Insider Travel Tips - Secrets To Getting Your Dream Vacation For Less!

Whatever the budget for a trip or vacation, most people would like to save a little - or a lot - of money when booking hotels, airfares and other trip necessities.

At Travel-like-a-pro.com, we specialize in helping people save money when booking their trips and vacations, and here are a few of our favorite tips for booking a hotel and making the reservation as smooth and affordable as possible:

• Search for hotels or resorts of your choice by using online travel-specific search engines such as expedia.com or orbitz.com. These sites contain powerful engines which will do the legwork for you in looking for the best rates to be found online. They do the comparisons for you, and are fairly flexible so that you can search by your priority, such as price, star rating or proximity to attractions.
• Use your travel agent if you have a good relationship. It pays to develop and maintain a relationship with a good agency, as you will then become a 'preferred' customer of theirs, and can take advantage of the best pricing available. They may even have an online or physical mailing list they can put you on to be notified immediately of great deals.
• Join the Last minute Club or some similar travel savings club. These organizations often have blocks of tickets and hotel rooms and can offer better rates because of this. They also have buying power with hotels and airlines because they frequently send them business, and thus can offer you savings over retail, especially, as you might expect, on 'last-minute' trips.
• Once you have narrowed down your choices, consider calling the hotel/s yourself. Be straightforward and polite, and ask if there are any discounts you can take advantage of, and ask if they can do any better, offer you an upgrade - anything they can do. Many hotel clerks have confided that they have the authority to offer complimentary upgrades or discounts to clientele, but they will not do so unless they are directly asked. S/he who asks, receives! Try calling two of your top choices and mention that you are down to these last two choices, and see what the best offer is...sometimes a little competition (without threats) can induce a reservation employee to do a little better for you.
  
• Get a Travel Agent ID Card. This is a tool your travel agent would not appreciate you knowing about, but it can easily be done, and you will save many thousands of dollars on hotels, airfare, car rentals and more over your lifetime. According to a one successful businessman, 'My wife got a Travel Agent ID several years ago, and it has paid for itself many times over. We've saved thousands over the years and it was definitely a worthwhile investment.'
  

With these tips, and those found in the Travel Industry Secrets resource guide available at Travel-Like-A-Pro.com, you can be the envy of all your friends and save more of your money for spending on fun things while you are away, by never paying inflated retail travel rates again!