HotelSlash Now Offers “Prepaid” Hotel Rates You Don’t Actually Prepay — No More Fronting Hundreds Up Front

You no longer actually prepay for prepaid hotel rates.

Hotel Slash gets wholesale rates for hotels. And instead of selling them to you at retail and keeping the markup, they pass on a lot of the savings. They’ll even watch reservations you’ve made elsewhere and let you know about price drops and rebook you to save money.

Now they have a new innovation: prepaid rates that you don’t actually prepay.

• Often prepaid, cancellable rates are cheapest.
  
• But you’re booking months in advance and don’t want to front the cash.
  
• Booking through HotelSlash you pay a $25 deposit instead (and even that’s refundable if you cancel at least 14 days before the cancellation deadline).

When you book the prepaid refundable rate through HotelSlash, you’ll pay $25 up front as a deposit to lock in your rate and we will front the rest of your prepaid cost. That’s right. You get the prepaid refundable rate without actually having to prepay except for a small deposit. You’ll get the same confirmation, the same guaranteed rate, the same everything. Your room is secured at the lower price, but instead of paying hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars now, you only pay $25.

You won’t be charged the remaining balance until a few days before your cancellation deadline. We’ll email you first, and if you’d prefer to use a different credit card than the one on file, you can update it before we process the payment.

I guess one way to look at this is they’re providing 0% financing on the deposit. Even if you aren’t worried about the cash flow, you don’t have to worry that you won’t get back your money if you cancel – because you haven’t paid yet. That’s pretty customer-friendly.

HotelSlash is the same folks who have been saving folks money on car rentals with AutoSlash that I’ve recommended for 15 years. Their bookings generally won’t earn hotel loyalty points or status benefits, but the savings can often be worth it and booking rooms through them with chains where you don’t have status makes a lot of sense as well.