Finding the Best Room Rate at Hotels

The rack rate is the maximum rate a hotel charges for a room. It’s the rate you get if you walk in off the street and ask for a room for the night. You sometimes see these rates printed on the fire/emergency exit diagrams posted on the back of your door. You can get some information of local private jet charters here too.

Hotels are happy to charge you the rack rate, but you can almost always do better. Perhaps the best way to avoid paying the rack rate is surprisingly simple: Just ask for a cheaper or discounted rate. You may be pleasantly surprised. If you are in Italy, get Car Hire Sicily airport to help your travel around easily.

In hotels and larger guesthouses, the rate you pay for a room depends on many factors chief among them being how you make your reservation. A travel agent may be able to negotiate a better price with certain hotels than you can get by yourself. (That’s because the hotel often gives the agent a discount in exchange for steering business to that hotel.)

Reserving a room through the hotel’s toll-free number may also result in a lower rate than calling the hotel directly. On the other hand, the central reservations number may not know about discount rates at specific locations. For example, local franchises may offer a special group rate for a wedding or family reunion, but they may neglect to tell the central booking line. Your best bet is to call both the local number and the toll free number, and see which one gives you a better deal.

Room rates (even rack rates) change with the season, as occupancy rates rise and fall. In most of Ireland, hotels charge the highest rate during the high season of June through August and the lowest during the low season of November through March. In Dublin, all bets are off because the city receives a high volume of visitors all year, and most rates don’t go down during the winter.

Know that even within a given season, room prices are subject to change without notice, so the rates quoted in this book may be different from the actual rate you receive when you make your reservation.