A journey to a foreign country for most people is 80% preparation and 20% vacation. Planning the perfect trip requires a bit of mental elbow grease and a lot of time finding resources, looking up information, and managing logistics. In the end the work you do before you go pays off in spades both in the experience you’ll have as well as the potential savings to your checkbook.

Whether you already have a good idea of where you want to stay, or whether you’re one of the few who are starting from scratch with nothing more than the idea of visiting Mexico, you’re in luck. We’ve brought together reams of relevant information for you, including this guide to saving money on hotel bookings written by a former travel industry executive.

Step 1: Learn the Tricks of the Travel Sites

All travel sites operate in basically the same way:

• Advertise heavily to get you to come to their site
• Give you hotel reviews and availability
• Heavily promote all-inclusive resorts (because they make the most money)
• Book your reservation and charge the hotel operators a commission

However, as in most things, the devil’s in the details. Each site has a twist that you should be aware of before you book:

• Orbitz – is owned by a major airline group and consequently has the highest prices in town. However, they also have the best customer service. For the extra money, you’ll get lots of special features, travel reminders, and of course, 24/7 customer service. Orbitz pushes primarily all-inclusive resorts.
• Hotels.com – as the name suggests, this is a premium site which focuses on hotels. They primarily push all-inclusives, but have a good selection of smaller hotels if you dig a little deeper into their search results.
• Expedia – Expedia was one of the first internet travel sites, and is known for having some of the lowest prices around. They heavily promote the all-inclusives, and while they do promote some smaller hotels, you may have a hard time getting price quotes online.
• Travelocity – Travelocity is a direct competitor to Expedia, and the same description applies.
• Priceline – Priceline lets you name your dates and price range, and they choose the hotel for you. You can get some incredible deals if your plans are flexible.
• Hotwire – This site specializes in last-minute travel. Again, you name the dates and price range, and they will pick the hotel for you.
• CheapTickets – Cheaptickets searches the inventory of the other major travel sites. There are often great deals here, so it’s worth checking out. The customer service is generally not as good, however.
• Kayak – Kayak searches a number of smaller sites (many of which you have probably never heard of) and displays their results on a single page. This is a terrific site if you don’t mind buying from a smaller company.
• SeePlaya – We have partnered with a small Mexican company that provides reservation services with many smaller hotels. The prices are very low (often 50% of what you can find elsewhere) but you should be aware that customer service is quite limited. Because this company does little more than place your reservation for you, we strongly recommend that you purchase travel insurance (see below).

Why Prices Vary So Much

Ultimately, your reservation ends up at the same place – the hotel. Regardless of where you book your stay, the hotel generally makes the same amount. So many people are surprised to find out how much difference in price there is across sites. It’s not unusual to find rates that vary by as much as $200 or more per night. Why is this?

The primary reason for this is because some sites advertise very little, while others spend millions in promotion (the cost for this is passed on to you). Another reason is that the more expensive sites generally provide better customer service than the discount sites.

Is It Worth Paying More at a Premium Site?

There can be several advantages to spending more at a larger site. Generally, you will have fewer restrictions on your booking. This means that you’re covered if something unexpected occurs and you may have lower cancellation fees. It also means that you’ll have access to more responsive customer support if something goes wrong.

The cost for these privileges can be high… as much as 50% of your nightly rate. Fortunately, there's an alternative.

Travel Insurance – The Great Equalizer

If you want to save money, but also want to be covered in case something goes wrong with your trip, you’re in luck. There is an entire industry built around this need: travel insurance.

For a low fee (about 5% of your trip cost), you receive protection against:

• Loss of non-refundable pre-payments if you need to cancel or change your plans
• Unexpected medical expenses that may not be covered by your health insurance
• Additional expenses for accommodations for travel delays
• Lost or stolen baggage

The protection you receive from one of these plans is far superior than that which you’ll receive through any travel site.

The idea here is simple: save 25% or more on your total trip, re-invest 5% of that in travel insurance, and keep the rest for yourself.

