Hotel Cancellation Policies: How to Use Them as a Pricing Tool
Cancellation policies aren't just an escape hatch. Used right, they save you 5 to 20 percent before check-in. Here's the system.
· 5 min read
Travel Guides, Tips & Hotel Deals
Destination guides, hotel tips, and ways to keep more cash in your pocket when you travel.
Solo Travel Hit a 15-Year High in 2026. Here's What Hotels Get Wrong About It.
Solo bookings just hit an all-time high. Hotels still charge solos a premium for no good reason. Here's the data and the workaround.
· 5 min read
What Day of the Week Is Cheapest to Book a Hotel? Real Data from 2026
Sunday evening, Tuesday morning, and the 30-to-60-day window. Real pricing data from 2026 on when to actually book hotels.
· 5 min read
Slovenia in 2026: Why Lake Bled and Ljubljana Beat Italy for a July Trip
Lake Bled, Ljubljana, and the Soca Valley give you alpine cool, half the crowds of Italy, and hotels from $76 a night.
· 5 min read
Hotel Industry
Hotel Loyalty Points Are Worth Less in 2026 (And What That Means for Your Bookings)
Hotel chains owe members $11.6 billion in unredeemed points. The plan to clear that liability runs through devaluations. Here's the strategy that works in 2026.
· 7 min read
How To
How to Plan a Memorial Day Weekend Trip Three Weeks Out (Without Overpaying)
Memorial Day weekend 2026 runs May 23-25. Three weeks out is the sweet spot for booking. Here's where rates are dropping and how to find them.
· 7 min read
Destination Guide
Vietnam in 2026: How to Plan Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and the Coast in One Trip
Vietnam tourism is up 25 percent year over year. Here's the two-week trip that combines Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and the coastal middle, with hotel costs and timing.
· 7 min read
Travel News
Hotel Resort Fees in 2026: One Year After the FTC's Junk Fees Rule
The FTC's rule on hidden fees took effect a year ago. Here's what actually changed, what didn't, and how to avoid resort fee traps in 2026.
· 6 min read
Destination Guide
Split or Dubrovnik in 2026: How to Pick the Right Croatian Coast Base
Both cities sit on the Adriatic. The cost difference is 25 to 30 percent. Here's which one fits which trip, and how to do both in one go.
· 6 min read
Travel Savings
How to Find Hotel Deals During Summer's Most Expensive Weeks
Late June through mid-August is the worst time to book a hotel in most of the Northern Hemisphere. Rates rise 25-40% above shoulder season. Inventory tightens. The flexibility you'd normally use to negotiate down to a better deal mostly disappears. That said, even peak summer has savings if you know where the price compression points are. We work with hotel rates every day at Best and have watched the same patterns repeat across thousands of properties. Here are eight tactics that actually work
· 6 min read
Destinations
Why the Lesser Greek Islands Are Beating Santorini in 2026
Greek hotel pricing in 2025 only rose 2% peak versus shoulder season. That number tells you something important. Demand has flattened across the most-visited islands. The travelers still going to Santorini and Mykonos are paying premium prices for crowded experiences, while everyone else has quietly figured out that Greece has 227 inhabited islands and most of them deliver a better trip. We've been tracking Greek island bookings since the start of the year, and the pattern is clear. Visitors ar
· 6 min read
Hotel Industry
How Hotel Pricing Actually Works (And Why You're Paying Too Much)
Most travelers think hotels set prices the way restaurants do. Calculate the costs, add a margin, post the number. That's not what happens. Hotel rates are calculated by software running on yield management models that adjust prices dozens of times per day based on demand signals you can't see. Two travelers booking the same room for the same night a few hours apart will routinely pay different prices. We've spent a lot of time inside this industry building Best, and the pricing logic is more i
· 7 min read