Now here's an ingenious way to pretty much get out of any last-minute hotel reservation without being penalized. Holy shit, why didn't I think of that?
Most hotels offer free cancellation up to a certain timeframe before assessing some type of cancellation fee. Though it varies from property to property, in my experience, the most common time markers seem to be 24 hours, 48 hours and a week before the stay commences. Buuut if something's come up at the very last minute, there's a sly trick to get out of it.
The Daily Beast went ahead and culled through a Reddit thread to find this little nugget from user Druumer89:
Need to cancel a reservation at the last minute but scared of the fee? No fear, Reddit is here. Behold a clever solution from behind the hotel receptionist desk. Step one: call the hotel and push your reservation forward a few weeks. Step two: call back later that day and cancel. Voilà! Room canceled, fee bypassed, integrity (virtually) unharmed.
In other words, by moving the date you extend the timeframe to a point where your reservation can no longer be penalized. I guess the time in between moving and canceling the reservation is a bit arbitrary but for social graces' sake, you might want to wait more than five seconds before you cancel the res.