One of the major providers of travel insurance is TravelGuard (underwritten by AIG).

Be Careful of Back-End Service Fees

Here’s the low down on the travel industry’s dirtiest little secret: back-end fees.

You’ve spent hours researching and are ready to book the vacation of a lifetime. You are about to submit your order, when you’re hit with a bad case of sticker shock! The price is 25% higher than you thought! What gives?

In addition to the commission that the travel sites charge hotel operators, they also tack on a fee at the last step of the order process. By this point, most people are so committed to their order that they go ahead and order anyway. The fees typically range from 15-25%. Part of this covers local taxes (about 13%) while the rest is pure profit. This is the money you pay to book your trip through that site.

All of the sites do this, so there’s little you can do about it other than be a better shopper. The important thing to realize is that at the end of the day, you are simply placing a reservation at the hotel itself, and there are plenty of sites to choose from to do that.

Step 2: Choose Your Top Hotel Picks Before You Shop

Most people wouldn’t go into an auto dealership without having some kind of idea of what kind of car they want to buy. Doing so would leave them vulnerable to being price-gouged.

Yet, most people are trained to do this when buying a high-priced vacation online. They log on to their favorite travel site and take their pick from whatever hotels are recommended to them (this is why the high-priced all-inclusives are always presented first on nearly every travel site!).

Doing things backwards like this can cost you dearly, so take our advice: do you research and pick a few hotels you like before ever start shopping.

We’ve organized this site to make this step easy. There are two ways to do this. If you have no special requirements, start by clicking on the hotel reviews along the left-hand side of every page.

The second way allows you to customize your parameters. Here’s how:

1. Go to our advanced hotel search page
2. Select your travel dates
3. Select only the SeePlaya checkbox at this time.
4. Enter your amenities and desired atmosphere. This will allow us to make better hotel recommendations.
5. Click on the “Read Review” links to see our hotel articles, taking care to note any problem areas as well as the photos.

For this first research step, it's only necessary to check the "SeePlaya" checkbox.

We’ve personally visited each property, so take advantage of our research. This is not your standard hotel fluff brochure – you’ll find both the good and bad here, so read carefully!

Step 3: Comparison Shopping – The Quick and Easy Way

Armed with your top hotel picks, it’s time to proceed to the final step of comparison shopping. This step takes most people the better part of a day to complete, but if you’ve been following along so far, you’ll be done in no time.

First, print out this hotel comparison worksheet. This is one of the times that it pays to be organized and this will be where you keep your notes.

With your worksheet printed out, proceed to our advanced hotel search and get ready for some power-shopping. What this page does is submit all of your information once to every site and opens the search results in new windows. You only have to enter your information once, and the other pages will load in the background … no more waiting!

Print out this worksheet to make short work of comparison shopping

Once you're there, following these instructions:

• Check the boxes next to the travel sites you’re interested in searching. You can search up to five at a time.
• Turn your popup blocker off (either add us to your “allowed sites” list, or in Internet Explorer: go to Tools->Popup Blocker->Turn Off Popup Blocker). We are a safe site – we will never serve unwanted popups to you.
• Press “go” and each of the sites will load up their hotel inventory in a new window. This can take up to 60 seconds depending on the speed of your connection.
• On each page, look for one of your three hotels. If you find it, enter the relevant information on your worksheet. For the most accurate pricing, you may need to proceed to the checkout page in order to reveal the back-end fees. You may also want to factor in about a 5% fee for travel insurance if you choose to go with a smaller website.
• When you’re done, return the advanced hotel search page and repeat the process for the other search engines you would like to search.

For this step, you'll check off up to five travel sites to search at once.

This whole process should take less than 20 minutes. When you’re done you’ll have a grid that has all of the information you need to make a well-informed decision.

Congratulations! You’re now a “Playa Insider”!

Editor’s Note: Did this article help you save money? Please let us know at info@seeplaya.com.