Best Days & Times to Book a Hotel Room For Lowest Rate

This is vacation season and you may be planning on staying in a hotel somewhere shortly.

If so, you will be going through the process of booking your stay online or by calling the hotel or their booking number.

Finding the right hotel and making a reservation can be stressful, especially if you are trying to book a hotel room for a large family or at the last minute.

Here are some tips for when and how to book your room and check-in.

The Best Times To Book a Hotel

Here are some strategies you can use to find lower rates, most of which boil down to timing -- one word of caution.

Even the experts, such as travel aggregator Kayak and the review site Tripadvisor don't necessarily agree on the best times to book, which can make this process confusing.

Use this info as a starting point and see how you do. If you begin early enough, you will have time to weigh the pluses and minuses.

The best time to book a hotel room? Kayak recommends Saturday as the least expensive day to book and Tuesday is the most expensive day to book a room.

As the week slides into the weekend, hotel searches can drop by as much as 30 percent, and the rates tend to drop off as well.

Tripadvisor thinks Tuesday is the cheapest day to book a hotel while travel-planning search engine Skyscanner found Friday to be the best day.

It’s always best to compare prices across a few websites, and, if prices look high, set an alert to see if they drop.

The Best Time of Day to Book Your Room

Hotel bargain hunters say hotel prices go down at night.

"Hotels often greatly discount their overnight rates a few hours prior to check-in to get the occupancy rate up and an extra 'head in the bed'", says Yannis Moati, CEO of HotelsBy Day.

By calling the hotel in the late evening, as opposed to the mornings and afternoons, which are the busiest times for the front desk, you have a better chance of scoring a bargain.