Over the past several years it has become more and more difficult to find a decent, cheap Portland Hotel. Recently I was in need of a room in downtown Portland for a conference that the company was holding at the Embassy Suites. The Embassy was booked, but even if it were not I would have looked for a cheaper rate somewhere else. I can’t see spending several hundred bucks for a room that I will spend 7 hours sleeping in, but lately there has been less and less of a choice in finding a cheap room in Portland.
It also baffles me that with the country in the state that it is and the economy in the tank, Portland hotels can get away with charging what they did 2 years ago. Sometimes they are even charging more! And still more expensive hotels are opened like The Nines and still new giant hotel projects are proposed by the mayor. And of course none of the new places are discount hotels, quite the opposite; they are all multi-million dollar luxury projects that they absolutely must charge big buck for the rooms in order to pay the mortgage. And all this expensive building is being done in the name of increasing capacity and room numbers in the city in order to attract more convention business and stuff like that.
So, how do I find a room in Portland at a reasonable rate, hopefully near down town and not in Beaverton or way on the east side of the river? In fact I don’t want to be on the east side at all. Even though it is relatively close to down town, I don’t like staying in the Rose quarter area. So the trick is: downtown, low price room without crack dealers hanging around the parking garage.
First stop, the online websites: Expedia, Orbitz, and Priceline. The first two and other like sites get roughly the same rate for rooms and then they add $10 bucks or whatever on top for commission. Priceline, on the other hand lets you bid on a room in a particular class range of hotels but you don’t know which hotel precisely. The problem with this is the location may not be near where you want, or in a bad area, and lastly the class that they assign to a hotel is generally not the same class as you might expect. It is generally lower. This is probably still one of the best methods to get a cheap hotel room in Portland, but I need to know which hotel BEFORE I bid.
A little website I found becomes the tool to accomplish the mission. People who are willing to use the bidding system at Priceline post the hotels and the rates that the hotels are accepting by city and date. You can see right away who is offering the cheap hotel rooms. My cheap room in Portland is now just a phone call away. Without using the system!
For this particular conference date I see that the Hotel Vintage Plaza is letting rooms go for $54 instead of the “seasonally discounted” $119 (down from $149 – definitely not cheap). The Vintage Plaza is a couple of blocks away from the Embassy, so no problem walking from there. Plus, it is actually a pretty nice place, a boutique hotel that was recently remodeled. Bitty rooms, but who cares since it is just for sleeping anyway.
I looked up the number and gave them a call. I told the reservations desk that I knew a fellow conference attendee of mine had gotten a very good rate for his hotel room of $54 through some online website place and that I would like the same rate. And they gave it to me, no problem. It took a little work, but I got my cheap Portland hotel.
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