How to quickly track hotel room rates over various dates
Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.
Two people have asked me recently if I know a way of tracking prices at the same hotel over long periods of time.
Both were trying to do ‘mattress run’ nights for “The Big Win” promotion, currently being run by IHG Rewards Club, the Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza etc group.
Basically, “The Big Win” offers a big bonus for completing a set number of nights, often in selected cities or on certain days of the week. The end bonus is often big enough to make it worthwhile booking hotels you don’t intend to sleep in.
(I did this in Madrid last week. I was there for a day and popped into a Holiday Inn Express to check in for a three night, €50 per night, stay! I did not return …. hopefully the points post on Friday.)
Anyway, back to the point. Is there a way of checking the price of a hotel for 60 days in one go?
The answer is “Yes”, luckily. You need to use travelocity.com. Note I said .com and not the .co.uk version.
Let’s imagine I want to stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Croydon as part of my “Big Win’ promotion (worryingly, I do!). I search for the hotel on travelocity.com without selecting a check-in date.
When it comes up, I click on the name of the hotel and then click “Check Rates” from the next page. I am presented with this grid (it includes early October because I did this search a couple of weeks ago):
The 6th and 13th October looked pretty good. However, those were bad days for me to head to Croydon, so I think I will aim for one of the Thursday nights in November, at $89 (£55 in reality – these prices may have moved by now as this was two weeks ago).
The $89 will not exactly match what you see on the hotels own site – in a good way, as Travelocity adds in its own fees to the prices shown – but it is a pretty accurate guide as to what days have the lowest prices.
You learn something new every day ….
IHG Rewards update – December 2021:
Get bonus points: You can earn up to triple IHG Rewards base points with IHG’s new Autumn promotion. It runs from 1st October to 31st December. You can register here and our full article on the offer is here.
New to IHG Rewards? Read our overview of IHG Rewards here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our article on ‘What are IHG Rewards points worth?’ is here.
Buy points: If you need additional IHG Rewards points, you can buy them here.
You will get a 100% bonus when you buy IHG Rewards points by 4th January 2022. Click here to buy or learn more.
Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from IHG and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.
Comments (18)