Greek Hotels - significant discounts due to economy after I already booked
 

Hi,

My husband and I have booked 3 nights in Athens, 4 nights in Mykonos and 3 nights in Santorini for early June. I have now looked at the websites over a month later to find that there are discounts from the original rates, sometimes up to 25%, at all of the hotels we booked at. There are notes indicating that this is due to the economy and lower booking rates than usual.

I would like to ask each of the hotels if we can have the discounted rates. What do you think they would say to this? Alternatively, none have taken deposits yet and we are still not even close to the "you can't cancel after xyz" date. If they were not willing to provide the discounted rate, we would consider just canceling and trying to re-book at the new rates.

FYI - these are all luxury accommodations for 10 nights and we would save approx $1500 if we got the new rates for each night of our trip.

Thoughts?
Thanks!
Kathy

I'd request the lower rate. If they refused, cancel and rebook. There are lots of things I can do and places I can go for $150 per night.

Absolutely. They will jump on the chance to give you a discount rather than lose your reservation and business. Get going right now so you have plenty of time if you need to change a reservation or two. That's a lot of savings and you can spend it on really nice dinners or upgrades. Or save it for the next trip, of course. Heck, that covers most of the airfare, right?

Go for it.

Thank goodness I haven't booked yet! ;-)

Thanks for the quick responses!

We'll politely ask for the new rates. I'll let you know how it works out.

I'm worried that, given these are all small hotels, by having to go the cancel-and-rebook method we risk loosing our suite to someone on a waiting list or something.

FYI - the estimated dollars saved above are in CAD, not EUR or USD. So basically... Monopoly money ;)

You could probably save additional $ , if upon your arrival you offered to pay in cash, and/or didn't press too hard for an itemized receipt ;-).

Probably wouldn't work at the large "corporate" hotels ... but smaller innkeepers are often eager to be more, umm, flexible.

Kathy -- do you mind sharing which hotels you decided on in Athens, Mykonos, and Santorini? My wife and 2 teenage kids are doing a similar trip the end of June and early July.

We will be going from Athens to Santorini to Mykonos and then flying from Mykonos to London.

Thanks.

Also, it would be interesting to hear of the outcome of negotiating a lower price.

Kathy,

I will be on a similar trip. Do you mind sharing the hotels that you have booked at?

Thanks