Late Hotels | Get Up To 75% Off Your Hotel Room Prices

Late hotels are only cheaper hotels when you use some kind of strategy to get yourself the best possible deal. It’s all very well for websites that specialise in late rooming deals (you know who they are) telling you “this is the best deal” and here is the “biggest discount” but we’ve only got their word for it. Prices are relative. There’s nothing to stop anyone opening a store selling milk for $100 a pint or litre. If they then slashed their prices and announced “milk 90% off our usual prices”, you’d still be able to find it cheaper at another store.

Here is my three-point-plan for getting the best possible price for all your late hotel bookings:

1. How Much Should You Be Paying?

Just like the milk (in fact even more so), the same hotel room can be sold for many different prices. To get a bargain we really need to know what the genuine room price is. Of course this will vary a lot, but you need to know what the cheapest end of the market is.

The best way to determine what a room should be costing you is to do a little Google research. Determine a time in the future when demand will be similar to what it is when you want to book your room and do a search. For example, don’t do a search for rooms around Christmas-time or during a major sporting event unless that’s when you want to book your late rooms. Always try and check “like for like”.

Determine what standard of room you are looking for and see how much it would cost to book normally. Look at several similar hotels in the same area. You’ll soon see a pattern emerging. Believe it or not, hotel operators are constantly monitoring what the competition are charging and adjusting their prices accordingly. Let this work to your advantage.

2. Define Your “Bargain”: Do You Want To Upgrade Or Pay Less?

Some people (like me) prefer to find a bargain that brings a better quality room into your price range. I’ll still end up by spending $80, for example – but instead of a crummy three-star room with a view of the car park, I’d prefer a luxurious 4-star executive room overlooking the park. Others get a bargain that gives an adequate room for less money. It’s totally your choice.

3. Check The Best Prices For All Late Hotels

Late hotel deals can come from several sources, including websites like Late Rooms and Late Hotels UK, but not exclusively. It really does pay to do a web search and see what kind of rooming prices other websites are coming up with. The concept of booking late to get the best hotel room deals isn’t really something you can rely on. Very often these days hotels book up and last minute offers just aren’t available.

One thing you really must do is: check the hotel’s own website before you commit to book anything. Very often – but not always – they will have the best deals for late hotels. Good luck booking your room!

Late hotels are many people’s idea of “cheap hotels” and the phrase has come to mean practically the same thing in some people’s minds, but a late hotel room is not necessarily a bargain priced hotel room. Cheap  rooms are only available when the hotel needs to sell off rooms cheaply in order to tempt people to book. Hotel owners regard any empty room as a sin worse than theft and the whole selling process is geared towards filling up hotel capacity at the highest room price possible.

One factor to be aware of is location. For example, cheap Dublin hotels can be rarer than hen’s teeth and the same can be said for hotels in the centre of London, New York and many other prominent cities around the world. But in Vegas, because there are just so many hotels, cheap rooms can be had.

On the other hand, if there are only a few rooms available on a certain day, you will not be offered much of a bargain. That is the fatal flaw in the whole late hotel booking concept. Because…

Late Hotels Are Not Always Cheap Hotels…

So how can you get the best possible price for any late hotels you want to book? I’m assuming that dates are not flexible – if they are, shop around until you find the best price for you. Here are my top 5 steps you should take to get the best late hotels bargains:

1. Shop Around

All the cheap hotels website have agreements to feature different hotels and different hotel groups more prominently than others. There is some crossover, but not as much as you might think. In fact what look like independent websites are very often secretly owned by one hotel chain or – more and more commonly – by an “affiliate”.  In case you didn’t already know, an affiliate is someone who earns commission by recommending a product and then receiving payment when someone follows their advice and books online. (Please be assured that the Late Hotels dot-org website does not earn any money from any service we review or recommend.)

2. Be Prepared To Travel

Do you really have to be in the center of town? A few miles away very decent hotels may be available at half the price of the ones you are looking at. It does pay to look at the transport links. In somewhere like London, for example, you will find that it is relatively quick and quite easy (if not especially cheap!) to travel long distances by public transport.

It might not all be good news. Most road transport links are not as good in London, so if you have to travel by car be aware of how you would be able to do it and how easy it would be. Be aware, too, of things like road-tolls and (in central London) a congestion charge that adds £8 ($12+) to your day’s driving. Spend some time doing your research: due diligence really can pay off in these situations.

