Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - another technique that worked for me...

I'm guessing that this can be construed as "unethical" but it's almost the same as researching on biddingfortravel.com - or maybe it isn't - either way, i'll share with you something that helped me out last week. I was booking a room for a friend who was suddenly (and very unexpectedly) caught out of town in Lexington, VA. The cheapest hotel was the Super 8 at about 60/night - there were some other dumps in the area, but I was hoping to at least be able to get him into a tolerabl place. I went online to the standard websites & the hotel websites and found the lowest rate available for a semi-decent hotel was about 100 bucks a night. I came up with an idea - he needed the room for 1 night, so I called the Best Western (first try - other hotels were the Holiday Inn & a Comfort Inn & an Econolodge, which I have seen while driving through Lexington, it ain't pretty) & told them that I was coming through Lexington for a meeting at the local college (Washington & Lee) & asked if they had a special pre-negotiated W & L rate. They told me that they didn't but offered me the Local Company Business rate, which was 55.00/night including a full hot breakfast buffet, so I booked it for my friend. (Priceline may have been cheaper, but for the Lexington, VA, area, the priceline selectons/areas didn't seem all that great)

I don't know if this method will work, but if you're on a Mileage Run or something and you're looking for cheap 1 or 2 night accomodations, it doesn't hurt to try - just thought I'd share....

Nope, not unethical.

I do it all the time. I always introduce myself as part of XXX Co. Ltd. and ask if they have any corporate rates. I still ask even if I know my company hasn't negotiated a rate with them.

Often, they'll come up with some corporate rate that's a little more reasonable than rack.