The Only Travel Hack you Need to Know

How to save more than $500 on your next trip to San Francisco

There are many articles on the web on how to save money when booking to travel. From using special credit cards to booking in advance, or using incognito browser windows and more — these are just a few well-known examples people frequently. Here are some examples.

I have two main issues with these approaches:

• They require a lot of work. If you want to use a specific credit card you need to apply for it, go through the process and stick to a payment scheme. Booking in advance involves a lot of trial and error to find a cheaper option.
• The savings are minimal. Using a credit card you can probably save 2% or 3%. Booking in advance is not guaranteed that will save you anything. Sometimes it might be detrimental. But let’s look at it positively; by booking in advance, you might get 5% or at best 10% off the standard price. Let’s face it, it’s certainly not bad, but it’s not that great either.

What if I told you that you can always save 30% or more?

In this example, you will see the same hotel room cost $500 less.
And the only travel hack you need to know is this: change your IP address.

In the table below are the rates I got from booking.com when I searched for San Francisco, 1–4th May 2019. I experimented with a US, Asian and European IP address. Out of all the hotels returned I chose four mid-range hotels for comparison: two independent and two chains.

You can see all the print screens from Booking.com here. The rates above are inclusive of all applicable taxes.

As you can see the differences are up to $500 for a 3-night trip for the Asian IP! For a two-week holiday, savings spike to $2,324. For many of us, this is the budget for an entire holiday.

If you wonder why prices different so much the explanation is straight forward: hotels know that clients from each region have a different spending expectation. Very likely overseas clients will cancel less, stay longer and spend more on extra services. Thus hotels strive to attract them through a better rate.

Booking.com or other travel websites have little control over hotels’ pricing strategy. These websites help hotels distribute their rooms according to their own policies. In our example the hotels which offered a better rate to Asian clients expect them to spend more money during their stay.

There is no guarantee that an Asian IP will always yield the best rate. My recommendation is to experiment with several different IPs, and see which one offers you the best price.

Changing your IP

I have summarised below the steps you need to follow. Disclaimer: I am not receiving any commission for tools mentioned in this article.

I am using DisconnectMe to change my IP but you can use any other tool. There are plenty of options to choose from. Whatever tool you want it must allow switching between IPs from different countries.

After you are up and running with the tool of your choice, you can start your search. Please note that at this point you should not change your IP and stick to your usual one.

Step 1: Open your favourite travel website. For this example, I am using booking.com since it is one of the largest travel websites worldwide.

Step 2: Select a city and the dates you are after. I searched for San Francisco, check-in 1st May, check-out 4th May 2019.

Step 3: From the long list of hotels select the ones that interest you. To make life easier I filtered for 4-star hotels and chose Hotel Zephyr, Grand Hyatt Union Square, Hilton Union Square and Nikko Hotel San Francisco.

Step 4: Record the prices that you get. For this exercise, I used the cheapest and second to cheapest rates for the sake of simplicity. Besides the rates, there are two aspects to be aware of, cancellation conditions and breakfast. Since we will compare these prices, we need to make sure the variables for each hotel are consistent.

Step 5: Now it is time to change your IP and open a new browser window. I chose Asia as my new location as you can see in the print screen. Note: it is crucial to open a new browser window since some websites will track your session.

Step 6: Repeat steps 2 to 4 and record your results.

Step 7: Change your IP to another continent and repeat the exercise.

Now what?

Along these years I have tried many techniques to book for less. For hotel bookings the IP change offered by far the biggest reward. For flights, booking in advance helps most of the time but not guaranteed. My advice is to never buy the first rate you are quoted. A bit of effort is rewarding.

About Me

Lavinius founded two start-ups in travel and analytics. I am heading the Product Management function for client APIs at Hotelbeds Group, the world’s largest travel distributor with $6+ Billion in revenue.