Rooms at the top

LUXURY hotels are slashing their prices to lure last-minute bookers this summer, writes Jeremy Gates.

That’s the view of Fulvia Montresor, senior director at Hotwire.com, a website that offers half price rooms in 25,000 hotels in Europe, US and the Asia Pacific.

“Now and through August, you can find double rooms in London’s Mayfair for around £115. That’s a steal, when hotel rates in the capital are usually ridiculously expensive,” she says.

“It’s not the case that London hoteliers are in trouble,” she says. “In fact, their current occupancy rates (around 84 per cent) would seem fantastic in most other parts of the world.

“But if 16 per cent of their rooms are empty, they want to shift them at any price, to maximise revenue in a tough economic climate.”

Some top hotels package their own deals: the five-star InterContinental Park Lane Hotel offers family breaks in interconnecting rooms from £98.50 per person per night until August 31, including breakfast in the Cookbook Cafe, a day’s use of Boris Bikes for four people, or entrance tickets (for two adults and two children) to Buckingham Palace.

Ramada has slashed prices by up to 30 per cent across Europe, too. Its rooms in Vienna start at 81 euros per night and 70 euros in Milan.

Hotwire claims it saves travellers more than £11.5m per month and says the biggest discounts at UK hotels are currently found in Glasgow (50 per cent), Cardiff (34 per cent), Manchester (31 per cent), Oxford (29 per cent) and Birmingham/London (both 26 per cent).

Worldwide, the biggest hotel discounts are in Cologne (40 per cent), Las Vegas (36 per cent), Orlando, Florida (33 per cent), Washington (32 per cent) and Vienna/Miami (31per cent).

At Secret Escapes, a rival website launched in January, founder and MD Tom Valentine says: “British travellers are starting to realise that the best prices for hotels are not found at the traditional online travel agents, or even on the hotel’s own website.”

Secret Escapes, which already has more than 700,000 members, offers deals on four to five-star luxury hotels and holidays exclusively to members.

With a room at The Feathers Hotel in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, starting at £139 per night, Secret Escapes throws in dinner and tickets to Blenheim Palace nearby. Valentine says: “We hand-pick hotels and negotiate rates guaranteed to be lower than anywhere else online – and also fix value-added extras like room upgrades, complimentary meals and excursions to create an unbeatable package.”

Source: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk