pre-paying for room discount
 

As I am planning for my spring trip to Lisbon I am finding many of the hotels I am researching offer a pre-paid discount. Is this a trend that is increasing thru out Europe or more of a Lisbon phenom? I don't remember encountering this option very often on many of the other trips I have planned (Paris, Barcelona, Italy etc.) Not sure I really want to pre-pay - the euro is headed down, down?! plus I always thought it was nice to be able to cancel 24hrs ahead without penalty - made the decision as to whether to get travel insurance a little easier. Have other posters been pre-paying the hotels to obtain a discount?

We did prepay for one night in London about 6 years ago. It was a big trip and we did have travel insurance--not so much for that one night but for the rest of the trip. So it's not just a Lisbon thing.

Find this quite common when I travel.
Choose booking.com usually which has
discounted rates both ways.Always
costs abit more to get the cancalable
reservations. Find betterbidding.com
priceline.com yields upto 70% off
probably best cheapest way to do it
for me.Obviously not refundable but
central 4 stars for me all over from
$60 range.

I run into it fairly frequently in hotels in many countries, it seems to me. Maybe more the chain hotels, I guess, than individually-owned ones. For example, Accor hotels in France often have that option. I know I've used it in Prague at least five years ago (now that was an individual hotel, the HOtel Pariz). Yes, I do it if it is a significant discount and I know I want to stay at that hotel, as I don't really change my itineraries on major trips to Europe. I stay in Accor hotels a lot in France so am pretty comfortable with what I'll get in the various brands. If you think you may want to cancel, don't do it. I have never cancelled a hotel reservation in all my trips to Europe over about 25 years. I'm not one of these people that cancels hotels for no reason or just because I don't quite like it as it would be too much trouble to find something else. I do a lot of research on hotels before booking them, also. If it's a one-night deal, it doesn't matter that much.

I've never had a situation where I thought the exchange rate was varying so much it would probalby save me a lot not to do it, though. Given what it is now, I would never bet that the USD vs. euro is going to be better this Spring, I'd grab the good rate right now.

I get travel insurance for other reasons anyway, I would never decide to get it or not based just on hotel prepayments.

sue

About three years ago, I had a client who was taking his family to Venice and Rome, and wanted to stay in some rather expensive (independent) hotels. He decided to prepay for the discounts, and didn't take insurance.

Before the trip, his life took a serious negative turn and all was lost. Because I was involved, I tried to recoup some of the losses for him but it wasn't possible. One hotel would let the money be transferred to another stay, but the hotel in Rome, which I had done business with for a few years, was totally uncooperative. I used to recommend them all the time, but they were so difficult about this, that I've stopped.

This wasn't a whim on this guy's part. He had a very hard time and some awful circumstances to deal with.

Me? I would never prepay unless I had insurance.

I pretty much always pre-pay so that I know pretty close to how much the trip will cost. That said, I only try to use places that give me a fairly liberal cancellation policy. I do not often buy travel insurance, but have on this next trip due to a pretty major sciatica attack last month so I just want to cover my bases on other areas like plane and train tickets.

dave

Yes this policy is relatively new in Europe, and you can blame the online booking systems for that.
Especially booking.com started to ask hoteliers for such a rate, and now most of them are offering non refundable discounted rates. ( few years ago only big chains like Accor etc had this kind of rates).
Have booked some very good hotels taking advantage of the low rate, and ended up paying 70 Euro with breakfast for a Novotel in Germany, when the rate when i arrived was 110 Euro... that is certainly a big difference.
On the other hand i have never cancelled a prepaid reservation , so i don't what would happen in such a case.

What i do know though, is that in Greece, where i am from,as per Greek law, every reservation can be cancelled free of charge 21 days before arrival.
All the non refundable offers that i see on booking.com with other words are illegal, when it comes to Greece.
In case of cancellation, the hotelier would be obliged to refund the prepaid amount in full....

I lot of my travel is short-notice - so this doesn;t apply. I would be hesitant to do so unless the discount is very significant. Why take any sort of risk for 10 or 15 euros per night. On the other hand if they are offering 30% or 40% off - and you are sure of your trip and have insurance - then it's probably worth it,

I am generally leery of prepaid discounts because I've seen the rates, along with the prepaid rates, go down significantly.