The sneaky booking hack to save hundreds on holiday homes and apartments – a how to guide

GETTING a good deal on accommodation can almost seem impossible at times – but there are clever methods out there.

There’s one in particular that sometimes works with Airbnb – and it could save you hundreds of pounds on your holiday rental home or apartment.

The process isn’t at all tricky, it takes just a few seconds once you’ve found the place where you want to stay.

But it could shave a healthy amount off the price of your accommodation.

I’ll explain exactly how to do it and how it works.

Firstly, you need to find the accommodation you want to stay in.

Take, for example, the Windmill in Cockfield, Suffolk.

The property is described as a romantic hideaway for two or for fun filled time off with friends, nestled in the beautiful countryside, just two miles from historic Lavenham.

Three nights in the Windmill, from August 5, 2024 is listed as £1,778 on Airbnb.

However, in just seconds, I was able to find it for £1.195, using my very simple method.

Once you’ve found the property you want to book, simply right click on the main image on its listing.

Then click in “search image with Google“.

A small panel will then open at the right of the screen, showing other places where the property can be booked, sometimes including its own website.

Try the links that appear in that panel – you might be surprised how often the same property is available for the same dates, but for a much cheaper price.

In this case, I was able to shave £583 off the total cost, taking the per person per night rate down from £296 to around £199.

Elsewhere, The Thatchie, near Deal, Kent – a “cosy, rustic, character-filled barn conversion with fantastic views over the countryside and coastline” – is available for £596.40 on Airbnb, again for three nights from August 5, 2024.

However, using the same trick, I was able to find it for almost £100 less on Booking, where it was exactly £500 on the same dates.

It takes less than 30 seconds to search this way, so it’s definitely worth giving it a go, with most Airbnb hosts listing their properties on multiple websites.

It’s worth pointing out that this is far from a perfect recipe to get your room for cheaper every time – it could turn out that Airbnb actually has the best price.

In which case, you can book it there knowing that it’s the cheapest rate out there and you weren’t overcharged.

However, it’s something I do just to ensure I don’t pay more than I have to, simply because I can’t be bothered to look around.

There are other ways that you can save money on accommodation that I’ve also tried before – including booking a mystery holiday.

Hotels will sell some of their rooms at cheaper rates to mystery holiday companies for a much cheaper rate, to make sure they aren’t going empty.

I ended up with a delightful room at a hotel in Venice, which should have been much more expensive than it ended up being.

Meanwhile, this is how you could save money on your flights.

And here are four hacks for saving money on holidays.

Getty

Using the simple method guests can find bargains online[/caption]