When it comes to travel costs, typically one of the biggest costs that eat up the funds is accommodation.
Traveling can be tiring, and a good soft bed is the best way to end a leg of the journey. A luxury hotel or resort might be the final ingredient in your dream vacation. Maybe you’re planning a family or friends vacation and need the extra rooms.
So, there are good enough reasons to make room in the budget for a good hotel room – but what if you can snag a good hotel room for free? Is it possible? Is it legit?
Good news! If you’ve ever wondered how to get free nights at hotels, there are several totally legit ways of securing free nights at hotels. You can get free hotel nights by promoting hotels online, or by joining a rewards program with a hotel chain. Read on to find out how to get free hotel rooms!
6 Ways To Get Free Hotel Rooms
1. Become a Travel Blogger or Travel Journalist
Ever felt like sharing the best experiences you’ve had on your travels around the world?
Part of this excellent job involves staying at hotels…a lot of hotels. It also involves a lot of writing about favorite hotels.
As gaga as hoteliers go for popular influencers, they’re just as keen to work with travel bloggers and travel journalists.
Depending on the popularity of the blogger or journalist, a good review could result in a boom in business – potentially even bigger than the boost offered by the influencer followed by millions.
Why? Because the people who follow travel bloggers or journalists are part of that audience because they are already interested in travel. From the hotel’s perspective, readers may be already shopping around for places to stay.
The Pulitzer Hotel in Amsterdam and the Hotel Schloss Leopoldskron are a couple of these world-famous hotels at that we’ve enjoyed free nights at.
You can check out our experiences with them here! The generous access we’ve been granted is something I’ll always be grateful for, not just for staying at a hotel for free, but also for the chance to learn more about the establishment, the staff, the area, and everything else that makes traveling great.
You get to build relationships and friendships while you’re on a mission to share the most special corners of the world.
2. Become a Social Media Influencer
Do you rock a serious ‘gram game? Is your TikTok account swimming with millions of viewers? If you maintain or plan on building a large social media presence, you might be the perfect candidate for a free hotel stay.
The most effective form of marketing is word-of-mouth and social media is the ULTIMATE form of word-of-mouth. Many hotels, including luxury hotels and resorts, are more than happy to offer free hotel rooms to influencers with even relatively modest followings.
In the influencers’ world, 15,000 followers might not sound like a lot. However, to a hotel, the cost of a few free nights to an influencer could potentially mean 15,000 customers.
Now imagine you had 1,000,000 followers…
3. Join a Frequent Flyer Program
Frequent-flyer programs are one of the best ways for frequent travelers to earn rewards like free hotel rooms. Most airlines offer some form of frequent flyer program that allows members to earn points that can be exchanged for free flights, seat upgrades, car rental, hotel room upgrades, and free hotel stays.
Some of these airlines partner exclusively with certain chains, while others enjoy a pretty broad catalog of hotels where you can cash in your points at hotels all over the world.
4. Join the Travel Industry
If you’re wondering how to get free hotel stays and working for a hotel chain doesn’t sound like your bag, why not try another career in the travel industry?
Travel agents, tour operators, tour guides, airline workers, and many other folks in the travel industry frequently get free hotel stays as perks for any business they bring to the hotel.
As mentioned earlier, hotels are rarely fully occupied, so hotels frequently offer these rooms to travel industry insiders as a reward.
Then, if you were to get a job as an airline pilot or as a flight attendant, not only will you be offered free hotel rooms as job perks, there’s almost a guarantee you’ll be put up in a hotel on a weekly if not daily basis!
5. Become a Mystery Shopper
When you hear the term mystery shopper, it’s likely that the first thing you’ll think of is the practice of testing retailers’ quality of service and compliance with laws and regulations. Did you know that there are mystery shopping companies that do the same for hotels as well?
Companies like BestMark, Coyle Hospitality, and True Guest will pay for your stay at certain hotels to help make sure that they are performing as they should.
Now the problem here is that this is essentially a working vacation. The more of the hotel you explore and the more amenities you make use of the better because, at the end of your stay, you’ll need to provide detailed feedback
You should also do your best to verify the legitimacy of any mystery shopper company you plan on working with. There are some less-than-scrupulous companies out there that will try and scam you.
So yeah, there’s a little legwork involved, but this is a surefire way of getting a night or two out of some luxury hotels. You never know – you might even want to make a career out of it!
6. Online Travel Agencies
Online travel agencies are a haven for all manner of travel deals from cheaper car rentals to free flights; after all, what’s the point of a travel agency if they can’t cut you a deal? So, it goes without saying that lots of travel agencies can get you discounted or even free hotels.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, you can use some of these tips, tricks, and hints to snag a free hotel room!
Do you have another way how to get a free night stay at a hotel? Have any hacks we’ve missed, you’d recommend?
Let us know in the comments section below!
