Hotwire Archives - TravelSkills

I booked a room at the brand new Even Hotel in NYC for just $115 per night (Image: IHG)

Let’s take a walk through the 2016 calendar and I’ll show you when to pounce on travel deals—and when you should sit back and let everyone else pay those painfully high prices.

January-February:

When everyone goes home after New Years, travel demand plummets and we fall into the so-called “dead weeks” — the slowest (and cheapest) time of year for bargain hunters.

Now through the end of March is a great time to find excellent last-minute deals. (Or if you were smart enough to book trips back in the fall when airlines posted big winter fare sales- like this one to Hawaii or this one to Asia)

Exceptions to this would be long weekends like Martin Luther King (Jan 15-18) Valentines/Presidents Day (Feb 14-16)— both weekends are crowded and expensive at ski resorts as well as beaches.

If you are between jobs, retired, or with no kids in school and have the flexibility to travel during these weeks, you’ll see jaw dropping low prices….and also lots of good last minute deals on sites like Hotwire.com or or apps like Hotel Tonight.

One great example of this: Later this week I’m staying at the brand new EVEN Hotel on West 35th Street in Manhattan for just $115 per night– at any other time of year, a decent room in NYC goes for closer to $300 per night– or more.

March-April

Watch out for rowdy coeds in March as Spring Break blooms across the US (Photo: Sandpiper Beacon)

This is spring break and you need to be on alert for high prices and surprise crowds at airports, especially if you live in or near a college town OR if you are headed to a warm weather destination like Florida, Mexico or the Caribbean. Find out when the university nearest you has spring break and stay home that weekend! (Here’s a helpful guide to spring break dates around the country.)

Late March is usually the busiest time of year for collegiate Spring break, and April is more popular with families traveling around Easter.

But this year, we have a very early Easter weekend (March 25-28) which means college kids AND family spring breakers are going to be crowding the skies and the beaches simultaneously, so expect BIG crowds and BIG prices at this time of year.

April-June

There’s a silver lining to an early Easter, though, which is a much longer “shoulder season” when demand dips along with prices. Shoulder season this year will run almost 10 weeks from early April until mid-June when peak summer pricing and crowds kick in.

Shoulder season is not as cheap as the dead weeks, but it’s not anywhere near the painful peak of what you’ll pay during July or August. Springtime is probably the very best time of year to travel to Europe because the weather is getting warmer and summer crowds have not arrived. East Coast to Europe airfares can probably be had for $1,000 (or less) round trip in May compared to closer to $2000 for peak summer roundtrips. Hotels are cheaper, too. Flowers are blooming and locals are in a much better mood!

June-August

Flying over London at night on a United 767 (Photo: Chris McGinnis)

The peak of the peak summer season does not start until mid-June, so you’ll find significantly lower prices in early June compared to later in the month. Prices soar after that, especially on and around July the 4^th and stay high until Labor Day or early September. Fridays and Saturdays in August are typically the busiest days of the year at major hub airports.

The best news for Europe-bound travelers this year is that the US dollar should remain strong, which means once you get there, you’ll find plenty of deals. I expect transatlantic airfares to remain steep, but due to lower fuels costs and increasing airline capacity they won’t increase significantly from last summer. Plus, there are a lot of new low-fare entrants on transatlantic routes that will keep prices low.

Note that with kids going back to school so much earlier these days, you’ll start to see deals pop up in mid to late August. They’ll soar again for Labor Day (Sept 2-5), and then tumble after that.

September-November

What’s best about shoulder season is that there are TWO of them! The second one starts in September and lasts all the way to Thanksgiving.

Fall is a slow (and very cheap) time for cruising because kids are back in school and people are fearful of hurricanes. But the reality is that modern cruise ships are fast enough to navigate around storms, so it’s not much of a problem.

Leisure travelers should keep in mind that fall is convention season in many major US cities, so mid-week rates at big city hotels can soar to freakish levels, and then crash on weekends when conventioneers leave town. (This is especially true in San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Seattle.)

