What if hotel rooms

Sound familiar? Then, read on to see how I have managed to book a sold out hotel in the past so you can avoid future booking failures. The last time I was confronted with a sold out situation, I was booking a family trip to California during Christmas break.

After doing my research, I had a list of three vineyard properties that met our needs — larger rooms, a pool and on-site dining. Then I tried to book my first choice hotel. No rooms available. It happened again with the second and third hotels. Ask for the manager, not the reservations person. For example, you ordered one movie from the room's TV but the hotel charged you for two. Thank you for subscribing!

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Beyond that, it may take an expert to figure out if a hotel will be full when you plan to visit. Art fairs, holidays, and other major events tend make for sold-out hotels, says Andrew Steinberg, a travel advisor with Ovation Travel Group. The best travel advisors love to do the seemingly impossible and find a room in a sold-out hotel, he notes. If you're a frequent guest or a member of its loyalty program, you're in.

That's what Andy Abramson, a frequent traveler and communications consultant from Los Angeles, has found. By the way, some guests are more important than others. Abramson has found that people who arrive late and aren't members of a loyalty program are far less likely to get a room than, say, an elite-level loyalty program member who always pays top dollar. So don't expect the doors of a hotel to swing open if you're a budget traveler.

They might, but probably not. There are two negotiation strategies that almost always work, he says. And, of course, it helps if you have already been a guest in the hotel before," he adds.

Knowing some hotel lingo can also come in handy. For example, 'unconfirmed booking requests' is a useful phrase. These are rooms the hotel is holding for travelers who have requested them but haven't yet provided a credit card number to guarantee the reservations.

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