Nathaniel Fried
I know what you’re thinking: “I thought this list was supposed to save me money, not cost me more!” As it turns out, we found out that extending your stay can actually save you money. How does this work?
On sites like Airbnb, you can often get discounts for stays for more than seven nights or more than one month. On one of our recent Airbnb stays in Salzburg, Austria, we received a 25% discount for booking for one week instead of six nights. Thus, it would have been cheaper to book the seven nights, even if we couldn’t stay the last day, which we did. The discounts can vary widely, but if you are staying somewhere in the 5-6 night range or in the 28-30 day range, it is worth checking whether extending your stay to a full week or a full month may actually be cheaper than your shorter stay.
Second, some cities, counties, states, and countries may charge special “transient” occupancy taxes or hotel taxes for shorter stays that are fewer than a specified number of days. This means that by extending your booking an extra night or two, you may actually avoid having to pay those occupancy taxes, costing you less money in the end.