November-December

As we all know, travel prices start to rise again during the week before Thanksgiving, but travel patterns have been changing lately. Traditionally, the one of the busiest days of Thanksgiving holiday is the Wednesday before. This past year, the FRIDAY before Thanksgiving was busier at most major airports—this means that more people are taking the whole week off.

Another silver lining for bargain hunters? An early Thanksgiving (Nov 24 this year) means that the dead weeks will begin earlier, leading to a longer dead week period when you’ll find great deals nearly everywhere — except in Manhattan when prices soar due to holiday shopping.

So…. when and where will you be traveling in 2016? Please share your comments below

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London’s St Pancras International station… where Eurostar trains depart for Brussels and Paris. Will it fill to the gills? See below for my outlook…. (Photo: Chris McGinnis)

Yesterday I received an interesting missive about London from the folks at Hotwire— the giant SF-based “opaque” booking site– you know, the kind of site that won’t reveal the name of the provider until you pay. It’s also the kind of site hoteliers flock to when they are desperate to unload unsold inventory at big last-minute discounts.

This is one of many signals we are getting that the Olympics in London might be a big bust for local travel suppliers hoping to cash in big. Your humble BAT editor was working and living in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics and saw the same phenomenon– hotels raised rates to the sky, local residents renovated homes in the hopes of renting them out to the crush of visitors. Warehouses were converted into huge entertainment venues for visitors.

Then the Olympics came… but the swath of visitors did not. They were scared away by all the warnings ahead of time. Traffic in the city was non-existent. Locals telecommuted or used public transport as instructed. Many left town altogether. Visitors attended events, then returned to their hotels… to sleep, not party all night. Except for the Olympic venues, Atlanta was a ghost town during the ’96 Games.

I wonder if the same thing will happen in London? Based on what I’m hearing, it’s possible. First it was the unprecedented, nearly too-good-to-be-true fare sale offering SFO-London round trips for just $2008 in business class. My United flight to London in early August is half full according to the United web site– there are still 25 out of 49 business class seats available. Coach is less than 75% full. Just five out of 12 first class seats are taken. This is PEAK summer travel season, folks!

Now this… from Hotwire:

Hotels across London are offering discounts of up to 50% during the Summer Games. Many have overestimated demand, put their prices too high and are now left with unsold rooms just a few days before the Games are to begin.
These hotels are now offering up to 50% off on discount travel websites like Hotwire.com. Three star and above London hotels are available for under $154 due to lower-than-anticipated demand. Data from discount travel website Hotwire.com show hotel prices through the first half of the games are actually lower than earlier this year.
While many London hotels anticipated a flurry of business from the games, the reality is that the economy is soft, business and leisure travelers who aren’t traveling for the Games are avoiding the city, and even an event as big as the Games couldn’t fill all the rooms in London.
These factors have led hoteliers to turn to secret hotel website Hotwire.com as a safe place where they can discount last minute and fill rooms without tarnishing their brands, and they’ve created some surprising deals for travelers looking for a last minute trip.
Some of the best available hotel rates in Central London are:
   5-star hotel in Mayfair for $154 for the week of July 23, 2012
   4-star hotel in Westminster has $140 rates through the games and into September
   3 or 4-star hotels in Notting Hill-Bayswater for $70 in late July
   3 or 4-star hotels in London Docklands have rates ranging from $59-116 during mid to late July and August
3-star hotels in Kensington-Earls Court for $120 in late July

EXTRA: Virgin America is offering a significant 20% discount for flights between August 28 and November 14. Note that this is an unpublished “private sale” (associated with guitar maker Fender) and requires you to sign up in order to receive the discount. Even better: It applies to one or two folks traveling together. To get the deal, you must book your trip by July 31. Sign up here.

20% off means that $400 round trip to New York in October will only cost you $320. So there. TravelSkills just saved you 80 bucks (or $160 if you plan to travel with a special someone)! What to thank us? Then TELL YOUR FRIENDS about TravelSkills— tell them to subscribe just like you did!

What do you think will happen in London? Will it be a teaming kluster or a quaint and efficient European capital during the Games? Are you going? What do you expect? Please leave your comments below.

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