Friday, May 17, 2013
We interrupt your regularly scheduled ranting for the followng...
I'm remiss in writing about the rest of my stay in Santiago, but this needs to be chronicled. People must be feeling richer, or something, because my
usual tricks aren't working. Please allow me to elaborate.
There's a meme floating through the Internet called
life-hacking or simply hacking. You dedicate yourself to taking a seemingly complex situation,
finding an inefficiency, and exploiting the shit out of it. Few hacks truly meet the criterion to be anointed with such a noble title, but until there's committee of hack bestowal, I'll claim the desiganation for now. My fave hacks
usually involve travel, and I'll reveal two.
The first is using airline miles effectively. Most people
have a membership or two, and if they're smart, they'll have a rewards card as
well. I have memberships with American Airlines and Jet Blue, as both fly from
Westchester to Florida constantly. Mergers and increased operating costs have
changed the way AA allows you to spend miles, but there are still real savings
to be had, even if you have to buy your plane ticket. I've found the hidden (and much
better) savings is in redeeming miles for car rentals, rather than flights.
Even if someone has a ton of miles with an airline, most people
don't know you can get travel awards that have nothing to do with flying. The
best usage I've found is getting car rentals, as mentioned, and buying the
ticket. This is especially true when flying to Florida, my preferred
destination anyway. Let's break it down using real prices from February 2010.
Using American Airline miles, the round trip ticket from
anywhere in NYC was 50,000 miles, which is fairly high. Also, the times and dates
were terrible compared to the flights I knew were otherwise available. It was
peak, and the cash price was anywhere from $450 to $900, with varying airports,
routes, etc. Nothing was looking too affordable or convenient.
That's not what shocked me, however. The price of the
car-rental was nearly $800 for the week! True, Orlando is the biggest car
rental market on the planet, but that was outrageous. So, knowing I had some
kind of budget, what was I to do?
Well, while I was futzing about on the AAdvantge website, I
saw that there were other ways to redeem miles. Curious, I clicked and found
you could get car rentals. I'd seen this before, but forgotten I guess. I gave
the dates corresponding to when I wanted to travel, and I was floored. For the one
week that was $700 for a sub-compact, I could get a week for only 12000 miles.
Wow. So let me get this straight, I can spend 50,000 miles to save 450 bucks,
or spend 12000 miles to save $800? Well, let me think about it. This didn't
answer the question about the flight, however.
After much digging, I bought a nonstop flight on Jet Blue for $286
round trip from White Plains, which was the best possible location anyway, and
LGA/JFK were no cheaper. I got a ride to the airport (which isn't even needed
now that SUNY Purchase has a lot for $10 a day), and saved a bundle, and even
got a nice upgrade on the car when I landed.
The second hack, and one I've been using much longer than
the first, is getting cheap vacations on holiday weekends. As I've written here
before, Americans will travel irrespective of the overall economy, though where
one goes is affected. Whether the economy is humming or sputtering, hotels are very expensive on the weekends of MLK Day,
President's Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Independence Day, so long as you
limit yourself the US.
I have no such restraint, so when the end of May rolls
around (seemingly every year, wow!) I look at hotels in Niagara Falls and
Montreal. I love both areas, and I love that the weekend isn't a holiday in
Canada. As such, even when you factor in the gas, the trip is much cheaper than the
Jersey Shore, Poconos, Lake George, etc. Moreover, both areas are so much more
fun than any I just listed. I love the energy, party atmosphere and amenities
of Montreal, and I love the kitschy, trashy fun of Niagara, along with the
casinos (though I'm not a gambler), and natural beauty of the Falls. I should
mention the cigars are awesome in both places, though Stogies on Rue Crescent
is the king of anywhere.I've been using this approach for years, and it finally stopped working as of 2013. Though my process for booking each area is different, the results were the same: almost nothing available and certainly nothing cheap. Cheap is a relative term, and has a different meaning for both places. In Niagara, if I can get a decent two-star hotel (Days Inn and the like) for under 100 bucks per night, I'm happy. I've gotten as low as $60 per night. I usually check Hotwire first (a hack in it's own right), but the site's pickings have been mighty slim, and not just for that weekend or that location. Now, I could always stay in the ass end of Niagara, where the hookers and druggies roam, but... no.
The most likely reason a tourist would even know this side of Niagara exists is from driving from Clifton Hill (the main tourist area) to the Sundowner strip club, where even I have never been, though while on the hunt for Cuban cigars, have seen it. It's alleged to be really nice, and it is where the locals go when they want to party. The club is located close to the western edge of the city of Niagara, so you'd drive through the seediest parts to get there.
Montreal is a little different. I stay only at one hotel, as it has by far the best location. The hotel itself is run down, and the price is quite high considering the condition, but there's no other place I'd rather stay. I don't feel like walking around for blocks just to smoke a cigar and grab lunch. It's my fave hotel or I'm not going. My target price is around $100, though I'll go a bit higher.
This relevant because I was given permission to go to VA training in Syracuse on the Thursday prior to Memorial Day weekend. That's well more than halfway to either locale, and it's the start of the holiday weekend. The girlfriend is away; I couldn't think of a reason not to go. so I've been checking for few weeks now, and both areas are either sold out, or close to it. The hotel in Montreal does sell out more quickly, as I'm not the only one enamored with the Rue Crescent neighborhood. 8 bars are directly across the street; restaurants and my cigar Nirvana: Stogies, are a block away, along with clubs, stores,.... cabarets (cough), etc. The hotel has the advantage of being the only "affordable" hotel in the area, and it's trashed anyway, so staff turns a blind eye to most of the nonsense that goes on. It does get a little loud, but I'm not so old that I can't let others have a good time.
So my tricks are no longer working, and I have two theories as to why this is. One is that discounted hotel sites aren't the bargain they use to be. The users of Hotwire have wised up, as have the hoteliers. One of the draws for hotels is the anonymity it (supposedly) provides. You don't the name of a deeply discounted hotel until after you buy it. If you want a specific location, you pay the regular price. In a densely packed area like Niagara, you can get a hotel and be reasoaably assured you won't be too far afield. The uncertianly over your hotel is the risk you take for the lower (often much lower!) price. However, if you use the site long enough for a specific area, you get a pretty good idea which hotel is which. This blunts the reasoning behind selling rooms on the site. Also, the hotels in question have their own websites, so using Hotwire only hurts their profits. In my opnion, Hotwire should be the place where you sell your unused inventory at the last minute, or sell a few rooms very early to gauge interest. For me that means Hotwire is useful only when I'm certain my travel plans are set in stone and with plenty of lead time. This is as true for Hotwire as it is for Montreal, as the price of a room went steadily upward everywhere I looked.
The other notion is that the economy seems like it's doing better. If you're working, then you can operate under the assumption you probably won't be laid off. The labor participation rate is still horrible, but those who have money feel much safer in spending it. Another factor is the winnowing of household debt. Whether by default or austerity (mostly the former), the average American household credit card debt fell from $19,000 in 07/08 to 14,500 in 04/2012. You'd read that and wonder what the big deal was, and I feel the same way. Since economies live and die on the margins, even a small uptick in traveling will cause the prices to increase. Similarly, when that demand cools, the prices will drift down.
I realized in the process of writing this post that I took a small idea (the economy seemingly better) with a small anecdote for proof (my inability to find a cheap hotel room) and blew it up into a 1,600 word monstrosity. I beg the readers' forgiveness. Anyway, I'll go back to writing about Chile post haste.
