What strategies have folks here found effective for negotiating hotel prices in Taiwan? I’m traveling outside of Taiwan for the next month or two, and when I return, I’ll likely stay in a hotel in Taipei while looking for a new apartment. I was thinking of inquiring about booking for a month and seeing if that gave me leverage to negotiate the price down.
I haven’t found any hotels I like in Taipei after staying at ~5, all found through Booking.com, but I tried asking the best of the bunch if they would give me a discount on a month’s stay and they said no. These hotels tend to fill up from what I see on Booking, so I guess it might not be a very attractive offer to them, although I’m a little surprised they wouldn’t be willing to negotiate at all on a long stay.
In case the price point of the places I’m targeting makes a difference, I’ve generally paid 2000-3000 NTD/night for hotels in Taipei, mostly on the upper end of that, which incidentally feels like painfully bad value for money considering the offerings and condition of the facilities.
Anyone have any advice to offer or experience to share?
I used to set prices for a dozen hotels in a major global hotel chain. Hotels that are generally busy will not have long-stay rates. If they do, then it will already be built into the reservation system. Just select your intended dates of arrival and departure, and it will automatically show the long-stay rate. No need to negotiate with anybody.
Besides, the front desk clerks will certainly not be interested in negotiating with you. They are not sales people.
For reference, out of the dozen hotels I was in charge of, only a quarter of them offered long-stay rates. Although this was in the US.
Have you tried AirBNB? The hosts may be open to negotiating if you contact them directly.
Taiwan doesn’t have a culture for negotiating hotel prices. In Taipei, hotels are expensive and usually busy, so I don’t think they have any need to negotiate prices. Your best bet would be to contact somebody on Airbnb and see if they’re willing to give you a discount for a long-term stay.
Some serf at the front desk in Taiwan is going to have the authority to do nothing off the script, other than offer a customer a tissue or something. I think the other thing is this medium/long term hotel stay is something locals never do, so there is no SOP for this. And Taiwan is all about the SOP.
Keen to know how you go, post back, I hope I’m wrong.
I had to look up “SOP” and I received the following definition:
SOPs are more than simply a written set of work instructions. A standard operating procedure is a document containing step-by-step instructions to guide employees on how to perform a technical, repetitive process within an organization.
You’re bang on. This is exactly what Taiwan is all about.
Makes sense that this would be rare for locals, but I would imagine that it’s not so rare for foreigners visiting on business for a project that takes a month or two? Maybe only in hotels at a price point above where I’m looking in Taiwan, though? In the US hotels set up to accommodate long stays aren’t necessarily really expensive, but the markets could be different there.
Yeah, I probably should look into Airbnb again. Not a big fan of Airbnb in general, and I had a bad experience with one in Taiwan, but no other good options at the moment.
Looks like that guide contains some nice-looking options that would be cheaper than booking the sort of hotel I’ve been looking at for a full month. Will investigate further. Thanks again @TroubleWithTribbles!
