About once a month, I "garden" my upcoming hotel and flight reservations. What does that mean? I check the out to make sure nothing has changed or if there is anything I can to make them better. The most common scenario is an airline schedule change which causes an early morning wake up call, a late departure, or a missed connection. In those cases, finding out about the schedule change prior to departure enables me to either accept the change (with United, you can do this online) or call and request a different flight/connection, etc...because the airlines made the change on purpose (vs. weather, mechanical, etc...) they are FAR more likely to allow you to change your reservation to something better.
But this can be a great strategy with hotel reservations as well. A few months ago, I posted about our weekend trip to Toronto which is now just a couple of weeks away. This morning, I checked on our hotel reservation and discovered that the hotel was actually running a promotion the weekend of our stay. The cash rate had dropped from $252 to $132 per night AI.
Originally, I had booked using cash and points so the stay would have cost me 10,000 points and $150 for both nights. So now, I could spend an additional $110 cash and save the 10,000 points. Since I value the Starwood points at roughly $300, that is a big win...I will definitely put them to good use in the future!
I cancelled the current reservation and rebooked the new one in about 10 minutes. It doesn't take a ton of time to do this especially if you only travel periodically. But it is definitely worth the time to ensure that everything goes smoothly and/or you're getting the most value out of your miles/points/cash!
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