How good a deal you get when booking your hotel is partly down to luck, as room rates can vary a lot, even within a few minutes, due to dynamic hotel pricing. I was looking for a hotel in Edinburgh for the night of 27 February 2012. I wanted to stay somewhere I hadn’t stayed before, so I could write a hotel review.

Edinburgh Castle

As usual, I started my accommodation search on the HotelCombined price comparison site. One of the cheapest discount hotels coming up was the Point Hotel where a deluxe double room with a castle view including breakfast was priced at £34 on the Hotels.com site. I knew that TopCashBack were offering 10% cashback on bookings made on Hotels.com throught the link on their site. I reckoned that £30.60, after cashback, was a real bargain. I recommend that you should only use cashback sites once you’ve researched the lowest available prices (you can read more of my tips on using UK cashback sites).

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I’ve recently seen two ways to save money on bookings.  I recommend checking for the lowest accommodation prices on the HotelsCombined price comparison site and directly with the hotel before booking. However if Hotels.com are offering competitive prices at the hotel you want to book, then getting an additional 10% off the price is a great bonus.

1. The UK cashback site, TopCashBack, was offering 10% cashback on bookings made with Hotels.com through the link on the TopCashBack site. The standard cashback is 8% but I have seen it as high as 12%. However you will have to wait for a few months to receive the cashback payment.
2. You can get a 10% discount voucher if you like the Hotels.com UK page on Facebook. There are some exclusions in the T&Cs but the discount code worked in all the examples I tried.

I prefer to go for the straight discount applied to the price paid when booking, as you are never guaranteed to receive cashbacks.

I wondered if it would be possible to get a 20% double discount by booking through the link on TopCashBack and then using the 10% discount code generated on the Hotels.com UK Facebook page. However, it does say on the TopCashBack site that the use of any discount codes not generated by TopCashBack will void your eligibility to a cashback from them. It would appear that some other bargain hunters must’ve tried that ploy already.

Read my other money saving travel tips.

Update 22 February 2012 – The Facebook 10% discount code expired yesterday but keep a look out for new voucher codes. TopCashBack are currently offering the standard 8% cahback on Hotels.com bookings.

Update 12 March 2012 – I found  March 10% discount code on the Hotels.com UK Facebook page.

LateRooms.com are currently running a free nights promotion in selected hotels and locations all over the world for bookings made during September 2011, for stays until the end of November 2011.

I checked out some of the UK hotels in the promotion and did find fair availability on the 3 nights for the price of 2 offer at several of the listed hotels. However some hotels exclude certain days of the week and dates. Being aware of promotions is one of Europe a la Carte’s money saving travel tips.

Click here to check out the LateRooms.com Free Nights promotion.