Originally Posted by eastcoastcan
I just scored a great weekday rate with TFB. The hotel was posting Best Avail at 339$/night, TFB, including breakfast, came in at 159$/night.
Wow!
Has anyone used this rate before? Could I possibly run into problems? It is a fully flexible rate. It must be listed by the hotel on error.
It might not be an error. I see Best Available Rate (BAR) yielding near-rack rates in many cases, with a wide variety of codes yielding much lower rates. BAR at $339 and TFB at $159 is a relatively normal "spread".
I've also seen hotels use their typical Weekend codes and rate rule language during the week. Perhaps due to low occupancy, or perhaps they have just cut & paste the rate rules in they system. Anyway, as long as the reservation is accepted and booked (and it is publicly available, of course), it will be honored. Renaissance Seattle does this for fall/winter periods when demand is lower. When summer rolls around, the rates are gone. So it leads me to believe that it's not a mistake - it's just that whoever loads the rates got lazy or didn't notice the "Weekend" language in there.
Oddly enough, while Best Available Rate usually yields something obnoxiously high, every now and then it really does uncover a rate that is, um, the best. So I still plug in BAR before I make a booking, just to see what comes back.