{"id":41232,"date":"2023-05-25T04:31:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T11:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=41232"},"modified":"2023-05-23T16:33:42","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T23:33:42","slug":"murky-turkey-negotiating-hotel-prices-free-stays-at-wyndham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/murky-turkey-negotiating-hotel-prices-free-stays-at-wyndham\/","title":{"rendered":"Murky Turkey\/Negotiating Hotel Prices\/Free Stays at Wyndham"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/geni.us\/cbjyU?utm_campaign=Nomadico&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=Revue%20newsletter\" target=\"_blank\"><em>A Better Life for Half the Price<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>The World\u2019s Cheapest Destinations<\/em>. See\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/nomadico.substack.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">past editions here,<\/a>\u00a0where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Still Murky in Turkey<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Will the country of Turkey (Turkiye) continue down its current spiral or turn things around? That\u2019s still up in the air as neither presidential candidate got above 50% in this month\u2019s election and a run-off is coming. With the prospect of Erdogan remaining in office a possibility, the&nbsp;<em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>&nbsp;reported that \u201cInvestors are betting the lira will lose another half of its value in the next year\u201d with no change in leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>News Flash: It\u2019s Not the Nomads Driving Up Housing Prices<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019re an editor trying to formulate a good clickbait article, tying rising housing prices to the remote work trend seems to be a sure bet. But it turns out&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/mexiconewsdaily.com\/real-estate\/mexicos-housing-prices-up-nearly-12-over-last-year\/\">housing prices in Mexico went up 11.7% last year<\/a>&nbsp;and many markets that increased the most had nary a nomad in sight. (In case you\u2019re wondering, the average price of a home in Mexico is $90,850.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>In-Person Hotel Prices<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\u2019t do this often, but when I do it almost always works: negotiating hotel prices in person instead of booking in advance. This week while road-tripping around Greece we showed up in one remote town and immediately paid 90 euros for a waterfront hotel instead of the online price of 110 (including breakfast for two) by asking in person for a room. In the end, the owners probably still came out ahead because they avoided the high fees charged by the likes of Expedia and Booking. This works best with 1) family hotels, 2) outside of high season, and 3) checking in late in the day. Paying cash can sometimes help too\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>A Simple Hotel Credit Card<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve got a few different hotel credit cards I use to stack up free nights and get upgrades. One of them you don\u2019t hear about much offers a great payoff without complications: the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wyndhamrewardsvisa.com\/referafriend?referrid=8f798afc-da9d-44af-a672-7c21e77c85c0\">Wyndham Rewards card<\/a>\u00a0from Barclays. There\u2019s a $0 annual fee version that gives you 45K sign-up points and a $75 fee one that gives you 75K points and Platinum status. Wyndham only has 3 redemption levels, the highest being 30K for a free night, so no complicated charts or changing levels for cashing in. And no foreign transaction fees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nomadico issue #53<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2385],"tags":[2386],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41233,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41232\/revisions\/41233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}