How To Stay In A Luxury Hotel At Half Price
In recent years secret hotels have become increasingly popular with travellers keen to snap up a bargain for popular holiday destinations.
Concept
For those who may not have come across the idea before, it’s reasonably straightforward (and quite quirky). You search on the secret hotel website for a hotel in your destination city, specifying the dates you plan on staying. You will be given summary details about the hotel’s amenities as well as the discounted price. This is the big appeal of using mystery hotel sites, where discounts on standard room rates of 45 – 50 percent are not unheard of. For larger cities the number and range of hotels can be very good, from budget right through to five star hotels.
So why do hotels offer these kind of discounts? Well, most hotels go through quiet periods when occupancy is less than 100 percent. While, sometimes they hold their own sales or go through regular discount travel sites for to cover off those periods when they know they are likely to have spare rooms. At other times they may want to sell rooms quickly or they may even not want it known that they’re prepared to offer discounted rooms. Utilising secret hotel websites offers hotels a way to fill any empty rooms.
Pros
Savings: Unmistakably this is the biggest advantage. In times of grim austerity jetting off for a trip somewhere has never seemed so appealing, especially if you can also stay in a swanky hotel. When hotel prices in cities like London, New York and Paris can reach into the stratosphere, secret hotels is a way to square the circle – stay in a really good hotel without completely blowing up your finances.
A taste of the unknown: It’s a great way of doing something a little different and finding somewhere you might never have discovered or could never have afforded. If you like trying something new then secret hotels may be a natural fit.
Cons
Location: The main downside to using a mystery hotel site is that by definition you do not know the name of the hotel until you have booked. People don’t worry about the quality of the hotel so much because the sites tell you what star rating the different hotels have and also give the overall TripAdvisor ratings. Not knowing the location, in bigger cities especially, might be a drawback – no one wants to be staying somewhere that’s miles from where you’re planning on doing things. In reality however, this doesn’t have to be a major concern as many of the sites provide a reasonable amount of information about where the hotels are located. For example, when I looked on www.secrethotels.eu/paris their descriptions included location details like ‘Eiffel Tower’, ‘Few minutes from Champs-Elysees’ and ‘… in the Latin Quarter’. With that kind of specific information the degree of uncertainty pretty much disappears. Incidentally, if you’re planning a trip to Paris have a look at http://www.parisinfo.com/ . It’s the official tourism website and has a lot of information that will give your trip a bit of va va voom.
The booking is final: There’s no backing out once you confirm so make sure that your plans are in place and you are definitely going. Then it’s just a case of packing your bags and jetting off!
