I find that I pay significantly less than Dominicans on American travel sites. This further frustrates me with how Dominicans are treated at times at resorts.
- Thread starter Unit5
- Start date
Dominican resort rates vs Tourist resort rates
Same thing happens in Las Vegas.
Just one of things I can get deeply discounted tickets to Cirque de Soleil.
And the beauty of it is that I can hand the usher my tickets with a USD note in it.
He will observe that my tickets are indeed cheap and in a bad location.
And one time my travel partner and I ended up center stage, second row.
Never underestimate the power of treating others with respect.
There it is ! 👆
Tried , tested and worked very well… several times…. at Cap Cana …and at some of the good resorts in PC …more-so with kids ….last year during the hurricane….long story .
The “walk in” method can be a hit or miss as you may have to show your ‘valid’ reservation to security before entry …but I’ve seen some locals book online to get in …and then get their “local discount” or better prices at the desk .🇩🇴
Lakes area in New York state, Cottage country in Ontario....etc all have off season lower prices and inseason gouging. Works this way everywhere.
It doesn't work to book online and then try to get a better rate at the desk. This is completely in violation of the agreement with the travel agencies, and they are very hot on checking if guests keep cancelling at the point of check-in. Additionally most reservations have a penalty if you cancel at check-in. You are much better to email or call the hotel.
Some hotels have a members-only rate on their website (for example Radisson hotels) but you can join for free. This is also allowed, the only restriction that the sites like Hotels.com make is that rates available to the general public must always be higher or equal to their rates. So it's always a good idea to check the hotel's own website before booking.
Yes…for tourists . Worked for us the few times we tried it …and for our Dominican neighbors ?…almost every time . They didn’t cancel the reservation ..why would they ?…they knew what to do …and we just paid the local price🤷 . I don’t think we …or most locals …would book a hotel or resort….local to us … via ( international or even local ) travel agencies same as a tourist would …so ….tourists …don’t try this at home !😬😁
Who knows that her motives are, but she definitely thinks she’s got you fooled.
If you’re smart, you won’t let her convince you otherwise.
I don't know why that would be. I don't know what there is to gain, but I will get to the bottom of this in a couple of days. Thanks for you input Auryn.
If they didn't cancel the reservation the hotel would end up paying about 18% commission to the Booking.com or Hotels.com, so there's no way they would reduce the rate. Well maybe if they were completely stupid they would. I guess they could have marked the guest as a No Show, but if a hotel keeps doing this it will arouse suspicion with the booking websites and end up with them being delisted. You have to remember that about 80% of reservations for smaller hotels come through Booking.com, Hotels.com and AirBnB. They would go under immediately if they were delisted from any of these.
You can usually get between 10% and 20% off. Remember they are paying 18% commission to the booking sites. In the case of AirBnB you can almost always get the rate the owner gets, and you just skip paying AirBnB's service charge which is about 10%. You can sometimes negotiate to reduce the "cleaning fees" on AirBnB.
If you do call direct also offer to pay cash, this means the hotel won't be paying a 4% credit card fee so you can also factor this into your negotiations.
There are very few resorts in Punta Cana that will let you in the gate if you do not have a proper reservation. Even I as a tour company, have difficulties at times and the paperwork has to be complete.
Yes that's true. To be honest the AI's do a lot of their business through packages which include airfares and accommodations. That's probably 70-80% of their business, they're not that interested in walk-ins or locals. Smaller hotels are the opposite, most of their business comes from online sites such as Booking.com or Hotels.com and the commission charges hurt them a lot so they will often do deals.