[ghaff]

I'm not actually too much of a brand loyalist when it comes to hotels--in spite of having something over 100 days on the road last year. My itineraries are too varied for one or two chains to really work for me most of the time. Furthermore, prices tend to vary a lot with hotels on any given day so I tend to shop around a bit. So I have frequent stay programs and accumulate meaningful points on a couple of them but don't go crazy.

>booking isn't instantaneous as with a hotel (wait hours or days for confirmation from owner), checkin has to be pre-arranged and requires you get in touch with the owner (i.e. no 3am red-eye check-ins),

As for these points though, I agree that I mostly don't want to deal with this sort of thing when I'm traveling on business. I want a 24 hour desk that I can just roll up to a 2 in the morning if need be and I need to be able to cancel on short notice. On vacation, I'm often willing to deal with something more interesting/less cookie cutter but for business I mostly want "just works."

[rokhayakebe]

Curious: How much time do you spend shopping vs how much do you save on average?

[ghaff]

Not sure how to answer that, but we're talking about maybe bouncing around Expedia, another portal, making a few queries on Trip Adviser, and checking the hotel website. Maybe 15-20 minutes tops? (I'm not talking about any deep bargain hunting.)

In some locations, I know where the deals probably are, whether because of company-negotiated rates or just past experience. But $50-$100 (or more)/night cheaper is not at all unusual compared to just choosing my default chain in a large city. (Though sometimes the price of the large chain is fine.)

And just last night I happened to get an email from a hotel I've stayed at previously in SF about a special. Turns out it was about $150/night cheaper than a rate I had locked in at another hotel just to make sure I had somewhere to stay for an event in late August. So I cancelled and switched. Took 5 minutes to save about $600.

My basic point is that, especially in expensive cities, there's a big difference between even doing just a quick search and just staying at the usual.

[rokhayakebe]

Thanks for the reply, Ghaff. It was more of a research and your response was very helpful. Cheerio!