It seems that I have been doing much more research into saving money on hotels over airfare as of late. This is partially because, through the magic of flexible points and airline miles, I can find ways to either save money on airfare, or control my experience to what I want (even though we all agree that using miles to upgrade isn’t always the best use of them).
Therefore, my biggest travel expense may come in the form of hotels: while I can always shop around for flights, I’m usually not given the same luxury when it comes to booking hotels – especially around major events.
The latest hotel booking site to come past my desk was Splitty: a program that automatically does something I have been doing for years. In order to get a better price on hotels, Splitty automatically splits up hotel stays into multiple bookings, resulting in a potentially lower price per night. Backed by major partners, including former hotel executives, airlines and travel software solutions, I was curious to see how the program could help optimize hotel stays through splitting nights.
Their concept is nothing new to the travel insider. In previous adventures, I have often split and stacked different hotel deals (including Groupon) to get the best deal on my hotel stays. The difference is instead of tracking each discount on my own, Spltty does the work for me by creating multiple stays at the same hotel to get the best price for the entire stay. As a result, I can reduce the difficulty of doing the hotel shuffle, or tracking prices to book multiple nights.
As an exercise to see if it truly was capable of preparing a better price through their splitting technology, I ran a search for an upcoming hotel stay in Toronto. Their map allowed me to see all the available hotels and choose one that was right for me – alleviating the confusion of other programs that only show a limited amount of hotels.
With my first hotel choice unavailable, I compared prices at another hotel: the Doubletree by Hilton Toronto Downtown. Compared to another major hotel booking website, Splitty was in fact cheaper – but only by seven percent. In addition, Splitty had me in two different room types for the duration of my stay for the lower price: one night would be spent in a single king-size bed room, while the remaining nights would be spent in an ADA-accessible room with a roll-in shower and one queen bed. If I wanted to remain in one room my entire stay, I could still book through Splitty, albeit for the higher price.
The technology to split room types to get a better overall rate is quite brilliant and I can see the potential for Splitty in the future. However, there are some cons to booking like this as well. In my situation above, I was not necessarily comfortable in splitting my nights between a normal room and an ADA-accessible room – someone else potentially needs that room more than I do. Furthermore, as I have pointed out before, there are limitations to booking through online travel agencies instead of direct with the hotels, such as losing out on loyalty-based amenities and bonus hotel points.
On a future stay, would I look to Splitty first before going to another site? Yes, because those who don’t mind a little inconvenience to save money can get a better price for shuffling rooms and reservations during their stay. While this booking trick may not be for everyone, those who can afford flexibility could save money through using a new program like Splitty.
Would you split up your hotel stay to save money? Or is shuffling rooms too much for your experience? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Written by Frugal Travel Guy @ http://www.frugaltravelguy.com
Written by Frugal Travel Guy @ http://www.frugaltravelguy.com