Originally Posted by
ffay005
I'm in a sort of tricky situation here. The hotel in SIN is a lot cheaper if I book a nonrefundalbe rate. My flight is three weeks from now, 05APR. And AY has already amended the schedule, adding in extra flight time and thus a new arrival time at SIN. So I have all the reason to believe that they intend to operate the flight. But dare I book a nonrefundable hotel rate? I've stuck to refundable rates only during covid, but the saving is substantial...
Easy. Just make an estimate of the chances you have to pass on the booked non-refundable room.
Suppose, you estimate it to be a 10% chance. With 10 times this bet, you "know" one time, you will lose the money for the booking. If the difference between fully refundable and non-refundable for those 10 times is more than the missed bet of one non-refundable, you'de better always go for the non-refundable. This also scales back to just one occasion. If the refundable is double the price of a non-refundable, and you estimate the cancel chance to be (significantly, it still is just guessing) lower than 50%, go for the non-refundable.
Not to say, make an estimate, whether you expect rooms to be available at the latest moment. IF you do expect sufficient availability, just book (online of course), just a couple of hours before arrival, and you don't have the non-refundable issue and often can get excellent rates for better rooms/locations. It does require strong nerves to deal with the uncertainly and not something to do with older people, or kids. Hotel rooms are a perishable good, so hotels will do what ever needed to put somebody in the room.
Oh, never walk in a hotel to get a room, even when at the doorstep, book online, it'll be a huge price difference with the walk-in rate.
And, when you are prepared to call off a trip, when the last minute pricing is too high, you may even try this with tickets.