Getting a Cheap or Free Hotel Stay with Best Rate Guarantees

Read an article from a travel blogger who always make use of the Best Price Guarantees from hotel booking engines and get cheap or even free stays. I tried to do the same for my upcoming trip to Vietnam. It looks hard doing it for the first time, but once you get the trick, you can't resist the temptation of doing it all the time to get the best deals in town.


What is a Best Rate Guarantee (BRG)? 
Travel providers guarantee having the cheapest rate available for your hotel stay and provide some type of compensation if they don’t. 

For the Orbitz website I am using, it
- matches the lower rate I found in other websites 
- compensates with USD50/ claim

Many high ended hotels do the same but usually for me, my only concern is the cleanness of the hotels with convenient locations and reasonably low prices. Therefore, this gives me a good chance to save the cost of accommodation booking hotels at around USD50 using BRG with Orbitz.

The best way to get Cheap or Free hotel stays
Orbitz BRG>> got USD50 compensation (Orbucks)>> Use the USD50 Orbuscks to book your next stay>> BRG again>> got USD50 compensation (Orbucks)>> Use the USD50 Orbuscks to book your next stay>> until forever

Of course you can accumulate the Orbucks and use them to book a more expensive stay.

Things to bare in mind
You need to
- have an active Orbitz Rewards account (join for free before submitting your   claim)
- book your stay within the last 24 hours
- check-in date at least two days from today
- same travel dates
- the site you found the lower price must be in English and in U.S. dollars
- the hotel's room type, rate, and cancellation policy must be the same
- the stay must be over USD50 excluding tax and fee

If the above criteria are matched, you can go and do the claim. (P.S. I usually find the same stay on Agoda first, capture the screenshot and make sure I can get the claim before I make a booking on Orbitz)

Examples
Stay booked on Orbitz was over USD50 and it cost USD60.03 in total.

An itinerary number was given. 

Go to Agoda and look for the stay with the same travel date, room type, breakfast and cancellation policy. It was only USD58.20.

All the info must be exactly the same.

Then go to Orbitz website and submit the claim with the screenshot captured.
https://www.orbitz.com/p/info-other/guarantees

They will later on send you an email and process your claim. Of course it may not be successful every time, but so far I have done 3 and I got 100% approved successfully.

So the price for my stay this time is USD58.20- USD50 (compensation will go into your account after you complete your stay)- USD1.80 (earned according to the cost on every booking) =USD6.4! That means it costs us around HKD50 only!

See how it goes? I tried to book another stay in Hong Kong.

Stay book on Orbitz was over USD50 and it cost USD70.94 in total.

Go to Agoda and look for the stay with the same travel date, room type, breakfast and cancellation policy. It was only USD64.67. All the info must be exactly the same.

Then go to Orbitz website and submit the claim with the screenshot captured.
https://www.orbitz.com/p/info-other/guarantees

So the price for my stay this time is USD64.67- USD50 (compensation will go into your account after you complete your stay)- USD2.00 (earned according to the cost on every booking) =USD12.67! That means costing us around HKD100 only with breakfast included for weekend getaway!

If you don't mind spending half an hour more booking your stay, you may try this method lowering your travel cost! Happy booking everyone!

*updates
Since there's an increase number of people using the trick, Orbitz is getting strict screening and issuing USD50 Orbucks.
- BRG can be done 3 times a month (counting the date of your stay but not the date you make booking)
- Orbucks is issued within 6-8 weeks after your stay, meaning from day 1 to week 8. If they process your claim altogether in the same month, you may not be able to get the USD50 Orbucks coz the maximum issue is 3 times a month even they sent you the confirmation 'great news' before.

To be safe getting the claim, you may try to use different accounts making bookings for the same trip to avoid them holding up the chance of the claims.