HotelChatter || Everything You Wanted to Know About Booking Hotels: The CurrentCodes Edition

Here at HotelChatter we get all sorts of questions about booking hotel rooms such as where to book (boutique hotel or a place with a loyalty program?), how to book (phone or website?), how to get a cheap rate, how to get free upgrades and the always lovely "Can you hook me up with a free room?" (We can't.)

But we do realize that you have a lot of good questions about booking hotel rooms. So once a week we're running Everything You Wanted to Know About Booking Hotel Rooms where we will give you the latest news, advice, tips, and answers on booking a room. And just maybe we'll be able to hook you up with a free room after all.

This week we're chatting with Barry Boone who is the founder of CurrentCodes.com, a one-stop shop for all of those special promotion codes for bargains, sales, discounts and more. CurrentCodes is expansive, listing promo codes for nearly 60 different retail categories totaling about 1,800 stores from clothing to cellphones to jewelry and travel.

Of course, we're focusing on the travel category here and more specifically, hotels. CurrentCodes list codes for some of the major hotel chains and their spin-off brands as well as for booking sites like Orbitz and Travelocity. If there aren't any codes available or listed, CurrentCodes will list any other promotion or special rates that it knows of at the hotels like a AAA discount or any package deals.

If you like to visit Vegas a lot, you're in luck as CurrentCodes has a ton of codes for hotels on the strip. Here Barry explains more about using the codes.

HotelChatter:
For the readers who may not be so savvy in the ways of online shopping, what are promotion codes?

Barry Boone:
A promotion code is usually a string of letters or numbers that you enter in during the checkout process. Typically, you click "Apply Coupon" and it gives off some sort of discount.

HotelChatter:
Who offers these promotion codes in the travel industry?

Barry Boone:
Airlines, hotel chains, rental cars, pretty much everybody and anybody is doing it.

HotelChatter:
And so where does CurrentCodes.com find these codes?

Barry Boone:
Oh everywhere. We find them through credit card rewards programs, in the weekly mail, through email newsletters and the companies themselves. Just being a regular customer at places can get you these codes.

With the hotel codes, sometimes they come from the hotels and a lot of times they come from our readers. We always say if we don't have a certain hotel listed or a specific code and you know about, send it to us and we'll put it up.

But as far as finding the better codes with bigger discounts, that's where we come in.

HotelChatter:
What are some things to keep in mind when using the codes?

Barry Boone:
Every coupon is different. Some will tell you there are black-out dates, and some won't. So you have to read the fine print. If we know it we try to put in the code description or if the fine print is too lengthy we say "See site for additional details."

So just read the fine print and live with whatever conditions are going to be applied to your purchase if you're really look for a discount. And of course, make sure the code plugged in actually shows up as a discount.

HotelChatter:
Any more words of wisdom about getting hotel discounts?

Barry Boone:
If you are sold on one specific hotel, try to get a coupon for it first. You've got to comparison shop and check out what codes are available for hotels. In peak travel seasons, hotels don't have to work to hard to generate the sales, but in the slower seasons that it usually the best time to find discounts. And the biggest downside is only that if you don't use the code, you won't get a discount.

Thanks Barry!

Got a hotel booking question? Send it to us and we'll answer it. Just a reminder: we're not a travel agency. We can't make the reservations for you.

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