It seems like the more we travel, the longer we wait to finish booking many of the important details of our trips…

Our final trip of 2014 is fast approaching. While we booked our flights in early October, we hadn’t done much else in terms of finishing off booking any of the other details.

Kim and I have been looking at hotel options for a few weeks now but hadn’t found anything worth jumping to book. However, with the trip getting closer, hotel options have been dwindling away.

My initial plan was to use my $500 Expedia Voucher that I won in a Twitter chat back in August but then a new potential option presented itself to me the other day.

I came across a tweet from travel photographer and blogger Kirsten Alana about an upcoming promotion from Orbitz on Friday.

In the promo, Orbitz would be offering $100 off bookings of $100 or more for paying with Visa Checkout. Other details were hard to come by but I looked further into it and found out some of the terms.

Bookings could be made starting December 1 but it didn’t state what time the code would be active or how many codes were available.

I now shifted gears to find an acceptable hotel which was bookable with the $100 off code but… I didn’t know if or when I’d actually be able to book it. With December 1 being a work day, I couldn’t just sit around waiting to book hotels.

A couple of days later I came across some more details about the promo from blog Miles To Memories.

I attempted to book rooms starting on December 1 at midnight and 1:00 AM and then gave up until morning. I again tried to use it around 7:00 AM with no luck.

It turned out that the deal would go live at 11:00 AM EST which is not a very good time for me to try to book any hotel deals!

However, with the potential savings out there I had to give it a try.

For our late December trip we’ll need a hotel for 5 nights.

I found a room for $113.33 which seemed like a good option for our trip and the promo. The code worked without a hitch and here is what the price came to.

The room went for $113.33 + tax for a total of $135.16. With the generous Visa Checkout promo code our cost came to $35.16 for the night.

I then went on to book 4 more nights, one by one. This gave me a huge savings of $500.

Had we paid the full price for the room, I would’ve been looking at $675.80 for 5 nights. Instead we’re paying $175.80!

Best of all, if we decide to change our plans, the rooms can be  cancelled up until a day before we arrive.

This has to be up there as one of the most awesome hotel promos in recent years!

It’s just too bad that the promo codes ran out so fast. When I stopped home from work, I attempted to book a room for a trip in early 2015 without any luck…

Here’s to saving $500!!!

If you took part in the Orbitz Visa Checkout promo, let us know how much you saved.