Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
will be up at its competitors as well. Be careful, however, with such hotels as the
Riviera or the Hilton, which book a lot of convention business. Because they
often hold conventions on-site, they may well have periods of outrageously high
pricing that the others will not match.)
One last tip on timing:
Occasionally a hotel will lower the weekend price for
someone who checks in Monday through Thursday. So if you can be flexible with
your dates, try to improvise the sequence of your stay and see where it gets you.
(2) Book an air/hotel package or contact a wholesaler
Not all hotel rooms are sold directly by the hotels themselves. Tour operators
(who put together air/hotel packages) and “wholesalers” (who simply sell hotel
rooms) buy up blocks of rooms in advance and at a discount, which they then
resell to the public with a small mark-up. This benefits the hotels, as they're guar-
anteed occupied rooms throughout the year; and it benefits travelers as the prices
these companies charge will often be lower than those quoted by the hotels them-
selves.
When these sorts of deals are good, they can be stellar. On the package front,
I've seen 2-night wonder-bargains from such companies as
Southwest Airlines
Vacations,
which charge vacationers just $99 for 2 nights at an older Strip prop-
erty and airfare from California (other Western gateways tend to cost between
$20-$60 more a night, with the Midwest coming in at $100 more and the
Eastern states for about $120-$200 more). Please take a look at the box on p. 24
for a listing of recommended air/hotel packagers.
Because nothing is ever that easy, you'll need to pull out your calculator before
you pull out a credit card, as not all packages will be good deals. Do a quick Web
search to find out what the actual costs for hotel and airfares are (see p. 24 on how
to do that), and then compare those numbers to what you'll be getting with the
package. Calculate the base cost first, by which I mean the cost of your airfare and
hotel room, times two (as these packages are always based on double occupancy).
If it's less than you would have paid booking these elements separately, as Bob
Barker would say—book that package! If you think you can get a better price on
the airfare, check to see if the company will sell you the hotel only. If none of this
works, move on to the next suggestion below. One warning: Be careful when esti-
mating the value of other items that might be included in the package, such as
shopping coupons, two-for-one show or attraction tickets, discounts on tours,
and so forth. Often these items are easily picked up on-site and for free in the
tourist literature handed out around town. The only additional items that you can
take at face value are free meals (such as included breakfasts), casino credits, and
free shows.
Wholesalers are like packagers in that they buy up rooms in bulk, but these
folks don't tend to handle the transportation side of the vacation, just hotel
rooms. They're also known in some circles as “Reservations Services.” You'll find
my recommendations for the best wholesalers in the “Top Tour Ops and
Reservations Services” box on p. 24.
(3) Call up and bargain
Never haggled? It's easier than you think and can lead to big savings in Vegas . . .
if you do it intelligently. By that I mean don't try it if it's Super Bowl weekend or
New Year's Eve—in fact, if the prices seem to be high across the boards, it's a good
