Travel Guides, Tips & Hotel Deals

Destination guides, hotel tips, and ways to keep more cash in your pocket when you travel.

Empty Atlantic beach on Portugal's Alentejo coast near Comporta at sunset

72 Hours in Comporta: Portugal's Beach Town 90 Minutes From Lisbon (Summer 2026)

Comporta sits 90 minutes south of Lisbon, on the kind of beach that most Europeans pretend doesn't exist. White sand that runs uninterrupted for 12 miles. Pine forest behind the dunes. Rice paddies inland. A handful of villages where the loudest sound is the wind moving through the reeds. This is the part of Portugal that people who can afford to disappear go to disappear. Christian Louboutin built a hotel there. Madonna spent a summer. Princess Eugenie got married nearby. None of which we part

Jun 4, 2026 · 7 min read

Hotel front desk reception area where guests check in and out

Travel News

Hilton Just Standardized $40 to $60 Late Checkout Fees Across All Its Brands. Here's What That Costs You in 2026.

Hilton just turned what used to be a polite ask at the front desk into a line item. Starting in 2026, every Hilton brand has a standardized late checkout fee. $40 at the value brands. $50 at the mid-tier. $60 at the high end. Plus tax. This is the kind of change that doesn't make the homepage of any major travel site. But it shifts the math on Hilton stays in a way most travelers will only notice when they're standing at the front desk asking for two extra hours and getting a price quote back.

Jun 4, 2026 · 7 min read

Breathtaking view of Sete Cidades crater lake on São Miguel Azores

Destination Guides

Five Days in São Miguel: The Azores Itinerary That Skips the Crowds

São Miguel is the largest island in the Azores and the one most people fly into. It's also where Iceland-style geology runs into Atlantic green and where you can swim in a 38 degree thermal pool in the morning and watch sperm whales from a boat three hours later. The crowds people warn you about are real in August. In June and September they're not. We went in late September, did a road trip, and came home convinced this is the best European destination most people haven't been to yet. Her

Jun 3, 2026 · 7 min read

Elegant heritage hotel corridor with chandelier and arched ceiling

Hotel Industry

Hyatt Just Raised Award Prices 67%. Here's When Cash Beats Points in 2026.

On May 20, 2026, Hyatt changed its award chart. The old chart had three tiers. The new chart has five. The high end shifted from 45,000 points per night to 60,000 points per night at peak properties. For aspirational redemptions, that's a 67% increase in what you need to burn for a single night. Hyatt was the last major hotel program holding the line on transparent, predictable awards. That's over. The devaluation puts Hyatt in line with what Marriott did in 2023 and what Hilton has been q

Jun 3, 2026 · 7 min read

Modern hotel room with city view balcony at dusk

Travel Savings

Sunday Night Is the Cheapest Hotel Night of the Week. The Data Backs It Up.

There's an old assumption that hotels are cheapest on weekends because business travel drives weekday demand. That's half right. Friday and Saturday are not the cheapest nights. Sunday is. We pulled three months of pricing data across 25 US cities and the pattern is consistent enough that we'd call it a rule. Sunday-night rates run 18 to 28% below the highest priced night of the week in nearly every market. The discount is larger in business-heavy cities and smaller in pure leisure destina

Jun 3, 2026 · 6 min read

Picturesque canal view in Ghent Belgium with medieval architecture along the water

Destination Guides

Ghent Quietly Out-Bruges Bruges Every Summer. Here's the Five-Day Plan.

Bruges had its moment. The canals, the chocolate shops, the lace, the cobbled bridges you've seen on a hundred Instagram feeds. The problem is that everyone else also had the same moment. In peak summer, Bruges runs at roughly 6 million tourists a year against a population of 120,000. The math is brutal. You're not visiting a medieval Flemish city. You're queueing through one. Ghent is 25 minutes east by train. It has the canals. It has the gothic. It has the chocolate. It also has a unive

Jun 3, 2026 · 7 min read

Soccer stadium under blue sky filled with fans during major football tournament

Travel News

World Cup Hotels Are About to Spike 25% in 11 US Cities. Here's the Calendar.

The FIFA World Cup opens in eight days. Hotel rates in the 11 US host cities are already moving, and the gap between this June and last June is going to be the largest single demand event US hotels have ever absorbed in a single month. CoStar pegs the hit at $900 million in incremental room revenue across US host markets. The room-rate impact lands somewhere between 7% and 25%, depending on the city, the night, and how close the property is to the stadium. We pulled the projections, the ma

Jun 3, 2026 · 6 min read

Panoramic view of Porto, Portugal with the Douro river and historic buildings

Destination Guide

September Is Quietly the Smartest Month to Visit Porto in 2026

Porto in August is a city that's running too hot. Literal heat. Crowded ribeira waterfront. Hotel rates 30% above the spring average. Cruise ships disgorging day-trippers by 10 AM. The northern Portuguese city has all the things people travel to see, but they're harder to see in peak summer than at any other point in the year. September is when the math shifts. The crowds drop noticeably after the first week. Hotel rates pull back. The Atlantic is still warm enough to swim in. Restaurants

Jun 1, 2026 · 8 min read

A scenic view of Kyoto, one of 10 international cities with hotel prices down in 2026

Travel News & Trends

Hotel Prices Just Dropped 25% in 10 International Cities. Here's the Full List.

While everyone watches US hotel rates climb for the soccer tournament, something quieter is happening on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific. Hotels in a list of popular international cities are 15 to 35% cheaper this summer than they were last year. Demand is up. Prices are down. That's an unusual combination, and it's worth paying attention to. Expedia's Unpack '26 Summer report calls them "Take-Off Destinations." Ten cities across Europe, Asia, and South America where average da

Jun 1, 2026 · 7 min read

Hotel booking interface on a laptop with search filters open

Travel Savings

The 7 Hotel Search Filters That Actually Change the Price (And the 12 That Don't)

Open any major hotel booking site and you'll see dozens of filters. Star rating. Guest score. Distance to center. Hotel amenities. Pool. Spa. Gym. Pet-friendly. EV charging. Each filter looks useful. Most of them do almost nothing to the price you'll actually pay. We've been tracking hotel pricing data at Best for the better part of a year, and we keep running the same experiment. Take the same trip, the same dates, the same neighborhood, and run it through 12 different filter combination

Jun 1, 2026 · 7 min read

Sarajevo skyline featuring minarets and Ottoman architecture

Destination Guide

72 Hours in Sarajevo: The €40 European Capital That Most Travelers Still Skip

Sarajevo just landed at the top of the 2026 "cheapest European capital" rankings, with the standard basket of travel expenses running €287 for a long weekend. That's roughly half of Vienna, a third of Paris, and a quarter of Reykjavik. The price isn't the only reason to go. It's just the reason you'd be foolish not to. We've been watching booking patterns for Sarajevo for the last twelve months. Hotel ADRs are up about 4% year over year, which sounds like a lot until you remember that the

Jun 1, 2026 · 8 min read

Luxurious hotel breakfast buffet spread with fresh croissants and pastries

Travel News & Trends

Free Hotel Breakfast Is Quietly Dying. Here's the Industry Math Behind the Cuts.

The free hotel breakfast has been a budget traveler's load-bearing wall for two decades. Skip a $20 airport sandwich, eat your fill at the hotel buffet, walk out energized and a little smug. The math worked. It's no longer working for hotels. And in 2026, the cuts are showing up everywhere. Hyatt Place pulled free breakfast from 40 properties this year. Holiday Inn, owned by IHG, quietly swapped its full breakfast for a slimmed-down buffet at most of its US locations with à la carte ad

Jun 1, 2026 · 7 min read