Hey did you just accidentally StumbleUpon this or is there a strategy you can do to surface these types of wonderful gems? Love this kind of stuff!
It certainly helps to have Accor+ membership as usually you find those deeply depressed deals at the Accor+ rate. I think too part of it is about being a frequent booker. In my case, I'll spend a good chunk of a year at hotels be it for conferences, vacation or staycations. And if you do enough searching eventually you will come across these deals.
There's actually a couple things that are going on here. The first thing is of course fat fingers (i.e. someone in the revenue department keyed in the wrong room rate). This would explain finding Sofitels for $9 a night. However, a lot of this is similar to airlines. The price you pay depends on the fares (i.e. room rates) available, and the cabin of service (i.e. room type) you are booking. Generally speaking, the most basic room types will attract the lowest room rate. And of those basic room types, a certain number will be earmarked on a given night to get the discounted (read non-refundable) rate. And unlike airlines, hotels will have dozens of different room rates depending on a number of factors. First, the hotel may be running its own promotion (i.e. stay 2 nights get the third night free). Second, the chains will have their own set of rates for different customers (i.e. Accor+ Red Hot Rooms deals). Third, there are special discount codes available to different organizations. Fun fact: I used to pay $60 CAD every year for my automobile club membership in Canada, even though I'm living in Australia. The reason being is the CAA card gave me the CAA/AAA discount code which would consistently get me 10-15% off the room rate across most major chains.
There are Accor hotels in Australia which will have prices in the tens of dollars per night if you look carefully enough. And if you hold Accor Platinum status that can be quite lucrative since that gets you breakfast, welcome drink, welcome gifts, status nights towards keeping status. Then of course you got cash back and other offers you stack on top. So that $60/night at the ibis budget Sydney Olympic Park ends up costing $40.20 when you account for the 8% cash back offer from ShopBack/CashRewards, and the ibis promotion where you get $15 in Accor points for each eligible stay. And that's not accounting for the Qantas Points earned or the free hot continental breakfast either (there is a toaster in the breakfast area).
It was an accident, Accor is pretty dynamic with its pricing, making a flexi booking and keeping an eye on possibilities sometimes bears fruit
That's right, their pricing can be dynamic even hour to hour. One booking I had last month, the price they were asking was insane (i.e. $600 for a 2 night stay at a Mercure in Sydney). Checked back later in the day and it was down to a more palatable $320 for the same 2 night stay. In this case the cause of the fluctuation was that the hotel I wanted to book had no rooms available, meaning they had to charge me the guaranteed room rate (Accor guarantees for their Platinums and above that they can book into most hotels up to 3 days in advance even if they are sold out). However, someone had cold feet and that allowed me to book at a more reasonable rate.
-RooFlyer88
