Upgrade Your Room Without Paying More
Scoring a hotel room upgrade is all about timing. It’s going to be easier during slower times, surely, but it also makes a difference when you ask for the upgrade.
A few seconds at check-in can make all the difference. If you wait for the front-desk person to hand you a key, you’re likely to get the least fancy accommodations. But if you make nice, telling them it’s a special occasion or that you have a lot of work to do, and you do this before they’ve locked you into a particular room, it’s much easier for the agent to hook you up.
Even if that moment has passed, all is not lost. Two years ago, when my husband and I went to St. Thomas for his birthday, our original room was a dark cave directly above a noisy outdoor bar. A quick trip back downstairs, a little explaining that it was a special occasion (while kicking myself that I hadn’t mentioned this when I checked in), and we were reassigned a room with an ocean view and a private balcony.
Filed under: YG Travel Guide by !YG
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Many of you know I’m a HUGE fan of the UK Grime scene. I saw the magic of the music at work while partying in Ghana last year and the UK massive went crazy over Sway. Just to give you some perspective Sway recently made history by winning UK’s prestigious MOBO Award for Best Hip Hop, beating out 50 Cent and The Game. What makes this accomplishment even more impressive is the fact that he did it as an independent artist! Sway has truly carved out his own niche and needs to be respected. Plus, he is from the best place in the world…..Ghana! 🙂 Check it out.
~YG
[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOLQfMf9jDM]
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Josh Groban is an artist who I’ve truly grown to appreciate. In the era of the microwave hit and complex marketing plans, this cat is just plan good. One of the few whose music speaks for itself. Check it out!
~YG
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfHYWYv23I]
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Scoring a Room in a Sold-Out Hotel
You know those convenient 800 numbers that every hotel chain has to connect you to their centralized reservation centers? Ditch ’em. The people in a call center in Omaha don’t have the power to manipulate a particular hotel’s inventory the way managers who are on-site do.
Instead, figure out which hotel you want to stay at and call it directly. If you’re still out of luck, consider a reseller’s Web site. Hotels, like airlines, overbook reservations because they know that not everyone is going to show up. But some of their inventory goes to third-party travel sites like Expedia, Hotels.com and Travelocity, which contract with hotels ahead of time to sell a preset block of rooms.
Last August, I was looking for a room in Chicago in October (I was running in a marathon). I searched several sites, and at Quikbook.com I found a room at Kimpton’s Hotel Allegro — it turned out to be 1 1/2 miles from the starting line. Even better, the Quikbook rate ($184 a night) was $20 cheaper than the hotel’s group rate, which was no longer being offered.
Filed under: YG Travel Guide by !YG
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