Corporate Rates: How Do You Get One?

I've been calling hotels and checking online, it seems this day and age all the hotels and their respective sites ask for "Corporate Rate ID Codes" or something of the sort.

Does anyone out there have any tricks to getting cheap hotel rates?

 

1) Check out what people are bidding for rooms by going to biddingfortravel.com or betterbidding.com

2) Go to priceline.com and place your bid

3) Pray

 

Has anyone used Pricline's "name your price?"

Man, it seems scary. Your card is automatically charged. What if you get some shithole dive?

 

I use it all the time.. as long as you are cautious and savvy about bidding... using the web sites I provided.. you will be fine. Biddingfortravel.com even keeps a running list of the hotels by star rating and zone so you have an idea of what you might get.

I have never once gotten a "shithole dive" and in fact usually end up staying at far nicer properties for less money than I would have paid otherwise.

 

A lot of them give a discounted rate for AAA membership, and I've never once showed my card.

 

Priceline is great. Do your research on the aforementioned sites and you can get some awesome deals. I stayed at the Hyatt in downtown Dallas recently for $65.

If you want to go even cheaper you can get some completely respectable places for $40 bucks or so.

 

Use Priceline all the time, too. Gotten some sweet-ass 3-star hotel rooms for $50/night, in several different cities. I highly, highly recommend.

 

So, just so I'm clear, I pick area, the "star level" and then name my price and that's it?

What if I don't like the exact location or the hotel? Can I cancel?

It almost seems too good to be true.

(God, I'm such a newbie)

 

I've always been afraid to do the priceline thingy. Sounds like I'm wrong -- again.

 

Therein lies the rub. You can't cancel, unless you want to eat the cost. That's the point of charging you automatically if your bid is good.

They will let you select a general vicinity of the city you want to stay in. Like, for instance, I recently booked a room in Phoenix. Before I made my bid, I could put a check mark in up to 8-10 different areas of the city if I wanted them to search for rooms there. So I could check, for instance, the airport/downtown, the north-center of the city, Scottsdale (northeast), Peoria/Glendale (northwest), Chandler (southeast), etc. If you really don't want to stay in Peoria/Glendale, then you don't put a check by it and it won't look for rooms there.

But say you bid $50 for a 3-star hotel and get it, you're going to get a kick-ass room for the price of a stay at Days Inn. If you're that picky about the exact location or brand name of the hotel, then just use Kayak.com or Expedia or Orbitz or any of the other million discount travel sites on the Web.

But if you want to try for a super-cheap room at a good 3- or 4-star hotel, it's gold.

 

Before going through expedia, travelocity, etc. be sure to check the hotel's website too. I stayed at a Doubletree in suburban Chicago a few weeks ago for $70 instead of $80 because I checked the Hilton Hotel website.

 

How long do the bids stay "active?"

As in, if I bid, how soon do I know a hotel accepts my offer?