No Money For A Hotel Room? What Are Your Options?

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Though I often point out that Third Party travel sites are more expensive than other options, they do have their advantages at times and this is one of them. If you found yourself stranded without enough cash on hand to get home or credit left on a card, have a friend or relative book you a room in your city and pay for it on their charge card. This may cost you more than other options but it is by far the easiest to accomplish. All it takes is a willing sponsor and a few minutes time.

There are a couple drawbacks however. Some sites operate on Eastern Standard Time and if you are in a West Coast airport and it is after 9 pm, they perhaps can't use that site, since it is already the next 'day' to their computers. Keep in mind that the major sites mandate that the hotel or motel check I.D. upon check in, therefore you need to have the room booked under your name. But some Third Party sites will only allow the party paying to be the party checking in, so entering another persons card number may not work either. Another drawback is you cannot get cash from a hotel using another persons charge card, so hopefully you are only interested in getting lodging (and usually cheap lodging) and not cash money for cabs and food as well.

My advice is to shop around as some sites DO allow for last minute bookings after 9 pm PST and some will allow for alternate payment by another party.

A better option might be for your sponsor to book a room for a cheaper rate on a hotels direct site and then fax an authorization to the hotel if needed. Most hotels will be glad to accept a Third Party payment as long as they have paperwork authorizing them to accept a given card. This requires your sponsor to fax the front and back of a card with a few written sentences allowing the hotel or motel to charge your card. The drawbacks to this are ones which prevents most people from using this option: they have to have access to a scanner or copier and a fax machine. Sometimes people have them at home but it is more likely they have them at the office and if the paying party is already home, they are not usually willing to venture out at night looking to find a fax machine somewhere, much less a drug store with a copier in it.

There are two workarounds to this. One requires that you have sufficient funds to pay for the room to begin with (if you are saving it for travel the next day). If you pay for the room AND your sponsor can send the fax the following morning, the hotel will change the payment method and refund your payment in cash. Of course, you cannot have a departure time prior to when the fax might arrive or you will not be able to get your money back. Plus, it assumes the fax actually gets there.

The other option is to email the authorization to the hotel/clerk. Some hotels will not accept email authorizations because they do not understand that an email 'signature' is a valid legal signature. Plus, the clerk that evening must have access to the hotels email to receive it. So you may need to shop around in order to find the right hotel or motel.

The advantage to working with a hotel or motel directly is that it is probably cheaper than a Third Party website booking and you get to choose where you want to stay if it is after 9 pm. On a Third Party site, your choices may be limited. It maybe that you are looking for the cheapest hotel around or the most luxurious. If you chose the cheaper place, it likely won't have a restaurant in it and you still have the problem of paying for food if you have no cash. The advantage of an upper tier hotel is ALL of your charge can go on the sponsors credit card and they likely have a restaurant you can eat at.

Figure out which makes the most sense to you and avail yourself of any of these options. It may just take a little bit of the sting out of a bad ending to a trip.