Traveling Light: Taking a Straycation

The EconoMuse needs to start today's post with a big mea culpa or two. She plans to keep the mea culpas handy as she writes her blog, because she can see that she will need them often.

Case in point: no sooner does the EconoMuse hit the publish button on her most recent Recession Proof, essentially calling Mr. EconoMuse clueless about Valentine's Day, when in walks Mr. EconoMuse. With a box. For the EconoMuse. Wrapped with great artistic flair. (You should see how Mr. EconoMuse wraps presents. There is always an Exacto knife and hot-glue gun involved. Her most recent birthday present was wrapped using a dissected Stella Artois six-pack holder that was artfully rearranged to spell out the EconoMuse's name and date of birth!) 

Anyways, since Ms. E-Muse was taking the kids away for President's Weekend while Mr. EconoMuse headed to Europe on business, the EconoMuses would not be together on Valentine's. Not only did Mr. EconoMuse figure that out, but he also purchased a lovely necklace (breaking all rules of economusing). 

By the way, the necklace goes beautifully with the egg on Ms. E-Muse's face. Mea Culpa. 

Mea Culpa Part Deux

The EconoMuse has been lax with the posts in the past two weeks. But--hey!--when nobody is actually paying you, it's a lot easier to go on vacation. So that's what she did. Which brings us to one of her favorite topics: traveling light--on the wallet, that is!

By now everyone has heard of "staycations."  You know the drill: sightsee in your own 'hood. Get the kids an ice cream or two. Buy the t-shirt. And call it a vacation. Apparently they were all the rage last summer. And in Europe they went so far as to dump a pile of sand into the city centers so the locals could set up their beach chairs, pull out their coolers, and pretend they were at the beach.  As fun as that sounds, Ms. E-Muse does not see her little Northern California town hauling in the sand and installing a tiki bar anytime soon. So that's where the "straycation" comes in. It's kind of like a staycation but you stray (get it?!) a little farther afield and spend as little as possible doing it. And that's where the real fun begins. 

A few years back the EconoMuse started meeting her dear friend, Muse Julie, in San Francisco for dinner. However, since the pair love to eat and drink, the hour drive home proved to be an obstacle to serious indulgence. So they hatched the idea of staying in the city overnight. After a few false starts (oh, the stories Ms. E-Muse could tell, such as the room with the ringing phones), the two struck on a winning formula: Hotwire +/- Priceline < (+/-)($80) = (Hotel Room)(****).  For those of you who failed complex, scientific formulas in school, that means four-star hotels for less than $80, give or take. 

Beating the Priceline System 

Maybe you've used Hotwire and Priceline for hotels before. But have you decoded them? If not, the EconoMuse encourages you to peruse this essential website, BetterBidding.Com. Hotel secrets are revealed. Winning bidding strategies are illuminated. Through the help of other bidders, you can often figure out what you are bidding on or how much to bid. Ms. E-Muse has used this website for hotels all over the U.S. and Europe, and she has not been disappointed. In fact, she gleefully shares her bidding results with others online. 

Now I don't know if you are like the EconoMuse and have thought, "Who are those people who actually write on Yelp or take the time to review a recipe on Epicurious?" (Is it not enough that you must cook the recipe, but then they expect you to provide qualitative feedback? How kum-bay-yah!!). But alas, Ms. E-Muse has become one of "Them" on BetterBidding.  If you ever see input from someone named "thrillofthehunt", know it is yours truly.  And truly, she is thrilled by the hunt.  So much so that she doesn't quite get the warm and fuzzies from an equally-good deal on her other favorite travel site, Kayak.com. Even though this site rocks. It's an almost one-stop shop that lets you "search 140+ sites at once." If you need the flexibility to cancel your hotel or you are booking airfare start at Kayak, because there is no canceling your rezzies on Priceline. But if this is a true straycation, you are booking at the last minute anyways.

(BTW, Ms. E-Muse will not use Hotwire/Priceline for booking flights.  And nor should you, unless you have the flexibility of a college student back-packing around Europe. And if that's you, really you should just consider becoming a courier. It's way cheaper--as long as your "cargo" doesn't land you in a Thai prison. But we'll talk about cheap airfare in a future Traveling Light post...)

Getting the Dirt 

Now, when you solve any complex formula, as Ms. E-Muse tells her sixth-grader, you must check your work. What does that mean when searching for travel deals? Cross-reference!  

The EconoMuse never, ever books (or bids on) anything without looking it up in Tripadvisor.com. If you are a Yelper (which Ms. E-Muse is), then go ahead and Yelp. But take it with one giant grain of salt. Just a few weeks ago, they were discussing Yelp on NPR. One guy called in to say that when he worked for a hotel, the manager required employees to write fake reviews. Can you believe that? Of course you can! So remember that the Man is onto Yelp. And probably Tripadvisor as well. So please, take everything with a grain of salt, both the good and the bad, because just as there are false positives, there really are a lot of whiners out there, and they do crave the bandwidth. But if your BS detector is finely tuned, and you still have a nagging doubt about the hotel you are considering, just use the Googles and do one final cross reference. There are countless blogs and bulletin boards where you might get an untouched-by-management review. 

Now lets suppose you loved complex, scientific equations in school, you can take the EconoMuse's very-scientific formula and add even more complexity: the Class-Review Ratio. What might that be? It's actually quite simple. Go to your favorite review site, divide the number of stars in the review by the number of stars in the hotel class (assuming they use the same scale!), and violá, you get the C-R Ratio. Anything greater than one means you're getting good value for your money. And for all you mathletes out there, don't forget statistical significance. The C-R ratio won't work if the hotel only has one review.  Use your head, people. Don't rely solely on the truly obscure review sites!

Pulling it All Together: A Success Story!

Over President's Weekend, the EconoMuse took her fourth grader to visit the Carmel Mission so that he could faithfully render it into a cardboard-and-lasagna-noodle model. Since Mr. EconoMuse was headed to Europe, Ms. E-Muse was thrown a curve ball when she decided to take along the dog. Unable to use Priceline/Hotwire, she had to turn to her favorite pooch-in-tow site, Dogfriendly.com. For all you dog owners who fancy a straycation, bookmark this site. (And please, no easy jokes here about using dog and stray in the same sentence. Ms. E-Muse saw it, too, and moved on.) Now, you simply enter the city you are headed to, collect a list of dog-friendly digs, and then use old-standbys Expedia or Travelocity. This combo yielded a perfectly fine "beach resort" practically sitting in the ocean just comfortably away from the tourist traps in Monterey. 

               

For those of you keeping score at home, this is the Best Western Monterey Beach Resort. With a C-R Ratio of 1.167, it was a good value!

Another tip for straycationing? Garden View. Let's face it, straycations are not about spending the money for the Ocean View. And, yes, Garden View usually means a tree in the parking lot. This is not The Big Splurge. By taking the Garden View at the "resort" in Monterey, Ms. E-muse got a rate of $81/night. (Using the AAA discount, of course, even though the EconoMuse doesn't have a AAA card. Final tip: always ask for the AAA discount over the phone when you book the room.  They never ask to see your card at check in, even though they assure you that they will!) 

BTW, an ocean view would have doubled the cost and doubled the pet fee! The "resort" did have a nice giant lobby bar with ginormous ocean views and a roaring fire, so Ms. E-Muse and the kids hung out after dinner and enjoyed the Ocean View from the lobby and then went back to the Garden View to sleep. Woke up and enjoyed the Ocean View in the restaurant. And then off to Carmel. Not bad for $81/night. 

Mission accomplished.