Hotel Booking Mistakes You’re Probably Making

With 119 million Americans traveling this holiday season (according to AAA), the staff at airports and hotels, are bracing for record-breaking crowds. As 90% of holiday travelers will get to their destination by car, hotels across the country are preparing for a surge in reservations.

Holiday travel comes with its own unique set of challenges that set it apart from typical vacation travel. Unlike leisure trips, where you can be flexible with dates and destinations, holiday travel often involves fixed timelines, family obligations, and heightened expectations. Whether you’re heading to grandma’s annual Christmas dinner or joining the in-laws for New Year’s celebrations, the pressure to arrive on time and make everything perfect can be overwhelming.

Add to this the seasonal factors like unpredictable winter weather, peak-season pricing, and crowded facilities, and it’s clear why finding the right hotel accommodation becomes crucial. Making smart choices about where you stay can mean the difference between a stressful holiday ordeal and a comfortable, enjoyable celebration with loved ones.

To help you avoid common pitfalls and ensure your holiday hotel stay supports (rather than hinders) your festivities, here are several critical mistakes to watch out for when booking your accommodation.

Forgetting your specific needs

If you’re traveling as a group, will there be enough parking? Will you have to split up and stay on separate floors? All of this can make your hotel stay far less joyful.

If you’re traveling with kids, you’ll need some extra space for sure, and these features can also be helpful (even better if the hotel provides them):

• A little surprise at check-in: this can distract the kids while you get the room set up. Coloring books, stuffed animals, and beach balls all work.
• Recommendations for kid-friendly things to do and restaurants. 
• Preferably an on-site breakfast that’s included in the price of the room. Even if you only need caffeine to get going, kids need breakfast.
• Kid-sized things: It’s great to have free bicycles at the hotel, but only if there’s one for everyone.

if you’re traveling with older folks, you may need accessible rooms. If you’re traveling with pets, you’ll need to know how close your room is to the outside for potty breaks and where on the property they can and can’t go.

It’s critical to factor in your specific needs when booking a hotel, especially at holiday travel time when you have less time to relax and more expectations to meet. 

How to do it: Write a list of the things you need and talk with a human before you book the rooms. The customer service representatives can help you with the booking process and if they don’t have the rooms you need, ask them for recommendations.

Pro tip: Simply asking for a corner room can give you a more spacious room based on how many hotels are built.

Forgetting to study the map

You may think you found a bargain deal, but it’s essential to factor in the cost of getting around and how far you’ll have to go if you don’t bring a car with you. Looking at the map where your hotel is located is critical.

• Are there restaurants and activities nearby? 
• How far will you have to go to reach the events you plan to attend?

Most people book a hotel room based on the photographs, but that’s a mistake. 

How to do it: Take time to look at the hotel’s specific address on the map. If you’re using Google Hotels to find a hotel, click the directions button to open a new window and zoom in on the hotel’s location to see what’s nearby.

Not checking the Wi-Fi situation

Sure, the holidays are not usually a time when you have to log into your work email, but you’ll still want strong, reliable Wi-Fi for everything else. For families with kids, Wi-Fi in the rooms is non-negotiable. Going down to the lobby to use the Internet isn’t an option when you have a group, either. 

You have to keep everyone entertained and busy, after all. How else can you keep everyone happy with their own devices while you check restaurant reviews?

How to do it: Find out what the Wi-Fi situation is in the rooms. In most cases, if you join the hotel’s loyalty program, they’ll activate it in your room, but if you’re booking several rooms, how does that work? Talk to a human and do what you must.

Forgetting to check transportation options

If you didn’t drive in, forgetting to check the transportation options is something that can cause you big problems. My family once flew into an airport, and we arrived late—so late that the rental car desks were closed, and there were no taxis or buses running! 

How to do it: Find out what your transportation options are during the holidays. Public transportation schedules often change for a few days, and ride-shares may not be widely available. If you’re renting a car, make sure the rental desk will be open when you arrive, or there is an electronic checkout option.

Paying too much

There are so many ways hotels charge fees, and the advertised price may not tell you what those are. Factoring in what you need from a hotel, like breakfast on-site or in-room Wi-Fi, you’ll need to find out if the advertised price is what you’ll be paying or if it’s just the starting point.

There are basically two types of websites that people use to find hotels – the hotel brand’s site or aggregator sites, which are meta-search engines that don’t actually handle reservations but crawl the hotel sites to return a list of search results. Hotel aggregator sites are useful for sorting through the options and identifying specific hotels that may meet your needs, but they sometimes get the data wrong, and sometimes they’re just plain scam sites.

How to do it: I recommend using Google Hotels to search for the amenities and location you need, then going to the actual hotel website to:

1. Verify the information is accurate, and
2. Contact the hotel directly to book.

When you do this, you can ask questions about the fees that aren’t listed and find out if you can meet your group’s needs at a price you can afford. Sometimes, I’ve found the hotel actually charges less than what appears on the aggregator sites.

Pro tip: If you’re a frequent traveler, be sure to check the points you may have collected throughout the year and ask if they can be applied to reduce your room rate.

Finally – if you get a cheap deal

If you find a cheap deal, be suspicious. Not questioning why the room is so cheap could be your biggest mistake. My friends booked a week-long honeymoon stay and snagged an amazing deal on their dream hotel, only to find out when they arrived that there was construction going on!