The BRG Deals Blog

This blog receives a small compensation for completed hotel stays that are booked through our affiliate links directly. The same holds true for searches (and bookings) made through our metasearch engines. These include wego.com and momondo. This allows us to keep the BRG Deals Blog online in this format.  For hotel stays, we highly recommend booking through our various links. They provide the very best available rates on the Internet, many of which are the "Pay-at-Hotel" variety with free cancellation (up until the hotel's own cancellation deadline). Supporting them also helps support us! - We are proud to have them here for YOU! You, our readers, help to keep us going strong! I can't say it enough - I appreciate your support! And remember, all the tools and information on this site is for YOU! I hope you enjoy reading all there is to read and have plenty of successes with your claims! If you enjoy this blog .. search, file your claim, and book .. al...

For the Best Western Best Rate Guarantee, you must book a room type with a "Publicly-Available" rate on Bestwestern.com for any Best Western branded hotel in North-America. If you find a lower rate of this same type on a competitor's booking site (for that same room type you booked), Best Western will then honor that lower rate .. and send you a $100 Travel Card to use towards a future Best Western hotel booking! A publicly-bookable rate is one that absolutely anyone can book. In other words, it is available to the general public. It cannot be a AAA rate, AARP senior rate, CAA, government rate, or any other rate of that nature. On Bestwestern.com, anyone can book the: FLEXIBLE RATE  - this is usually a pay-at-hotel booking where your credit card info is entered in order to hold the room. (Please verify this under "Rate Details". On some occasions, it may be a non-cancellable rate.) You can cancel this booking up until the hotel's specified cancel...

It's often difficult to know which Choice properties offer the VERY BEST in terms of customer service, cleanliness, amenities etc. unless you take the time to read the many reviews found online (via Tripadvisor and numerous other websites). If you're only looking for the VERY BEST, whether for free rooms or not, check out this list of Choice's top 3% hotels in the USA . All properties have a proven track record of exceptional guest service and facilities, representing the top 3% of hotels within each Choice brand. Choice Platinum hotels must score high in guest satisfaction, product quality, room condition, room cleanliness and staff service - good to know when you're worried about showing up with a "free night" BRG! Gold Award winners can be found here - these are the hotels within the top 10%. Note how well the Comfort Inn/Comfort Suites perform - I usually stick with them!

Has this happened to you? If you've BRG'd hotels long enough, than it's inevitable to happen to you at some point in time! It just happened to one of my readers the other day. She sought out some advice on how to handle the situation .. and I'll tell you basically what I told her. In my experience, this doesn't happen often. Most of the time, the check-in clerk will either accept the $0 rate without questioning it, or they may question the rate simply because they don't understand how you got it! This was the case with my last BRG at the Quality Inn in Temecula, CA. My free night was accepted, but the female clerk seemed confused. She said: "I see you had some trouble at the (nearby) Comfort Inn and they sent you to us".. (Huh?) My response to her was: "Uhhh .. yes ma'am!" (I would've agreed with anything to have avoided a problematic check-in!) Going along with her understanding of it seemed much easier than telling her how I ...

Here's our top ten list of the biggest mistakes newbies make when filing Choice claims, resulting in rejections, and causing some to lose faith with the whole process altogether: 10: Neglect to match up room types exactly. The wordage must be exactly the same. If one site calls the room "Business Room" and the other doesn't, your claim will most likely be denied. If one says smoking and the other says non-smoking, this also won't be a match. The bedding and room description must be exactly the same. This isn't hard to do once you get the hang of what you are looking for. First, look at the beds, then, compare the overall room description. Look for similar wording that means the same thing - this is OK. But, if one noticeably stands out from another, there is a good chance it is not BRG-able. 9. Expect that a room type with the same description, but with multiple instances on the Choice Hotels site, will be approved. If Choice offers...

Matching is very important with any Best Price Guarantee. Matching is generally defined as being an "apples-to-apples" comparison of your itinerary to the itinerary offered by the competing booking site. First: The Room Types Once a customer service agent has located the lower bookable rate you found on a competing travel site, his or her next task will be to attempt to verify that the room type on the other site is actually identical to the itinerary you just booked. Bedding will be looked at first, perhaps smoking/non-smoking will be looked at next (for a match). If your booking is for "2 Double Beds", for example, it cannot be compared to a lower-priced "Double Room". Why? Because a "Double Room" could easily be 1 double bed, or it could refer to a standard room for 2 adults. We just don't know - and neither would your claim agent know! "2 Doubles" is specific, whereas "Double Room" is not. Next: The Room De...

A little history ... For those of you not familiar with my blogging history, I started out posting "BRG deals" as a contributor on the now retired  "The Best Rate Guarantee Blog" , along with another gentleman residing in Calgary, Canada (he founded and ran that blog - eventually bringing me on board as a full-time partner). In those days, we highlighted BRG opportunities that were found for all of the Wyndham-brand chain hotels (a free night deal similar to the Choice/IHG programs). Shortly after the Wyndham BRG program fell by the wayside, I took over, finding myself doing the vast majority of the posting. I transitioned to Expedia BRG deals, and later Choice. At this point (April 2009 I believe), the Wyndham BRG downgraded from a free night deal to a "10% off the lower rate found" non-deal! Due to all of my hard work and my blog partner's interest in pursuing other projects, I was given a 75% ownership in the blog. At this point in time, with ...