I have the hotel, but want to find the best price

[tryingsomethingnew]

Hi all,

I'm going to a wedding in the summer (Greece) and I want to stay in a particular hotel where most of the guests are staying. Not the venue for the wedding. Any tips on finding the best price? I've searched all the main sites and written down the price, which are similar but I'm wondering if I can ring the booking sites directly and say X are saying this much for the room, can you beat it? Does that work?
On a side note, it's 2 adults and a teenager so I'm looking at rooms that have three beds or big enough for a sofa bed but not on top of each other. I'm now thinking whether getting two rooms, hopefully interconnecting, and if that works out a better price rather than a suite type thing. Teenager is 13 so I don't want a whole room on her own completely.

Any tips?

Call the hotel directly

Contact the hotel directly. If they aren’t having to pay a slice to the third party booking sites, they may be able to give you the best price.

Oh really? On the hotels webpage it's the most expensive. But I guess I could tell them Booking.com's price?

I agree that it's often more expensive to book direct than on booking.com, which seems mad.

OP if you look at sites like trivago or hotels combined you can see prices from a range of booking sites.

How much of a difference is there? Is it worth more of your time than a quick email to the hotel to ask the question? If you spend time faffing around contacting the hotel and/or hoping for a cheaper rate somewhere, by the time you do book it the price might have gone up.

Have you tried Trivago

Many hotels will not give a discount over the phone, because they contract with Booking.com not to undercut them, and Booking can use mystery shoppers to catch them out.

What might help is to look up the hotel on Google Maps. Once you have selected some dates, that often shows your the prices from several agency sites (and Booking is rarely the cheapest).

If the price is similar everywhere you're looking, just book the room and stop faffing about!