Tips For Gaming Hotel Websites To Get The Best Room Rates

by Dave Seminara on

Major hotel chains have sophisticated software that dictates room rates based upon expected occupancy, but with a little knowledge and a bit of effort you can ensure that you get the best deal. The key to getting the best possible price is understanding hotel demand and trying different search terms to see which combination of dates yield the lowest prices.

Depending on location and time of year, some hotels have dramatically higher occupancy on the weekend, while others that cater to business travelers are busier during the week. If you want to save money, schedule your trip accordingly.

For example, let’s say you’d like to spend a week dividing time between San Francisco and the nearby Sonoma County wine region. If you want to save a bundle on hotels, hit Sonoma during the week, when it’s nice and quiet and the room rates are low, and then on the weekend stay in a business class hotel in the suburbs of San Francisco or in Silicon Valley.In many destinations, you can find a good deal on hotels any night of the week, save Saturday nights and sometimes Fridays. You can either work around this, as outlined above, or manipulate your search terms to make sure you’re not paying the higher Saturday night rate for more than one night.

If you plan to stay more than one night at a chain hotel, particularly if part but not all of your stay includes a weekend night, definitely split apart your travel dates into one-night increments to see how the price changes. For example, if you search for a room on the website of the Hilton Inn at Penn in Philadelphia for a two-night stay, checking in this Saturday night, you’ll find a AAA rate of $260 per night. But if you split your search term to see the price for Saturday night and Sunday night, you’ll notice that while the Saturday rate is $260, the AAA rate for Sunday night plummets to just $134. The Hilton is quite content to charge you the higher rate for both nights but you’d be a fool to pay it.

This is not an isolated example. I did a quick search for other hotels this weekend and almost every hotel I checked out had a different rate for Saturday night versus Sunday night, but none offered the Sunday discount to the customer booking both nights together in one reservation on their sites. The Renaissance Marriott in Philadelphia offers a AAA rate of $279.95 for a two-night, Saturday, Sunday stay this weekend, but if you search just for Sunday night, you’ll notice the rate plummets to $180.45 – though you don’t get that rate unless you make two reservations.

The Hyatt Regency on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago has a Saturday night rate of $170 versus $116 on Sunday, but again their site doesn’t give you the lower Sunday rate unless you make two reservations. And the same goes for Chicago’s Westin River North, which has a $233 versus $118 split for this weekend.

The split can work the other way as well, especially in the suburbs. For example, the Hyatt House in Plymouth Meeting, outside Philadelphia is $18 more expensive on Sunday night compared to Saturday this weekend. And there are also occasions when the hotel offers a better rate for multiple night stays compared to a single night stay. Again, it all depends on expected occupancy.

This summer, Orbitz got a lot of bad press after admitting that it shows higher priced hotel options to those searching for rooms on a Mac, so many advocate double checking searches on a PC, if you can, but I tested various searches on my PC and my MAC and they all appeared to yield the same results.

The bottom line is that you always need to check and split apart your travel dates when searching for a multiple-night stay. If you can save money by making multiple reservations, go for it, and add a note in the comments section asking them to combine the reservations so you don’t have to move rooms.

Then remind them again when you check in. Or, to simplify matters, call the hotel directly, tell them what you discovered online and ask them to extend the lower rate for your entire stay. They might not do it, but it’s worth a try. Whatever you do, don’t throw away money by failing to explore all your options online before booking.

[Photo credit:Uggboy Ugggirl on Flickr]

Video Of The Day: The Making Of Udon Noodles

by Elizabeth Seward on

“For Udon and Country” from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo.

It’s easy to think of udon noodles as just another delicious kind of food, but, as with most food, there’s more to the story than what winds up on your plate. This film by The Perennial Plate focuses on Shimizu San. He’s been making udon noodles for the last 45 years at his farm in a small town outside of Tokyo. He not only makes the noodles from scratch, but he grows the wheat for them, too. The footage is beautiful as well as the music. It only takes five minutes to understand udon noodles on a completely different level. Enjoy!

Today Hindus Celebrate Diwali, The Festival Of Lights (PHOTOS)

by Libby Zay on

Across the world today, Hindus are celebrating Diwali, one of the religion’s most important holidays. Popularly known as the “festival of lights,” Hindus mark the occasion by decorating their homes with flowers, paper lanterns, powders and earthen oil lamps called Diyas, which signify the triumph of good over evil. Other traditions associated with the holiday include cleaning your house, wearing new clothes, sharing sweets with your family and lighting off firecrackers to drive away evil spirits.

