Booked Hotels

When we travel, I am not spontaneous. Everything is planned, for two reasons.

The first is cost. By setting up hotels and such in advance, I can get the best prices possible from Travelocity or hotels.com. We have friends who drive until they feel like stopping, then then look for a hotel.

They will certainly find one, but price being charged what is called the “rack” rate. This is the price that they quote you when you walk up to the counter. It is not a good price. If you call ahead by even a few hours they will offer you a better deal. If you book like we do, the deal is better still.

Sometimes hotels have great rates posted on big signs. This always applies to only one or two rooms, and they are always already taken. All the rest are at the usual, rack rate. They figure that if you are already at the counter, you are very unlikely to walk out to do some shopping for a cheaper room. Even if you do, all the hotels are doing the exact same thing, so good-luck with that.

Try that with one of the big casinos in Vegas. They do advanced pricing so cleverly that they almost never have even a single room out of the thousands that they have for walk-up customers. We'll be in our luxury, mega-resort room for less money than an unbooked arrival will end up paying for spot in the Travelodge off the strip.

The last time we stayed near Disneyworld we were in a $81 room, that we got for $26 per night. Granted, this was exceptional, but getting half price is pretty common.

The second reason is that Helen and I know our driving psychology pretty well. If we are doing a big drive, like the one we did to Los Angeles last winter, we either want to blast through, or dawdle and explore. We don't do both at the same time. For us blasting through means doing the drive in 3 days. This is the fastest we can do it and still enjoy ourselves.

We also tend to do big drives asymmetrically regarding the length of driving day. If an LA drive is split into 3 equal days, we would have ended up stopping at Eugene, Oregon and Ukiah, California before reaching Los Angeles for the end of day 3.

Somehow, stopping at Eugene in the middle of the afternoon isn't very satisfying. I'm sure it's a great city, but we have no desire to poke around there. Ukiah, California even less so.

Therefore, we like to go much longer on day one, and end day two in the San Francisco bay area. Day three ends up with the shortest haul.

How could you know this if you were playing it by ear?

We barreled down I-5 until just just south of Eugene, then headed over to the Pacific Coast. We ended the first day at Coos Bay. It's a fine place to grab a bite and sleep. In the morning, we headed on down the west coast.

We ended the second day at Hayward, just east of San Francisco. This was a long day, too.

The last day we zipped down I-5 for a direct run to LA. We were finished driving so early, that we checked into our hotel, headed over to Disneyland, and had a lovely half day there.

With travel by air, early planning is even more important.

For fun, wander over to a website like Travelocity and look up a fantasy flight someplace. Pick the best flight on a certain date, something like ten months in advance. See how much it costs. Go back a month later and see what the price has changed to. Keep doing this every month.

You will see the price steadily rising. As you likely would have picked a great flight regarding time of day, and having few connections, you will run into another problem. Months before flight day, there will be no seats left.

If this happens, go back to the website, and try and find an alternative. Likely the time will be less than ideal, or you will end up with 3 connections instead of 1. Note that this crappy flight also costs far more than what you could have gotten the good one for if you'd booked it months earlier.

Yes, sometimes there are great last-minute deals. The trick to this is knowing how to find them. The problem is that there often aren't any when you need them the most. Go ahead, plan on going to Europe this summer. Don't book anything, and give last-minute deals a chance. Maybe you'll get to go, and maybe you won't.

Or you'll go anyway, and pay through the nose for a crappy flight.

Now, I'm not saying this will work for everyone.

You have to be willing to think things through in advance, and to consider all the alternatives. Will you be driving down the freeway past San Francisco, as we did last year, and suddenly decide that you simply must go to Chinatown. My kind of travel doesn't allow changes like that.

Not that it has to be Chinatown. If you think you will need some time in San Francisco, that can easily be blocked in. It can be utilized as you wish, but you can't jam entire days in later.

I like our way, but it just might drive you nuts.