Should I book hotels or not?

[Rincelex]

Last year I booked a flydrive for August this year and have been wavering from not a chance to hopeful over the past few months. The plan is for a two week road trip from Tampa down to the Keys and back up finishing up with 5 nights at Universal.

The trouble is that I have not booked any hotels yet as firstly I thought there was a good chance it could be cancelled and secondly a lot of them were not taking bookings, the problem now is that the nearer we get to the departure day the more expensive the hotels are getting. Should I just book them now making sure I can cancel them? I was going to use our Tesco vouchers through Hotels.com but not sure how you get the vouchers back if you have to cancel.

We can't just reschedule as we can only go in the summer and next summer's holiday is already taken care of.

[duchy]

Sure if you book cancellable rates, there’s no reason no to.

[snowbelle]

We have just booked all ours for October, all are booked direct with the hotels though
Using their cancellable option, It took us a whole day to do but I read cancellation options on many sites and some were not ideal.
We aren't going to Orlando this time, but Dallas and Miami then driving up the Gulf coast.

Many people think that it's cheaper to book with a consolidator but it's not always the case and booking direct with the hotel can give you a more flexible option ( in our case we collect status points)

is there anything else you could use the vouchers for to save the worry of losing them ?

[anji]

Definitely book now! I don't know about Tesco vouchers but Hotels.com are giving 11% cashback on all bookings (+ free cancellation on most) for after June 2021 on Quidco at the moment. You also gain stamps for a free night with them.

I've already booked all our accommodations for our Florida road trip in February 2022! All on free cancellation so will keep looking too for anything better as it gets nearer.

Same for our trip (hopefully) in August to Canada and Pacific NW - big fingers crossed on Canada tho! Prices have gone up masses since I booked them in 2019 for our 2020 cancelled trip!

[TinkerBabe]

We have booked all accomodation for our August (Miami) and October (Vegas and Grand Canyon) trips on either a free cancellation or pay on arrival basis. I did most of this at the end of last year and since then the costs have gone up considerably with the exception of our Vegas hotel which had a price drop (so we cancelled and rebooked) so I would definitely say book as much as you can with the option to cancel/rebook if needed.

[floridafan101]

I think it’s been really hard planning trips this year especially for the DIYers. I know I’ve found it floats to get motivated for a trip that might not happen. I did however sort myself out for a couple of weeks end of last year to book all our hotels for our August trip. All are cancellable and most are pay when we get there so no big outlays. Car hire had been mega expensive and I wish I’d booked that earlier too. Don’t delay - get booked. If you have to cancel later on then so be it but I can only imagine prices going up with all that positivity about getting there going on!

[lfc_sarah]

I would definitely book cancellation rooms for sure especially if prices are rising.
I'm not sure about the Tesco vouchers, but could you possibly use them for something else instead if it's a worry? 🤔

If international travel is announced that it's allowed I can imagine not only prices will rise but that things will start getting booked up rather quickly too 😊

[DisneyCupcake]

I may be wrong but I am sure I have seen in other threads that if you use Tesco Voucers through hotels.com that if you cancel you lose the vouchers. More than happy to be corrected if other Dibbers have experience of using them in this way.

[duchy]

I think I’d book cash , pay on arrival cancelable rates for now and then look at replacing them with voucher bookings later on once things look clearer.