If you are anything like me, for much of my life I thought that if you were going to buy something and there is a price listed on the item then that was the price that you had to pay. When I started working in the hospitality industry a few years ago, I realized that the listed price is not always what every customer pays. As part of my job working at the front desk of a nice country inn, I was given the authority to bargain with people that came in off of the road looking for a room who had no reservation.
I had some experience with negotiating room rates from a customer perspective a few years before that too, during a cross country road trip with the man who is now my husband. We traveled without reservations, by the seat of our pants. Whenever we decided that it was getting towards time to stop for the day we would scope out the various hotels in the area. My husband would go into a hotel and talk to the desk clerk to see whether they could do any better than the advertised rate. If they did, we would check in. If not, we moved on to the next hotel until we found one that would.
Hotels, motels, inns, and other lodging facilities all have multiple rooms to rent each night. Every night, some of those rooms remain empty. However, the facility still has to pay to maintain those rooms and keep them in good condition so that there are enough rooms to rent on nights when the demand for rooms is high. There is a cost that can be determined for how much it costs a lodging facility to let a room remain empty each night. If that room can be occupied by a guest that pays even a small amount more than the hotel would pay if it were empty, then the hotel makes money. That was the principle upon which I negotiated with of road guests. I never revealed my “number”, of course, but I did accept all reasonable offers that were made.
The next time you are traveling and you have enough flexibility to spend a little time bargaining with lodging facilities, try traveling without reservations. You just might find yourself with a little more money in your pocket after your trip than you had anticipated.
Photo by clarita on morguefile.com.