Flights and accommodations make up a big chunk of your traveling expense no matter where you’re traveling to. That’s why in the following article, we’re going to show you how to save money on hotels using a VPN.
In the same way that you can save money on flight costs by using a VPN when making your booking, you can use the same strategy for booking a hotel.
Or, you could just make your booking on home-share online platforms such as Airbnb. They allow you to experience different destinations while minimizing accommodation costs.
But, if you’d rather stay at a luxury hotel room or resort instead of couch surfing at someone else’s house, then you might want to keep reading for tips on how to save money on hotels using a VPN.
Hotels Prices Depend on Your IP
If you’ve ever tried to book a flight to another country, you’ll notice that your location has an impact on the price that you’re required to pay for the flight.
The same goes for hotel rooms. Hotel websites and comparison sites are known for tracking user location. This is to determine the price that they’re going to charge you for rooms.
For instance, if you’re booking a hotel in London while you’re in the US, you’re going to see way more expensive prices compared to someone in Africa.
Basically, searching for hotel deals in a low-income country will give you access to better deals. Way better than searching online from a first-world, high-income country in the West.
The country reflected in your IP address as you’re searching can definitely determine the types of deals that you have access to. It’s the basics of how to save money on hotels.
What Do They Use to Track Your Location?
Most people don’t know this, but hotel comparison sites, as well as hotel websites, actually track your location and preferences by looking at the following information:
• Wi-Fi
Depending on your device settings, websites can detect your location through Wi-Fi.
The good news is that there are ways to prevent websites from doing this which would then prevent them from increasing their hotel room prices based on your Wi-Fi.
You can use a VPN to achieve this and we highly recommend IPVanish. It’s the only VPN that hasn’t doxed its users and they don’t keep user history or information.
• IP Address
IP address stands for Internet Protocol. It’s what travel sites use to detect your location. They then use your location data to determine the hotel pries to show you.
So, when learning how to save money on hotels, we show you how to use this feature to your advantage.
• Cookies
Cookies refer to an amalgamation of your browsing history. It’s what comparison websites use to determine your preferences based on what you regularly search for.
Should they notice you searching for the same keywords consistently then they’ll most likely increase hotel prices in a way that reflects the demand.
• GPS
Every mobile device such as a tablet or smartphone has a GPS feature that’s designed to track your location.
That’s why you’ll see different hotel prices when browsing through different websites on your smartphone.
5 Tips You Can Use to Save Money
In case you’re on the fence about the whole using a VPN to get cheaper rates thing, we decided to run an experiment for your benefit. This is all you need to know on how to save money on hotels in 5 different ways.
We used a VPN to save money on a 5-star hotel booking in London.
London is great around Christmas and even though people in most places aren’t allowed to travel right now due to the COVID-19 situation, there’s indication that lockdowns should be over soon. This is thanks to the recent developments in vaccines and treatments.
However, prices for London hotels are usually very high regardless of what time of year you’re traveling there.
We decided to book the Goring luxury hotel which is one of the most well-known buildings in the city. Needless to say, their rooms don’t come cheap, especially because you’re literally next-door neighbors with the queen while staying there.
As you can see, the Goring costs about $800 per night around time of the year. Not cheap.
But, this price is based on browsing from a computer with a UK IP address. We found a way to reduce this amount by about $300 using the following methods:
1. Use a VPN
As we mentioned, hotel websites will show you room prices based on your location most of the time. Therefore, one way to slash the price is to change the location reflected on your IP address using a VPN. We’re huge fans of IPVanish because they offer you a wide range of servers to choose from.
This means that you can easily change and hide your IP address at the click of a button. Once you change your IP address to another country, you’ll be able to see and benefit from the lower prices.
The great thing about a VPN like IPVanish is that it will automatically hide your IP address. It will secure your internet connection and encrypt your information as well. We’re so glad that we went with this option because it allowed us to switch our location from the US to Paris and that was a major game-changer.
Instantly, we saw the price drop from $800 to $583 per night. This translated to massive savings for us. But we wanted to take it a step further and you can read about that in the next section.
2. Change Your IP Address
One of the best ways to save money on hotel bookings is to browse hotel booking sites from a lower-income country than your home country. This is especially if you live in a first-world Western country.
For example, you could switch your server to an IP address in India which, in our case, bought us a price of about $584 per room per night. This is very similar to what we got from our Paris IP.
Sure, we didn’t save as much as we expected to save by switching to another country and continent. But it was still way less than what we’d spent if we just stuck with our US-based IP address.
3. Browse from a Country That’s Offering Discounts
It’s worth noting that hotels not only offer different prices to users in different locations, but they have also been known to offer discounts to specific locations as well.
For instance, after we switched to an IP address in Washington, DC. we got access to a 17% discount for the same hotel.
This means that we went from almost paying $800 per night to $487 which is a saving of over $300 per night.
It’s worth noting that the reason why we saw that super-high $800 price, in the beginning, was because we were browsing from London.
But, this isn’t always the case in some places where hotels actually prioritize local travelers and offer them the best deals.
4. Erase Browsing History
It’s always a good idea to clear your browsing history including your cookies prior to searching for your hotel accommodation.
This will help you to find discounts that you wouldn’t have had access to before because hotel websites and comparison sites are known to track your browsing history and location based on your browser’s collected cookies.
In addition to using a VPN, it might be a good idea to browse the Internet in private or incognito mode. This will help you to avoid having your cookies and data tracked as you switch from one IP address to another.
5. Wait for the Right Moment
Most importantly, be patient, because following all of these steps outlined here will take time.
You’re not just going to find a cheaper offer with 50% off the original price on your first try. It might take a bit of searching and focus to find the cheapest possible hotel room price.
You’re going to have to test out different locations and see what you’re able to get with each one. You’ll have to search for different dates and even clear your browsing history in between all of this.
VPN Legality
Just in case you’re concerned about the legality of using a VPN to side-track expensive hotel prices, no need to worry.
All you’re doing is using a VPN to view the same website from different locations and perspectives. This is in order to get different deals and prices.
This is a common money-saving method that has been utilized by online retailers for many years. It’s an open “secret” if you will, that’s both legal and safe to use.
However, of all of these strategies, the most effective is to use a VPN. It’s by far the best way to find great deals on hotels and even flights by hiding your location.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it! That’s how to save money on hotels using a VPN.
If you’ve tried these tips before, let us know what your experience was and how much you were able to save. We love seeing your comments!
Remember to always use IPVanish as your VPN of choice when applying these tips. This is because they are literally the safest and most effective VPN that we’ve come across so far, and the only ones that we can truly vouch for.