Officially, the holiday celebrates the homecoming of the God Ram after vanquishing the demon king Ravana. That’s the abridged version of the story, as it took the God Ram 14 years to do so. The holiday also honors the Hindu goddess of wealth, Lakshmi.

In India, the festival also marks the end of the harvest season, so many people give thanks for the year gone by and pray for a good harvest in the year to come. However, the festival is celebrated across the globe – from Nepal to New Zealand, and also in Fiji, Britain, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States.

Interested in seeing more of Diwali? Click through the gallery below to see how the festival is being celebrated in various countries, including India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

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Is There A Perfect Way To Board A Plane? Researchers Say Yes

by Allison Kade on

It’s little surprise that China is crowded. Given a booming population that can afford to fly – and without an equally booming plane population – researchers in Beijing have been examining ways to make boarding planes most efficient.

The idea is to accommodate the heightened Chinese flying demand and relative scarcity of planes. Western Australia’s ScienceNetwork reports that researchers are doing something new by looking into boarding patterns, as opposed to just luggage congestion and takeoff scheduling.

The findings? Move over, screaming children and slowpokes.

The researchers found that there is an “optimal” way to board a plane, and it involves categorizing passengers by their “individual properties.”

Under our current model of assigned seating, passengers at the front can reach their fastest possible boarding speed, but after that things slow down. The “optimal” system would categorize you by your luggage type, timeliness at the gate and other factors, and sort you into boarding order that way.

Although this is nice in theory, there are some obvious problems. Math can’t, after all, account for factors like passengers’ personalities, how distracted they are or even how large they are. Oh, and the fact that humans aren’t generally as predictable as variables in an equation.

[Image credit: Flickr user Reuben Whitehouse]

Is Illegal Poaching In Africa And Asia A Threat To US Security?

by Kraig Becker on

The U.S. intelligence community has been issued a new charge from President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Organizations such as the CIA and NSA are being asked to assess the impact that illegal poaching across Africa and Asia is having on U.S. security interests abroad. This shift in policy indicates that the administration may be preparing to get tough on the underground black market that has been built on the bones of thousands of slaughtered animals over the past few years.

While meeting with a group of conservationists, environmentalists and ambassadors at the State Department last week, Clinton called for a unified strategy across a host of regions to help combat the illegal trade of elephant ivory and rhino horns. Those two items in particular have sparked the recent rise in poaching in Africa as suppliers look to fill the rising demand in parts of Asia. In launching this new initiative, the Secretary of State pledged $100,000 to help get new enforcement efforts off the ground, but perhaps more importantly was her announcement that the U.S. intelligence community would lend their talents to the fight for the first time.

At first glance, using U.S. intelligent assets to fight illegal poaching doesn’t necessarily seem like a good use of resources. But much of the poaching is done by rebel forces and local bandits who then use the funds to purchase better weapons and more advanced equipment. Well-armed and funded militias can be a direct threat to the stability of allies throughout Africa and Asia, where a number of fledgling governments are struggling with so many other important social and economic issues. Additionally, because poachers move across borders with impunity and ship their precious cargoes around the globe, the U.S. intelligence community seems best suited to track their movements. Their efforts could lead to not only finding the poachers while they are in the field, but also tracking down buyers in Asia who are funding these hunts.This move comes at a time when poachers are becoming more armed and using more sophisticated tactics. It is not uncommon for the illegal hunters to employ the use of helicopters, night-vision goggles and sophisticated weaponry when stalking their prey, and when confronted by local authorities, they are generally packing bigger and better guns than their foes. That has made combating the poachers extremely difficult, as they are often in and out of a game preserve before anyone knows they are there, and when they are caught in the act, it frequently turns into a deadly firefight.

Secretary of State Clinton’s announcement also takes illegal poaching out of the realm of conservation and puts it squarely into the national security arena. That is a definite change in tone over what we’ve seen out of past administrations, which generally seemed more focused on bigger international issues. Obama may consider poaching a big enough issue to take on in his second term, particularly since he has deep family ties in Kenya, another nation hit hard by poaching.

The Washington Post says that an estimated 10,000 elephants are killed each year in Tanzania alone, which gives you an indication of just how bad this problem has become. In some parts of Africa, rhinos have already been hunted to extinction and if this wholesale slaughter continues, the elephant may not be far behind. I don’t care if the U.S. government did have to come up with an excuse about national security to get more involved, I’m just happy they are taking steps to crack down on this awful trade.

[Photo credit: Kraig Becker]