How to book a cheap hotel room

Did you know the average hotel price in London is £110 per night? Brighton & Hove currently has the highest average price at £133 per night, and elsewhere in places like Nottingham, Newcastle, Manchester, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Leeds, you can expect to pay over £90 per night for a room. We know that for many people right now, every penny counts and the cost of living crisis has meant that people must find cheaper hotel rooms to travel. The good news is there are several travel tricks you can try to save money on hotel rooms. Stick with us, and we’ll show you how!

Book a cheap hotel room mid-week

Avoiding staying in hotels on Friday and Saturday will save you a lot of money. Most hotels (unless targeted at business travellers) will be cheaper to book midweek when they are less busy. A bonus is that the pool, restaurants, spas and other facilities are likely less busy and may even offer special deals!

Make a last-minute hotel reservation

Some travel experts will tell you that booking a hotel months and months in advance will work out cheaper. We don’t necessarily agree. While some hotels may reward early bookers, experience tells us that hotels will often discount rooms at the last minute to fill them. After all, it’s much better to have a room booked with guests who are likely to spend money in the hotel bar or restaurant, even if they’ve paid a lower price for the reservation.

Booking last-minute hotels can be tricky, particularly if you need to secure accommodation for a specific date. However, for travellers with the freedom to be flexible or travel at short notice, saving money can be advantageous.

One of the best places to look for cheap last-minute hotel deals is the Plans Change Resale Deals page. We enable sellers to re-sell hotel reservations they can no longer use until check-in time.

Buy a hotel resale deal on planschange.com

If you’re looking for a cheap hotel room, make our Resale Deals your first port of call. We’re constantly adding new hotel deals from sellers who can no longer use their reservations and want to get some of their money back by selling them to someone else.

We require all sellers to list their hotels for at least 25% of the original booking price so buyers like you get a great money-saving deal. Many of our sellers list their hotel rooms on Plans Change with an even bigger discount to stand a better chance of selling their reservation.

The listings on our Resale Deals page appear in date order, so you will see the deals expiring soon. However, you can sort the listings by ‘saving’ to take advantage of the biggest discounts, ‘price’ to see the cheapest or most expensive hotels in order or ‘location’ by viewing deals on our new interactive map.

Let’s say Katie, a travel blogger, spontaneously visited London for a day, taking photos for her guide on the top restaurants to try in the capital. Initially, she planned to head back home on the train, but after bumping into an old friend, she decided to try and find a cheap last-minute hotel to make a night of it. Katie clicked on Plans Change’s Resale Deals, where she spotted someone was selling a hotel room for that night at Travelodge London City. The original room price was £132, but with 50% off, Katie could buy the seller’s reservation for just £66 - a real bargain! Check-in was at 3pm, and just in time, Katie paid for the hotel room at 2pm. Plans Change sent over the booking details and took care of the entire transaction so Katie could swan into Travelodge at 3pm., drop off her bags, get ready for a night out with her old friend and spend the money she’d save on her hotel room on a delicious meal and fancy cocktails!

Make an offer to get a cheaper hotel room price

Another way to book a cheap hotel room on Plans Change is to make our sellers an offer. When creating a listing, sellers set their hotel resale price, which must be at least 25% off the original booking price. They can also select if they want to receive offers for the duration of their listing, for the last 4 hours or not.

If sellers have enabled offers, you, the buyer, can send them what you think is a reasonable offer for their hotel room. For example, say they offered 25% off the booking price at £70.00. You could send them an offer to see if they’d consider selling it to you for £60.00. As it gets closer and closer to the listing expiring, sellers are more likely to consider reselling a hotel room for a cheaper price, so keep that in mind when timing your offer.

Book a non-refundable hotel room

Booking a non-refundable room is a fantastic way to get a cheap hotel deal. Many boutique hotels and well-known hotel chains offer non-refundable hotel rooms at a more affordable price - the consequence is that if you can’t make use of your reservation for any reason, you won’t be able to get a refund from the hotel.

But here’s your loophole! While you are unlikely to get a refund on a cheap, non-refundable hotel room, you can list it as a resale deal on Plans Change to recover some of your costs! So, for many travellers, it’s worth taking the risk. Save money and book a non-refundable hotel room, knowing if your plans change, you can resell your room on our website.

Enter your destination, dates and number of guests into our hotel search bar to find the best non-refundable hotel room deals and save money!

We hope you’ve found our tips on how to book a cheap hotel room helpful. If you have any questions about using the Plans Change website, please check out our FAQs and contact our friendly support team for further assistance.