How to get a cheaper hotel deal: Ten tricks to try

Cheap hotel deals are in plentiful supply. The trouble is that there isn't one simple trick or handy website you can use to make sure you get the best deal every time. We've already given you some top simple steps you can try in order to get the cheapest hotel room. But there are so many more! Here are ten great ways to ensure you're saving money when you're trying to book a hotel room. We reckon if you combine all of our tips, you'll get at 30 per cent of the advertised rate - and in some cases you can even get it for free.

1. Check all the sites
If you know the neighbourhood you want to stay in, and what you're looking for in a hotel, you can plug this information into all the hotel discounters like hotels.com or booking.com and the major travel search engines, including Travelsupermarket, Expedia, Kayak and Trivago. This will give you a baseline price for the time you want to travel, and an idea of the hotels on offer.

2. Visit the hotel website itself
Once you have picked your hotel and found the best possible deal from the aggregators and discount sites, it's worth checking out the hotel's own website, because they may well have deals of their own. Some, for example, will offer three nights for the price of two at certain times of the week or year, so it pays to check rather than assume the best deals are on the deal sites.

3. Call before you book
Believe it or not, the old fashioned route - calling the hotel - and we mean the actual hotel rather than a main booking line can work wonders. Tell them the price you have seen online, and ask them if match it or beat it. They prefer to deal with people direct, because they don't have to pay commission to the website, so they may throw in a few extras for you like WiFi or a late checkout.

4. Book late
Lastminute.com built a business out of the fact that hotels will often offer deep discounts at the last minute. If occupancy isn't high enough to cover the overheads, they will drop the price until they attract more guests. After all, if they are already paying cleaning staff, they may as well fill the room.

There are a number of sites specialising in late deals, including laterooms.com and lastminute.com. However, as well as looking at the available deals on these sites, it's well worth calling the hotels themselves to see if they can beat the deals advertised on the sites.

5. Show up on the day
The late deals start appearing as the date of departure approaches, but the best deals are available from 24 hours in advance. The later you leave your booking, the deeper the discounts get. Of course, there's a balance here because if you leave it too late the hotel could fill up, so either there are no rooms available, or occupancy is high enough that the hotel decides to bump prices back up because they do not need to fill empty rooms. It's worth taking this kind of approach only at less busy times, and when you are completely flexible about the hotel you want to stay in.

6. Think again about location
Many of these tips will only be successful when there is plenty of availability - but you don't have to radically alter your plans to travel when it's quiet.The 'quiet' period will depend on the location, and the type of traveler the hotel normally attracts, so target hotels that are out of season on your chosen date.

If you were to travel to London on a Saturday at the end of July - in the middle of peak school holiday season - at the time of writing Hotels.com is offering a room in the Marriott West India Quay for £151. The hotel is every bit a swanky as other Marriott hotels, but it's in the business district, so there's not a lot of call for rooms on a Saturday in the holidays. On the same day, Marriotts in the tourist areas are ruinously expensive, including the one at Marble Arch that would set you back £313, and the one at County Hall that costs £333.

7. Use hotel points
If you travel regularly through work, you should join the loyalty scheme of any hotel where you stay, so you can build up points for free stays - you should get priority for upgrades too when you check in if you mention your loyalty club membership and ask nicely.

8. Consider a reward credit card
There's one major caveat before you go anywhere near reward cards: you have to be absolutely certain you will pay it back in full and on time every month, or any rewards will be very quickly wiped out by interest payments.

If you are confident you have the discipline for a reward card, there are plenty on offer that will give you Avios points that you can exchange for hotel stays. Many of them have fees that can wipe out the rewards, but one card that doesn't have a fee in the first year is the American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (the fee in subsequent years is £140, so you'll need to calculate whether you make enough in rewards each year to make the fee worthwhile).

If you spend £2,000 in the first three months you have the card, you get 20,000 bonus Membership Rewards Points - which translate into 20,000 Avois points. That will get you a night in the Novotel in Birmingham city centre, or the Marriott at Manchester Airport. If you're referred by another cardholder, that reward is bumped up to 22,000 points too.

9. Check your Tesco Clubcard options
It's worth considering the Tesco Clubcard deals. These aren't perfect, because hotels will charge their maximum price for the room, so the notional price you will be quoted will be fairly eye-watering. A quick search on the Hilton website, for example, threw up a room for £152 a night, when I had been quoted £209 for paying in Tesco points.

However, when you are exchanging your points you will get three times the value. So that Hilton stay actually costs just £70 in Tesco points. If you want to use this system, you will need to book around four months in advance, and call to confirm availability before you order your vouchers, but if you are planning a long way in advance and have the points to spare, you can get a room for nothing.

10. Consider Airbnb
Some people will be keen on staying in a hotel, with the service and anonymity it provides. However, if you are just after a bed for the night, you are likely to get a much more affordable deal through Airbnb.

If, for example, you were after a room in Edinburgh on September 5th, you could pay £199 for the Hilton, £100 for an entire Georgian flat round the corner, or as little as £60 for a modern flat in the city centre. If you book an entire property, you'll have access to the kitchen too, so you are not forced to eat out for every meal and rack up the expenses that way.

Don't forget to look at our article five steps to bagging a hotel room for cheaper.

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