Tried booking a hotel in Denver for a weekend, the app price was $20 higher than calling.

I was looking at a room at the Hampton Inn downtown for $129 a night on their website. On a whim, I called the front desk directly and asked if they had any deals. The guy said they could do $109 for the same room if I booked with him over the phone. Saved $40 total just for making a quick call. Anyone else found calling gets you a better rate than the apps lately?

2 comments

2 Comments

davis.diana4d ago

Calling might work sometimes but honestly that's a total crapshoot and apps are way more reliable. You probably just got lucky with a bored front desk guy who had authority to cut a deal. Most of the time when you call you get stuck on hold for 20 minutes then talk to some random call center person who doesn't even know the hotel's rates and just reads you the same prices from the website. Plus apps let you see all the options instantly and compare with other hotels without having to call 15 places. Also apps have rewards points and cashback offers that phone bookings never give you.

gray_nguyen23d ago

Right, because getting a bored front desk guy who just wants to play with the pricing system is basically my superpower. My life is a constant cycle of hoping some underpaid employee finds me charming enough to knock twenty bucks off a room. But your point about the call center robots is dead on, every time I think I've cracked the code I end up on hold for half an hour listening to some muzak version of a song I hated in 2007. Apps definitely make the whole process less of a personal humiliation, though I'm pretty sure the app rewards are just a system designed to make me feel good about spending more money on a king bed I don't need. Do you ever actually cash in those rewards points or do they just sit there like a toaster you got from a wedding you weren't invited to?