Discount & cheap booking Definitions

Booking Terms

There are several terms that are used to indicate that cheap bookings or discounted accommodation is being offered. These disounts are advertised by all types of accommodation in order to sell any spare capacity they may have.

For hotels, self catering and bed and breakfast properties, empty rooms mean a loss of profit. It costs Hotels, apartments and larger guest houses a certain degree of overhead if the rooms are empty. They still have to pay staff, electricty, water rates, business rates etc, so even if they can shift the empty rooms at cost or less than cost, they will do so in order to minimise their losses on these base costs. An empty room is a loss of revenue that they want to avoid at any reasonable cost. If you walk into a hotel and ask for a room for the night, make sure you ask for the best discount rate. They will give it if asked but will take full rate if you don’t.

Self catering, apartments and some specialist accommodation types like narrow boats have a similar problem. Their costs still exist even when the property is empty so they are keen to get as much rental as they can even if it means letting the facility for a shorter period than they would normal accept.

Knowing all this will help you to get a better rate from many of these hotels, guest house, self catering cottages etc. You may need to be flexible about your days, length of stay etc but there can be many advantages to using these discounted rates. However, to do this you need to understand the terms involved in the hospitality sector and their advertising.

These terms may be obvious to British residents but for many overseas visitors they may be confusing and less well understood. We have included a list of the more common ones with an explanation of their meaning:

• Last Minute Bookings
• Short Break
• Weekend Break
• Mid-week Break
• Bargain Break
• Winter Break
• Summer Break
• Cheap Holiday

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