{"id":8766,"date":"2011-01-14T05:08:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T05:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/top-10-ways-to-score-free-hotel-upgrades-2\/"},"modified":"2011-01-14T05:08:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T05:08:00","slug":"top-10-ways-to-score-free-hotel-upgrades-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/2011\/01\/top-10-ways-to-score-free-hotel-upgrades-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 10 Ways to Score Free Hotel Upgrades"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kiwi Collection &#8211; Hotels For People Who Care Where They Stay<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, just being personable and friendly can go a long way in scoring a free hotel upgrade. But for times when a nice smile and pleasant demeanor is not enough, here are some other tricks to try.<\/p>\n<p>1. Timing &#8212; Check in later, between 4-6PM as the front desk can see the cancellations and no-shows of that day. Also, if your dates are flexible, don&#8217;t book on busy holiday times, as upgrades cannot be given if a hotel is at full occupancy.<\/p>\n<p>2. Book a room in the middle price range &#8212; It&#8217;s not impossible to get upgraded when booking the cheapest room category available, but it doesn&#8217;t help your odds. Book a room that is in the mid range for better chances.<\/p>\n<p>3. Be nice &#8212; It&#8217;s that simple. Front desk staff and hotel managers deal with a lot of people and handle a lot of problems and stress during their day. Sometimes, just being personable, and friendly can go a long way.<\/p>\n<p>4. Ask &#8212; It doesn&#8217;t hurt to ask, and the worst thing that can happen is that you get declined. Ask if an upgrade is available. If it&#8217;s a special occasion, it doesn&#8217;t hurt to volunteer that information either.<\/p>\n<p>5. Hotel mistake? Sometimes a hotel&#8217;s mistake can work to your advantage. Perhaps your room wasn&#8217;t ready upon check-in, construction causing loss of sleep &#8211; you can always address a hotel issue with the management in a nice manner and see if they will do something (like provide an upgrade) for the inconvenience.<\/p>\n<p>6. It&#8217;s all about relationships, baby &#8212; It&#8217;s true, who you knows matter, and even more so if it happens to be the general manager at the hotel you&#8217;re staying at. Don&#8217;t have a connection? Don&#8217;t fret. Book on luxury hotel site Kiwi Collection and they&#8217;ll do the contacting for you. Half the hotels offer free perks and free upgrades, and if you book with a Visa Signature card at one of the 800 Visa properties, you get an automatic free room upgrade. Frequent Kiwi bookers can earn VIP status, and that&#8217;s when they actually contact the hotel on your behalf to request for upgrades. There are some other sites that offer this as well, but you have to buy a membership.<\/p>\n<p>7. Where you book matters &#8212; If you&#8217;re booking a standard room, a hotel actually can give you a different room just based on the booking source you made the reservation on. Ever experience a really crappy room right by the hotel&#8217;s laundry area when booking on Expedia, only to find that your friend who booked elsewhere paid the same price but got a better room?<\/p>\n<p>8. Loyalty &#8212; You&#8217;ll have better chances of a free upgrade if you are loyal to the hotel and provide repeat business. It doesn&#8217;t hurt at the time of reservation to let them know that you&#8217;ve stayed there before. Hotels know that it costs a lot less to keep a repeat customer happy then it is to acquire a new one, so often they&#8217;ll give special treatment to return customers.<\/p>\n<p>9. Title drop &#8212; There aren&#8217;t any guarantees, but you may find that title dropping can increase your chances of special treatment and upgrades. Hotels may want to impress you more because they know you&#8217;re an important businessperson, someone who can refer new business or have blogging or press power.<\/p>\n<p>10. Volunteering information &#8212; If you&#8217;re at the hotel celebrating a special occasion, like a birthday or anniversary, it can only help your case if you share the information with the front desk. Also, if you did book as a VIP on a site like Kiwi Collection, it doesn&#8217;t hurt to mention your status and loyalty as a booker, and politely inquire about upgrade possibility. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kiwi Collection &#8211; Hotels For People Who Care Where They Stay Sometimes, just being personable and friendly can go a long way in scoring a free hotel upgrade. But for times when a nice smile and pleasant demeanor is not enough, here are some other tricks to try. 1. Timing &#8212; Check in later, between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}