Heading home for the holidays is often associated with sleeping in your childhood bedroom or on a lumpy pull-out couch. So when you think about it, there are plenty of reasons to book a hotel room the week before Christmas.
Perhaps family festivities will remain more cheerful if you can leave after the third cup of eggnog. Maybe you have a holiday party you’d rather not drive home from. Or perhaps you don’t celebrate Christmas at all, and would prefer to shut out the outside world and all its festive cheer while living in the lap of luxury (and still enjoying a 10-foot Christmas tree in the lobby).
Whatever your reason, the week before Christmas is a prime time for deal-hungry hotel geeks. According to HotelTonight, the week offers the biggest discounts of the year on hotel rooms, thanks to a drop in business travel and a glut of vacant rooms. Average daily rates in the US during the week before Christmas were the lowest of the year in 2016 and 2017, and the app says they expect the same to occur in 2018. That means you can expect savings of up to 25%, with average rate of $100 per room—and plenty of offerings in the double digits.
While this is likely to be the case across all booking sites and online travel agencies, HotelTonight primarily offers listings for what its founder calls “boutique, independent, and/or distinctive hotels.” If there’s is a particular hotel on your list, it can’t hurt to call up directly and ask about vacancies.