Travel Deal of the Day (May 6, 2008)

Here is a rule of thumb that I highly advocate – check your hotel and car rental rates just before the cancellation policy would be imposed. You can often save a lot of money.

The Deal:
If you are truly obsessed with finding the best deal, keep reading (those who are not so obsessed may find the following tip over the top). I ALWAYS re-check a rate right before a cancellation penalty would be imposed. For instance, for a hotel room with a 24 hour cancellation policy, I always re-check the rate at 48 hours out and 25 hours out to see if the rates decreased because the hotel wanted to unload unsold rooms. (FYI – for this hypothetical room, I also likely checked the rates at multiple other times. But checking at the last minute is an absolute necessity). The reason that this last-minute check is so important is that hotels and car rental companies are most likely to reduce rates at the last minute if they realize their inventory will go unsold. This works especially well with car rental rates as there usually is no cancellation policy (so, I would check a car rental rate 24 hours in advance and maybe even a few hours in advance). This does not work as well with airfare as most airfares include huge cancellation policies. But if you do have an airfare with no cancellation policy or are flying an airline that will credit you (either with cash or voucher) if your airfare decreases, I would also advocate checking for changes in airfares.