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So i was thinking today how many travel agents are going to be moved out of the hotel market in the next few years. It must be quite scary if you have a bricks and motor business in this industry at the during the current climate. When you think about some of the costs that your average agent is going to have its a wonder more high street agents haven’t gone bust. Everything from rent to staff costs has to be passed on to the customer and in these hard economic times that cant be a good thing.

Things are changing still further with people like expedia getting into the package market too which has always been the agent’s traditional home ground. With the internet population growing by the day its hard to imagine how many of these retailers are going to make a comeback. For many people searching on the net for vacation deals has just become an automatic thing to do, many have never even been in a high street travel agent before and i don’t see this trend changing.

One thing i see again and again is people not haggling with the hotels they pick to get a better price. The thing that they don’t realise is that the price you see in the brochure is often just a base price and many hotels especially non chain ones will often expect the customer to ask for discounts. It is also worth noting that its not just the price of the room that you can negotiate over. You can get many of the services offered in the hotel for free or at a reduced rate if you are prepared to do a little bargaining.

For example many hotels these days will have a gym but quite often you will have to pay extra on your room price or purchase a more expensive room in order to get access. However it is always worth asking when you are booking a hotel if they would be willing to throw in the access to the gym or pool for free. There really is nothing to lose and during the current economic many hotels are finding it hard to reach anywhere near full capacity and have to offer some great extras in order to get people to book.

Many people feel self conscious about asking for free stuff but the thing to remember is that you are the customer and that all hotels want and need your business to survive. Just be cool calm and collected and you could be in line for some amazing free offers!

When many people think about Phoenix they think desert and isolation but that may not be the whole story. There are some great secluded hotels in the great city of Phoenix. One of the great things about the desert is how it allows you to get away from it all while still enjoying all the comfort of a great hotel. All you need to do at the Royal Palm Springs is to sit back and relax and maybe stare up at the great empty blue sky.

The Grand Hyatt hotel is one of the great hotels of the southern states and one you should deffinitly look into. Despite the expensive exterior it can actually be quite cheap to stay here, especially in the current financial crisis.  The key as with booking most hotel rooms is to enquire about rooms for off peak times and also booking at the start of the week as opposed to the end. Give them all call today and you could be staying in one of the worlds great hotels.

Its an interesting question buy why should you go for a cheap hotel when the majority of people are lookng to splash out when they go on holiday. Well the simple answer has to be that you can often get the exact same or even better facilities in a cheap hotel if you are willing to compromise on just a few small details, eg location. What people don’t think about is that hotels are often exploiting peoples ignorance about the local accommodation market and charging excessive prices based on this.

The key to any good deal is to look around as much as possible in the area you want to stay in and look at different options. For example try different room combinations to see if the final price gets any cheaper. Its also worth noting that hotels find it difficult to sell very large rooms so you may want to explore sharing with your group as opposed to smaller separate rooms.

One great tool we should all be using is google maps as it allows you to quickly see the location of many hotels in a given city at once. Its a great tool to help you decide when booking as the price of a city centre hotel could be as much as  50% more expensive than hotels on the outskirts. Check out the map of Dallas below.


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