Journey vs. Destination

The nice lady at the AAA office (there will be a whole post about AAA at some point, promise), anyway, the nice lady at the AAA office said that one of the things she learned about being a booking agent was that for a trip like ours, we’d do best to find a hotel chain we like and stick with it, possibly pre-booking nights across the country, chaining them up. Then if we get behind, we can call the head office and all the nights can move in unison.

Huh, well, huh. I am a planner. I like plans. Most of my plans include at least A through G so it is not only about the plan, but also the failure modes and the backup plans. I build much of my career around being able to this sort of deep planning.

But I was planning (ahem!) to make this trip a little more spontaneous. I was thinking to whittle away time in the car by looking up yelp reviews in the next city, maybe going through a discount hotel site (travelocity or priceline) to get good deals. And if we end up without a hotel for the night we can just drive a little extra.

The exceptions were to be Boston’s and Washington DC’s multi night stays. And Flagstaff since that is the first night and C wanted to stay at Little America, a neat place he stayed with his parents (the last time he did a cross country trip).

But this idea of linking them all up has appeal. We’d get more uniformity. But we’d lose the possibility of finding the niftiest bed and breakfast or an amazing resort we’d only afford because they were relatively empty.

So in Boston, we are staying at a Best Western because it met the location and price quotient. But I don’t know if Best Westerns are the hotel of choice. What about Hampton Inn? La Quinta? Marriott? I know we’ve stayed in these. I do remember getting confused by one (two?) Hampton Inn, forgetting which city I was in once on a blur of a business trip with multiple stops.

The smallest place we are staying is Wells, NV. They have a Best Western but not a whole lot else. Oh, and BW has free internet. And a twitter account that seems active, like maybe they care. And just like that a decision is made. I think we’ll still make a point to have a few open nights but now we’ll have a default. We’ll call this a strong plan B. Or maybe a plan BW (hey, at least I amuse myself!).

(Goes away, makes a call….)

Huh, well, let’s just file that plan in the little round can. I called the main reservation line but all Best Westerns are individually owned. The reservation-taker could make reservations for me but she couldn’t line them up, it wouldn’t be any different than if I did it all myself online, no special discounts and any changes would require me to call them all individually. And they have a 24 hour cancellation policy which is tough if we get caught up on the road, probably better to just book it when we get nearby and are sure about where we want to stay.

Even so, I started to go ahead until she asked where in Oklahoma City we wanted to stay. I have no idea. We’d like to stay somewhere near the freeway, where we can walk to multiple restaurants and the Whole Foods. Oh, and something scenic nearby would be great, where it would be safe for walking on my own (in the morning). Apparently those criteria were not in her computer. Ahh… well, I think we are going to go back to the original plan, by which I mean the non-plan plan.