Booking a month long trip in a country you’ve never set foot in and only ever seen on television is seriously daunting. Luckily, I was fortunate to have enough time in the lead up to the trip to do a tonne of research on how to stretch my dollars as far as they would go…and for anyone who knows me well, they know I love a bargain and setting myself up for the challenge of getting the most out of my hard earned cash.
Trying to keep costs at a minimum when vacationing in resort laden towns like Waikiki is pretty difficult – but booking accomodation at a reasonable price in a resort town can be done.
There are a multitude of website proffering discounted rooms, chalets and suites on the internet, but more often than not, these rates are unlikely to be much cheaper than booking the same room via the hotel directly.
For example, HotWire has been heralded by many as one of the most cost effective ways to book accomodation abroad, however the company currently has a one star rating on Yelp. The website offers unsold ‘travel inventory’ at discounted prices.
When hotel rooms, airline seats, or rental cars go unsold, they are filled by travel companies through companies like Hotwire. Hotwire does not identify the participating companies until after the purchaser has paid so as not to directly compete with regular retail sales of the travel partners. This sales model is known as an “opaque”. According to the Hotwire website, they deal with brand-name travel companies exclusively. This strategy allows Hotwire partners to clear out their supply and sell inventory that would otherwise go unsold.
I myself used HotWire locally to book accomodation in Paihia and was definitely disappointed in what I got for around $240NZD a night. The hotel was dated, dusty and the service non-existent. I had to call for towels on more than one occasion as those that were supplied were insufficient for the number of guests booked in to stay and the locks on the doors were flimsy at best. However, HotWire does have a star rating system which means you can elect to purchase a slightly more expensive room with a higher rating if you wish to do so. But if you’re going to spend more money, you may as well use an agent that lets you know who you’re actually booking! I would suggest if you are going to use HotWire to base your choice on user feedback in conjunction with the star rating.
Booking.com offers it’s registered participants ‘hidden offers’, which are only displayed once you have created a user profile and logged in. It pays to create an account when using Booking.com, as dynamically priced destinations mean they can drop significantly during a given day. They also offer daily specials and allow you to setup price drop alerts in locations you are interested in renting, meaning you’ll receive email alerts any time a price drop occurs in your saved destination list. In the US, the site is operated as PriceLine. Again, user reviews on the Consumer Affairs website rate this engine with one star, with some customers citing underhanded cancellation policies that are not in line with actual hotel chain policy, reservations being confirmed by the company but not booked with hotels and very poor customer service. I have used the Booking.com app myself for making reservations in Rarotonga, and at the given time Booking.com offered the best listed price for a room at the resort our wedding party was staying in. I found both the site and mobile app easy to use and based on my experience with the company, I would recommend them to others cautionarily.
With that being said, most of these engines charge a percentage fee to the hotel, for acting as a conduit between customer and service provider. Think of it as a marketing platform that gives smaller businesses access to audiences that it would not usually be able to reach, with its own social media presence. Because of this, it’s highly likely that if you call the hotel directly and quote the listed price on Booking.com, Expedia or sites like Trivago, the hotel will honour the quoted price directly as they’ll receive 100% of the revenue and it won’t be liable for service fees.
When looking for listings, browse incognito! I use Google Chrome to do this.
To open an incognito window, start Chrome and click the wrench icon in the top right corner of the screen. Click New Incognito Window and start browsing. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl+ Shift + N to bring up a new incognito window without entering the Chrome settings menu.
Most hotel chains are now performing analytics to understand where their demand for supply is coming from. This means that when cookies are enabled on a browser, websites are able to collect small pieces of arbitrary data, like a users activity. With this data, they can they can instate dynamic pricing, hiking rates for suites that are in demand based on their users on site activity.
An easy solution is to designate one browser for your accomodation searches set for use in incognito mode, and then to do everything else that you enjoy the use of cookies for, in another browser.
In the end, I booked accomodation in Waikiki at the Aqua Palms, based on a number of aggregated searches I performed over a week. The location was recommended to me by a work colleague, a former resident of the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
This hotel charge resort fees. A resort fee is usually collected separately from the advertised room rate. Despite these charges, my booking which was made directly through the hotels website, was cheaper than any of the advertised rates on Expedia or Booking.com.
The hotels website also offered reduced rates on suites without oceans views, as well as an additional discount for bookings made more than a month in advance, and free car rental on some suites.
I booked a suite with a City View at the Aqua Palms for the three of us, because I can’t imagine we will spend much time in our room while we have Waikiki Beach on our doorstep so the rooms view was inconsequential.
For 2 adults and 1 child including all resort fees and taxes over 2 days, I paid just over $532 NZD ($382 USD), paying in US currency and allowing my own bank to complete the conversion.
When making payments using a New Zealand credit card, you should always elect to make payments in local currency. In most cases, your banks’ foreign currency conversion rate will give you a better return than an international retailer.
I’m looking forward to being able to post a review of the Aqua Palms resort and am hoping it will be a positive one. I guess we’ll find out in T-Minus 13 days from now!
Charli x
charliespinoza.com 