At the conclusion of this summer I was planning a 4-day weekend trip to serve as my vacation and stumbled upon the extreme usefulness of Radisson Hotel’s best rate online guarantee and comparison shopping. I wanted to book an ocean-view hotel room at a Radisson location for 2 nights. Radisson.com quoted $159 for Thursday night and $169 for Friday night. I checked orbitz.com and they quoted me $159 for Thursday night and FREE for Friday night. Orbitz was running a Friday night is free promotion. So that brought my average nightly rate with Orbitz to $80 and Radisson.com at $165.
While on the Radisson.com site I noticed a link that said best online rate guarantee so I clicked it. Their policy is if they do not have the best publicly available online rate they will match that rate and beat it by 25%. Sweet! The catch? You have to book with Radisson.com first, then within 24 hours of your booking submit an online claim form. This seemed risky to me because I was signing up for $400 bill(w/ taxes) when I could only afford the $200 bill. But I took comfort in the fact that at least with booking on Radisson.com I could cancel if my claim gets rejected. Then hopefully Orbitz would still have the great rate.
I eventually booked the hotel on Radisson.com then immediately sent the claim form. Within 24 hours I received an email stating that my claim had been received and approved. So I received 2 nights state at an average nightly rate of $60 in an ocean-view, quality hotel!
The hotel was ok and it was great to be right on the beach. Not sure if I would have wanted to pay the full rate but at my discounted rate…. this hotel was fantastic!
I just had to post this blog to let people know the Radisson best online rate guarantee does not seem to be a rip-off or scam. I searched before I tried my claim and only found one other person who reported results just as mine. So now, hopefully, people will find 2 success stories.