Room Key Gets Us A Room With a View –On a Moment’s Notice

We opened the front door to the house and the boys raced inside. After a long drive, they needed to stretch their legs. Our friend’s vacant, waiting-for-new-renters house was available for us to stay. We were attending a party in the area and just needed a place to crash for the night. We packed sleeping bags and looked forward to “camping” in his house with the comforts of electricity and running water in his home.

We tried the lights in the house. There were no lights. We turned on the faucets. No water. Our friend thought the transfer of the water and electricity had happened without interruption of service, but it hadn’t. There was no water or electricity in the house. This wasn’t going to work for us. We were four hours away from home with no place to stay. We sat on the front porch with our mifi and laptop looking for a hotel room in the area. This was not an expense we expected, we needed a hotel as soon as possible and as close as possible since the party started within two hours. We didn’t have a lot of time, money, or resources. We were in the middle of Los Angeles and felt lost.

Finding a room with RoomKey.com

I searched RoomKey.com to see how this service could help. I’d heard about Room Key when I attended BlogHer back in August. I knew it allowed users to search for the best rates from six top hotel chains (Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, Wyndham, Choice Hotels, and InterContinental) and I knew I trusted these properties. It seemed like a useful service, I just hadn’t anticipated needing it this soon and under these circumstances.

In synch with how our luck was going that day, we couldn’t get a strong signal and loaded ourselves back into the car to search for better reception. As we drove and finally got more than one bar of service, I directed my husband to the party’s destination while simultaneously searching Room Key for a room. If we couldn’t find a place quickly enough, we would just attend the party and worry about where we could stay afterwards.  Needless to say, this was pretty stressful. If I had used any other travel booking site, I would have been overwhelmed with the choices and felt a strong desire to do further research. Since Room Key is already using hotel properties with great reputations, I didn’t spend valuable time reading reviews. I searched based on price and location and booked a room.

Checking in

Twenty minutes later, I was standing in front of the hotel desk in the lobby of the Marriott in downtown Los Angeles, waiting to check in. The lobby was beautiful, our boys were ecstatic to get to stay in such a fabulous place, and I was relieved I’d booked it so easily. I requested a floor as high up as possible since our boys love to look out at a view. We made our way to the eighteenth floor, got cleaned up quickly and arrived fifteen minutes early to the party.

If it hadn’t been for the ease and reliability of Room Key, I never could have made such a quick decision for a place to stay. When I checked out, I mentioned to the manager that I used Room Key. He checked my room rate and let me know I had gotten the best rate that was available from the hotel for that night. Great news!

I don’t know if I could have gotten a lower rate with another travel booking site I’ve used in the past and it didn’t matter. I got more than what I needed: a great room, in a beautiful hotel, with plenty of room for my family, at a great rate, while using a minimum amount of time in the booking process. I’ll definitely be using Room Key in the future – even if the circumstances don’t call for such a quick decision and our friend has running water.

When Eileen Calandro isn’t taking her family on poorly-planned weekend adventures that turn out better than she could hope, she is the Chief Mom Connector of Mom Central.  You can connect with her on twitter at @MomCentralChat.

Eileen Calandro