Travel Better In 2021 With Roland Frasier’s Luxury Hotel Hack.

You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. This is your seat at the table. Welcome to the show. This is the producer, Darren Clark. Now, although most of us are trying to stay home as much as we can right now, entrepreneurs still need to Travel. So in 2021, travel smarter with the tips Roland shares in this snack size episode. If you're loving the show, please hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and and go to businesslunchpodcast.com for show notes and more. Now here's our host, Roland Fraser.

For me, hotel upgrades are huge. I travel a whole lot and so I want to stay in nice rooms, but I'm also somewhat cheap, so I don't want to pay for them at the full rack rates. So over time I noticed and this is an American Express card that I'm going to talk about, but it will work with other cards that offer upgrades as well. What I learned as I was booking online was that I was trying to think of the name of it. It's like Ambassador Program or something like that that American Express is part of. But any of these cards that offer hotel room upgrades, when you're booking online, go to the site for the card. This is through American Express Travel, but you can do it through anything. And so I'll look at the rates of the rooms and It'll be like 269, 279, 284, and then 299, 700. So if you go for one of the rooms that's before the big jump in price, then your upgrade will only be to the next category of room, meaning that if you're going for a 269 room and there's a 279, they're going to give you the 279. And that's nice, but it's not really going to be any different than the 269. So I'll book to start the 299, the one before the giant leap. So. So my upgrade will instantly be to a suite. So you're like, if you want to get upgraded from regular room to suite, that gives you the biggest bang for your buck right off the bat. Then when I go in, I wait to be invited up to the window and it's amazing how many times they will comment on that. Thank you so much for waiting. I just had to finish a couple things and people come up on me that right off the bat is you're showing empathy without saying a word because you are empathizing with their situation of Got to get stuff done. Don't want people hovering over me. And then going up, finding something legitimately nice to say to this person who's probably been experiencing people yelling at them all day long. Right. It's a tough job being at the front desk. You hear only generally about complaints and then saying, what kind of room do we have? And instantly aligning myself with them. I want them to be more my ally in this adventure that the two of us are going to be on, of getting us to get me a suite. Right? Then it's, what's your favorite room in the hotel? Tell me about that. After I found something to talk with them about, what's your favorite room in the hotel? And then they'll tell me. And I'm telling you, Like, I could go through hotels or you can look on my Facebook and see. I mean, I've had the Czar's suite at the Four Seasons, $25,000 a night in Moscow. The Imperial Suite at the Mandarin in Las Vegas is like $18,000 a night. I mean, and all of these hotels, either for no additional money, or the next thing, which is a little bit of extra money and goes to empathy. Thing of, how do you make it a win for all three people? For the hotel, for the manager, for the front desk clerk that you're talking to. So the way that you do that is, again, start with future pacing. So what would it look like if we were to get. If we were to get me into that favorite room of yours, right. Or if we were to get an upgrade to that. What would an upgrade to that room look like? That's what I say. Not. Not me. Then they're excited and they're on my team, and they're frequently arguing with the person in the back. Arguing. You know, haggling, talking, whatever. So they'll just disappear. Now, this can take up to 45 minutes, by the way, but I'm willing to invest 45 minutes to get a 15, $20,000 a night room for a couple hundred bucks more. And they'll come back and say, yes, I am so excited. What we can do is we can do this, but it would be an extra charge of $300 a night. Now, this is going from a room that's usually a couple hundred bucks a night. So you're talking about 5, 6, $700 a night for this giant, ridiculous room that has saunas and workout things and showers that hit you from all directions, all other kinds of crazy stuff. And then I will haggle back, right? I don't Say, okay, that sounds good. That extra $300 sounds good. Ah, man, my, my budget was, was 500 a night. And, you know, this would take me to, to 650. Is, is there any way that we could, that we could get it into that range? I'm just trying to. Just trying to meet that budget. And then they'll go back and it's like a car dealer thing. And that's why it takes a little bit of extra time. But they'll go back and forth. And very often I don't think I've ever had them come back and say, no, that's it. It's gotta be this number that we threw out. They'll come back and we'll haggle in between, and it's always less, and it's just a few hundred bucks more. The hotel wins because they get extra revenue that they wouldn't have gotten over and above what I was gonna pay before. The front desk clerk wins because they get credit for an upsell. So when they're getting a job review, one of the things they're required to do is upsell, but most of them never think to do it. How many times have you been asked, you know, I've got this extra room, I could put you in a suite for $200 a night. They don't even ask. Right, but now you've helped them win, right, with that. And then the person who is the on duty manager wins because their upsell revenue will also be higher. So everybody wins. And then we get the nice suite that we want. So use that strategy.

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