Pros and Cons: AAA membership discount on hotels vs online travel sites (vacation, senior)

[gman5431]

I am not an AAA member and would never become one. I dont see the benefit. As mentioned above, Priceline and to some extent Hotwire get you deals that are much better. I'm not picky so if you can live with not naming your exact hotel it works out great. I routinely get hotels for 30% or so of the rack rate.

G Man

[Alaskan Mutt]

If the bottom line is price then the online travel sites are usually best. However you usually get less. You will not accrue rewards. You might have to pay for breakfast. You have less chance of geting a free upgrade. You might have to pay to fax something. It all depends on what your needs of the hotel are.

[jlawrence01]

Originally Posted by gman5431

I am not an AAA member and would never become one. I dont see the benefit. As mentioned above, Priceline and to some extent Hotwire get you deals that are much better. I'm not picky so if you can live with not naming your exact hotel it works out great. I routinely get hotels for 30% or so of the rack rate.

G Man

The ONLY real benefit that I can see from AAA membership is that you can call their emergency road service number from anywhere in the US at any time of the day and get a wrecker out there within an hour. It is a great benefit to have when you can breaks down in Central Wisconsin in -10F weather.

I am not saying that there are not other services that can do similar BUT so many of them require YOU to get a the wrecker out there and they reimburse you.

Their tour books are decent but the info is often grossly out of dated as it is NOT updated each year.

[gman5431]

Alaskan - good point. I usually am just looking for a place to crash and the only real draw back from me is not racking up points. I only gain points when i stay places for work. Marriott used to give you some points for staying when you booked thru Priceline but that ended a while back.

Jlaw - good point, the road side assistance is a good benefit. Peace of mind at least.

G Man

[jhlcomp]

Understand that AAA was around long before computers and the internet. At the time, they were a valuable resource. I am a member and have been for many years. Today, for me, the benefits are emergency road service, their trip tik service (online and paper), tour guides, etc.. So whether you prefer paper or using a hand held device, they can serve your needs. What is also great is that their tour books will list hotels that take pets, plus all the other features of that property.

Today, AAA can not compete with the various on-line travel and/or hotel services from Priceline on down. I do question their rating system and that they don't list all hotels. That's anothr matter that I won't go into here.

When it comes to making reservations, I use a variety of resources to compare prices - often times, I go directly to the hotel site.

[pcity]

I agree about AAA. I've found that they are sometimes the lowest price for hotels, but usually not. I would not get AAA just for the travel discounts. However, AAA is still worth it for me for roadside assistance, Tourbooks, and printed maps.

I disagree with the above post about not listing all hotels being a bad thing though. I like that if I see a hotel in the Tourbook, I know that at least one person (the AAA rater) has "approved" the hotel. I always do check AAA vs. the other online sites because occasionally they will have the low price.

[BergenCountyJohnny]

Originally Posted by pcity

I agree about AAA. I've found that they are sometimes the lowest price for hotels, but usually not. I would not get AAA just for the travel discounts. However, AAA is still worth it for me for roadside assistance, Tourbooks, and printed maps.

I disagree with the above post about not listing all hotels being a bad thing though. I like that if I see a hotel in the Tourbook, I know that at least one person (the AAA rater) has "approved" the hotel. I always do check AAA vs. the other online sites because occasionally they will have the low price.

I like your post and agree.

My dad had AAA as long as I can remember as a kid and I have had it since I started driving, and I've never regretted it. I would admit that it's definitely not worth getting JUST for hotel and travel discounts. I have occasionally saved more with AAA discounts on hotels than even Expedia and other online booking, but that's usually not the case.

But there are good rates on airfare that they've come up with for me in the past, better than I could get online. In addition, the discounts on attractions have often come in handy. Graceland, San Diego Zoo, etc... It's nice to save a few bucks here and there just for having the card.

Their roadside assistance is awesome and has gotten me out of jams many times. Most recently, I was in Las Vegas, and was heading off to the airport to fly home, and I locked my car keys in the rental car. Now, I haven't done something like this in years, but this time, it happened, at the most inopportune time. I called AAA and they had someone there within 20 minutes (they told me 40 but then called back and said the person would be there sooner). The locksmith could not get into this particular car the "normal" way that he does, so he did a different procedure, going with the back door, and he got the car open. He said it would normally be an extra charge and "good thing you have AAA", because it cost me ZIP. I was on my way within 10 minutes of his arrival.

For people who travel a lot, as I do, it's great to know that anywhere I go in the US and Canada there is a AAA (or CAA) office nearby that can provide me with maps and other information about the region I'm in, and they can help me with travel arrangements if I ever need them.

For whatever I pay a year - $60, I think - it's worth the peace of mind alone. One roadside assistance call and it has more than paid for itself. I use maps every year and I use their tourbooks to plan travel, and they are excellent tourbooks that I can take with me and I don't have to worry about losing them or the maps, because I can always get more if I do lose them.

My first trip to L.A. I drove out to there from Vegas with nothing more than a rental car map. I found my way to Glendale and found a hotel for the night, and the next morning drove down the street to AAA and got hooked up with a whole set of maps for all of LA, including an attraction map and a freeway map. They had some other nice littlel freebies for me, too, that said "AAA of Southern California" on them.

I highly recommend AAA to just about everyone, but if someone only wants it for hotel discounts, it's not worth it. It IS worth it for all the other benefits, though. As pcity pointed out, also, when a hotel isn't in AAA's tourbook it often is for a very good reason (i.e. it's not a good hotel) so I don't mind them cutting out a few overly cheap hotels if they aren't good ones. Also, even if AAA doesn't provide the LOWEST price, I know that I'm still getting a good price that's lower than normal. If AAA saves me $20 instead of the $25 that Hotels.com would have saved me, that's good enough for me. And, unlike hotels.com or expedia, the reservations through AAA are NORMAL reservations with the NORMAL cancellation policies - no paying up front, no high cancellation fees and decreased cancellation time windows, but instead the actual hotel's cancellation policies.

AAA is so worth it.

[marence]

I'm a long-term AAA member, and use and appreciate their services. But for hotel reservations, I'll use Web resources. I usually check the hotel site, kayak.com, and the usual travel sites, and often find killer deals.
We do use AAA for hotel rooms when we're doing spur-of-the-moment traveling. There are always AAA guides in the car, and by calling one of the hotels listed there, we can almost always* get a hotel room at a reasonable discount.

*except on a Saturday night in Niagara Falls. But that's a story for another thread.

[freqtraveler323]

I disagree with the comment about going directly to the hotel always being cheaper. While it is sometimes cheaper going direct to the hotel we had an experiece today with Marriott where we called directly to the hotel where we have stayed several times over the years, gave our rewards number and were immediately transferred to central reservations, who said based upon availability were told the best rate was $229 a night, so we booked it. Later we looked online and found that the AAA rate through the same hotel was cheaper. We called back and were told the AAA rate was correct and they lowered our rate by $30 per night.
Bluntly , we were insulted that as an established customer going directly to the hotel, we were not given the benefit of a favorable rate, until we complained.

[rational1]

I really don't want to join AAA or AARP because the junk mail would be too annoying. I have had poor service in person with AAA.

I haven't tried Priceline because I really want to know where I am staying. I've generally been happy- sometimes very happy- with the prices through travel websites. (Formerly used Travelocity but I have stopped because of their policy on trip insurance, I am now using Expedia).

A downside is that you don't get the hotel frequent sleeper points. On the other hand, the prices have often been better than the hotel website.

A final possibility- show up in person and ask for a discount from the quoted price. You might get it, or maybe not. Works best when the parking lot is empty, it's late at night, and there are three hotels down the street.