Megan Singleton: BloggerAtLarge.com writer with her tips for saving money on hotels

Travel expert Megan Singleton has revealed her secret trick for getting discounts on hotels.

In the months before your trip, if you open Booking.com and reserve a refundable room and lock it in for the dates you need, come back and check about two days before your payment will be taken.

Then, you go back into Booking.com and add your dates in again and see what the prices are, and it's likely you'll find that prices have dropped.

Read more about Megan's travel tips here. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News TALKSTB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
It is time to talk travel and we're joined by
Meghan Singleton, blogger at large dot com. Good morning, Good morning. Okay,
so you are about to head off to New York
and you had a bit of a play around, you know,
booking hotel rooms and things, and you've you just discovered
the best way to grab a great hotel price talk

(00:34):
us through absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
So this is a tip that you could use for
any hotel anywhere. I'm using it for Easter weekend, and
so that might actually be working to my favor. But
I am about to save hundreds of dollars on my
stay in New York City. So what I've done was,
like last year or whenever I first booked it, I
went to booking dot com and I selected the hotel

(00:58):
that I wanted and it was you know, mid price,
mid to lower price, but still nice, like a four star,
three four star hotel. Locked that in. Happy with the price.
I think it's going to be about nineteen hundred New
Zealand dollars for three nights, right, but that's what you
have to pay. So I but I got a refundable
and this is the only way it will work. I
went to booking dot com and I chose a refundable room.

(01:20):
So I've got until the first of April, so I've
gotten a lose on my phone to lock that in
or cancel for no fee. So every day I've been
refreshing about seven hotels that I quite like the look of,
including this same one, And as of this morning, my
latest refresh has gone down that very same room, a
big king sized room, to fourteen hundred and two dollars.

(01:42):
That's a saving of five hundred and thirty dollars. Now
how I take advantage of that is because you don't
just get that. I now need to go and back
into that hotel, book that room for fourteen oh two,
and then go to booking dot com and cancel my
previous booking. Now, hoteliers don't want us to know this.
They hate this. However, it is available. You do pay

(02:04):
for a non refundable ballroom, maybe one hundred dollars more
than if you just bought it and paid for it
on the day. But of course I'm going next weekend,
so I'm ready to pay in cash today, and that's
no problem, and especially if I'm saving five or six
hundred dollars.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Okay, So you go in, you book the refundable room,
and then closer to the time you book a non
when you find a great deal, it's a non refundable room,
and that gives you never that gives you the best
cheapest price possible.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Well, it's not even about the non refundables, because I
could still buy another room today that won't be payable
until the second and that is still about five hundred
dollars cheap or four hundred dollars cheap. Although then I'm going, well,
maybe there's a posh hotel I might like if I'm
going to have that sort of budget, and I might
just upgrade yourself, so you know, take that option. But

(02:57):
at least I've got my sort of placeholder, as it were,
and I was happy with that when I first booked it.
But honestly, I'm watching these prices. I've been watching them
all week come down about seven of them. I'm just
refreshing daily, and the savings huge. So it's a really
good tack.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
And Meghan, did you do both those bookings on booking
dot com?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Yeah, okay, yeah, definitely. Well to be honest, No, if
I'm ready to pay in cash, I could go straight
to the hotel. But again, compare. Sometimes the hotel price
isn't cheaper than these online booking agents, so it is
worth comparing, opening all your tabs and have all double check.
But this is just what I've noticed the trend this week.
That's insane.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Isn't that interesting? So you are, So that's all sorted.
You've done that, You've given yourself a good cup of
the days. It's not a really close crossover, and it's
a bit touch and go.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
No, I'm going direct. And that's another thing because I'm
meeting the rest of my group next Tuesday down in DC,
and I was awake from three am Francester thinking about
them all because they're transiting through from Los Angeles or
Houston or wherever they're coming, and I don't know their
turnaround times to get their domestic flights. So that's where

(04:06):
your mpc app is going to be very very important
to try and get through the customs lines at least
they're not. Yeah, well then they've got to go through
and go through security and they're domestic. Ah, a bit worried,
to be honest, but I won't hopefully that none of
them are listening right now.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, look we're going to cross our fingers and we
look forward to you know, getting a catch up in
a week or two. Thank you so much, Megan, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks they'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.