u/SomewhereSad1985

I've been working at an online travel agency for the last 3 years and these are the 5 things I've learnt that I was truely surprised about and I think can help people save especially if they are travelling for a long period of time. Would love to hear if anyone knows more:

1. Always book on mobile: Price parity is a huge thing in the OTA landscape and so often hotels will allow cheaper deals on mobile devices as it is harder to price scrape these. Often see 5-10% discounts
2. Over a busy season search day by day: Lets say you want to spend 4 nights in Tokyo and most places seem soldout. Instead search 1 day at a time, often cheaper rooms at the same hotel will become available and then at checkin usually the hotel will be accomodating. For longer
3. Book with Free Cancellation and then rebook when the price drops: Hotels and OTA's are constantly changing the prices, and you can often save hundreds by checking regularly or using a free service like watchmybooking or pruvo to get alerts when you should rebook. This has been the most effective for me
4. Use a VPN: OTA's price differently in different countries and switching to a different region can often allow you to save.
5. Create a new account via incognito: Create a new account via incognito and abandon a cart. Often this will trigger a promo code to be sent after a day or so.