3. Is There An Airport Nearby?

If so, you might find your bargain room at the hotels near there. Hotels tend to be bigger around airports and have lots of rooms to fill. Usually there are excellent transport links to where you want to go, that’s what airports do. You might also be able to take advantage of facilities such as free shuttle services and I’ve even be given a free limo service into town.

One word of caution: “free” doesn’t always mean without cost when it comes to the world of late hotels and accommodation “bargains”. For example, the “free limo service” I was assured was available as part of my rooming charge in a hotel in Las Vegas turned out to be a circular journey that took in all the hotels in the area (almost an hour to reach the Strip) and became pretty crowded once every seat had been taken and baggage piled high inside the limo. And, although billed as “free” the driver made it pretty clear he expected a sizeable gratuity every time he picked you up. No tip and next time he’d just glide by, pretending to be full or out of service. When it comes to hotels, free is a relative term.

4. Do Your Research: Check Out Trip Adviser

Do not just accept that the hotel that appears cheapest really is the best value: do a little more research. A few minutes spent on Google or Bing at this stage can save you heartache and money later. Search for late hotels in the location you are looking for and look up the hotel’s own website. Not every hotel offers cheap rooms to the late hotel websites.

And is the hotel as good as they say they are (it’s usually the hotels who write their own blurbs on hotel booking websites!). Trip Advisor has become the hotel owner’s feared adversary because it contains reviews from people like you and I, who have stayed there. Just be aware that some people are more difficult and expect different things to us. Do not let one bad review put you off- people can be cranky. Learn to read between the lines and see what a hotel is really like.

5. Email or Telephone The Hotel

Even if the websites you are looking at show no vacancies, it’s very likely that there might be a last minute cancellation and in my experience that’s where you’ll find the very best late hotel bargains. I once arrived at the last minute at a five star hotel in New York and, whereas my colleagues were paying as much as $485 for a standard room, I had an executive double on my own for $50. All right, so breakfast wasn’t included but I get fed very well for $5 at a diner a block away.

Remember: Late Hotels Can Offer Great Bargains – But You’ve Got To Be “In The Know” And Do Your Research

And that’s exactly what latehotels.org is here to do: put you “in the know” when it comes to getting the best deals. Please bookmark this website and come back often for your late hotels tips and tricks.

Late Hotels dot-org is intended to give you the best advice on booking last minute rooms online, as well as how to get the cheap hotel deals when booking by telephone or in person. The price of hotel rooms can vary enormously as hoteliers use ever-increasingly complex measures to ensure they get the best possible price for every room. The cost of a room can rise or fall by as much as 100% in a single hour. These days hotels rarely have set prices for their rooms – and if they do, it’s sky high to make you think your inflated price is a bargain! – everything now is priced according to the laws of supply and demand. Pity the poor customer who is at the mercy of sophisticated hotel rooming software!

That’s where latehotels-dot-org comes in. Our aim is to redress the balance in your favor by giving you information that will help you find the best late hotels room bargains when using hotel booking websites. We’ll give you insight into how the hotels “fix” their prices and offer you various cheats and ways around the system.

Where you want to stay plays a large part in how good a hotel room deal you can get. Certain parts of the world are better than others for finding cheap late hotels. It’s all a question of supply and demand. For example, finding bargain hotel prices in London is very difficult but not impossible, whereas somewhere like Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast of England usually has many more hotel rooms (supply) than people who want to stay there (demand) and so bargains can be found in adundance!

Local knowledge helps, as well as an insight into how supply and demand comes into play in various situations. Those in the know who are looking for cheap London hotels can opt to stay at one of the many Heathrow or Gatwick airport hotels, where 4 and 5 star luxury is available for a fraction of the price of staying in comparable hotels in Central London. The train or underground fare into London is a few pounds and the journey time is less than an hour in both cases.

The London airport hotels situation came about because large international hotel chains were invited to build large hotels on land surrounding the two London airports. Due to the economics of how hotels work, it makes more sense to have a lot of rooms served by one reception, one or two bars, restaurants, car parks and so on, so a lot of chains built tall buildings containing a lot of rooms, which they want to fill: hence the bargain room prices you can usually find there. In central London, where land is expensive and planning laws restrict the height of many buildings, rooms are much scarcer and so more expensive.

So, thanks for joining me at Late Hotels dot-org, I hope we can be of help.