With today’s economy everyone is looking for that next big discount, deal or promotion. Searching local papers and on the internet trying to save a dollar. We are all there and that is the reason for my article today.

Business and leisure travelers can save thousands of dollars per year on their hotel expenses, restaurant bills, car rental fees and more. The only issue is you do not know where to go. There are so many companies flashing discounts that you do not know where to turn. Should you use one of the big branded portals and if you do, how do you know you are actually getting a true discount?

See here is how this system works and how you are able to reserve hotels online. Back in the 1990’s when the internet started coming to tuition, hotels did not want to invest into an online booking engine because of the cost and lack of technology. So there were a few key investors that started buying Hotel inventory back in the 90’s and were looking for a way to resell this inventory and created what is now known as the GDS system. This inventory was then distributed to the large online booking services such as Expedia, Travelocity and etc. Once the sites started becoming well known and started generating millions a month in bookings, the Hotels decided to go direct with these large booking services and agreed to pay these companies around 30% or more booking fees. So basically when you spend $100 on a reservation $30 of that goes to the booking system. Well because technology became more robust and affordable, individual hotels and corporate chains started to invest in their own booking systems direct on their sites. Now pretty much EVERY hotel offers its own online booking.

Here is the problem! These larger companies are still responsible for 70% of the bookings so the hotels have no choice but to pay the 30% so they don’t lose guests. Hotels then started to drop their rates to beat or meet their larger hotel booking portals on the net.

With that being said you can search websites like Kayak.com which will bring back the lowest rate that is available on the net. This site is very popular and allows you to find the best rate in a matter of minutes and allows you to make easy reservations. This is the best way to find the Hotels best available rate.
Well if you want to beat the Hotels best available rate and get real cheap hotels rates, then you need to pay special attention to a site I ran across the other day. Hotels Etc., is a private membership club that offers the best hotel discounts I have ever discovered. We are getting ready to head out to Washington, D.C in December and we started doing our research on a particular 4 star property in the D.C area.. The lowest rate on Kayak was $394 per night for the property we were looking at. I then went to search for cheap hotel rates and I ran across Hotels Etc., membership club. To my amazement the rate through this private program was only $197 per night. Folks that is almost a $200 per night savings! I was blown away and thought it would be best for me to share my experience with others.

My wife and I checked properties from all over the globe and 99.9% of the time Hotels Etc and their Hotel discounts beat any other system on the globe not by pennies but in the upwards of hundreds per night. The best thing is they have everything from 1 star budget properties all the way to 5 start properties. Looking for flight package discounts they have them. Looking for restaurants, attractions, or any other type of entertainment and attraction discount? They have them. It is now time to stop telling yourself and your family that things are too expensive to enjoy a trip, you are now wrong! Visit Hotels Etc and you will see for yourself that they went to those group of investors that I was speaking about in the 2nd paragraph and negotiated a deal to get rates and wholesale merchant rates and boy did they do that.

If you are looking for cheap hotels, cheap car rentals, cheap flight packages, or hotel discounts then you need to join Hotels Etc and get cheap hotel discounts.