Want to see the world but too broke to travel?
Maybe not!
Getting a hotel room doesn’t need to break the bank or force you to plan fifty years in advance.
“Get a room on Hotel Tonight,” said my friend. I travel to New York for Job 2 from time to time.
When I’m spending my money, I plan, budget, check and compare. When I’m spending someone else’s, I’m ten times worse.
“Plan on spending about $300 a night,” he said. “Hotel rooms get expensive in Manhattan.”
$300 is way above what I ever spend for a hotel room per night. I hadn’t used Hotel Tonight, so I downloaded the app.
It’s simple. It lets me search by location, and in New York City by neighborhood as well. The closer I got to my travels, the more the rates lowered until the rooms were sold. There were a ton of rooms, rated “hip” “solid” “basic” and “luxe.”
I’ve stayed in some of the best rooms in the city for rock-bottom prices. Usually, I get a room for about $150/night, which is nearly free by New York City standards, and now as I write, I’m finding rooms for under a hundred bucks. You can’t get a cup of coffee and a sandwich in New York City for less than a hundred bucks.
Suddenly, if you pack your own sandwich, Hotel Tonight is making travel start to look a little more affordable, isn’t it?
Only once did I have to pay the $300. I kept waiting for prices to fall, but I was cutting it dangerously close to the three-day conference I was attending that weekend.
“Prices are higher than usual,” the app warned.
“Take the room,” said my friend Marianne, who travels to New York City more than me. “The Fairfield Inn,” a decent hotel in Connecticut “is $279 for God’s sake. Stop being cheap!” I pushed the button. It hurt, but I haven’t paid more than $175 before or since.
There are tons of tricks to getting a good deal while traveling–I use all the travel sites, Expedia, Hotels.com, Priceline, Kayak, Orbitz… but I was pleasantly delighted to find I could travel like royalty on a New York dime with Hotel Tonight.
You can, too. Whether you discover a basic solid value or a hotel with a mint on the pillow, get out and travel like a Rockefeller! There are rooms waiting for you right now.
With a phone and a couple hundred dollars, you can see the world!