Do cheap hotel advertised rates exist?

djmatt24 on 05/08/2015 - 10:47
Last edited 05/08/2015 - 10:50

Every so often I go to the Gold Coast for a break. Sometimes I stay at Jupiters casino, which I'll use for examples here.
I must have clicked on an ad for Jupiters a while ago because now I quite often see banner ads for it, with a pretty cheap nightly rate.
But on the couple of occasions I've followed the links, the real price for random dates I put in is always much higher. I don't know where in the 6 months that advertised price was, if at all.
Same again on Hotel Club, where they have a banner for $99/night but no way to find it.

This comes across fairly misleading as I can't find the rate advertised, and they don't make it clear. I miss a feature that used to be on Trivago, where hotels would have a graph showing their daily rates over the next few months.

Does anyone know any tricked to find these lowest advertised prices? Do you consider ads like this to be misleading?

Travel

Comments

  • DealzEddy123 on 05/08/2015 - 11:07

    usually it says "FROM" $99/night. (from is usually in tiny font)

    they do this everywhere… e.g. SALE from 50% off*******

    • djmatt24 on 05/08/2015 - 12:05

      Yeah, I know the advertised price is likely to have very limited availability, but my issue is I can't find the rate advertised at all. Is my only option to manually enter dates for 6 months?

      • DealzEddy123 on 05/08/2015 - 12:58
        +1

        yes, or code a bot to do it for u. (which is what companies do to monitor competitive pricing)

        or you can try to call their customer hotline and ask them to search for u.
        they might be more familiar with when the low-periods / sale periods are

  • YTW on 05/08/2015 - 13:55

    We've stayed at Jupiters for between $99 and $135 (with buffet breakfast) quite a few times in the last year. Maybe you just aren't quick enough to get in on the sales, they wouldn't have many rooms at the cheap rate I'm guessing. It's just your luck as to how early you get in on a sale. I found a couple of good deals by accident, then got an email telling me about the sale 4 hours after I'd already booked. It also depends on what nights you're looking for - Sat nights are hard (but not impossible) as they book out pretty much every weekend so know don't tend to put much on sale.

    • djmatt24 on 05/08/2015 - 14:33

      That sounds like a steal! Is this through a particular site? I've seen ads from Expedia and hotels.com with the rate, but no success finding the actual deals.

      • YTW on 08/08/2015 - 00:12

        Combination of places. Ratestogo, Jetstar and direct with the hotel were the main ones last year. Ratestogo yielded the best overall for getting nights cheap but were slightly (~$10) dearer on average even after using the 20% off codes they have on a special rate. But Jetstar and direct were more one-off things that we'd randomly stumble across (both my mum and I keep an eye out for good rates as we both go down a lot). I did experience the frustration with Jetstar not seeming to have anything at the advertised rate a few times too though.

        We also tend to book either at the last minute or months in advance. It helps to be flexible. So maybe widen your date range searches.

  • Foxtail on 09/08/2015 - 11:36

    We found Jupiters extremely noisy with that huge void in centre of building, also the boom boom disco music resonated up through the floors. Moved to higher floor to get some sleep.

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