No Advance Reservations? No Problem, in Some Cases

Here’s a piece of advice I wouldn’t have given last year: When it comes to hotel reservations, you shouldn’t always book today what you can put off until tomorrow.

Yes, I know, this violates the standard prescription that travelers should line up all of their flights and lodgings well in advance. And in these boom times of high occupancy rates and steep prices, it probably seems especially perverse. So let me first say that advance reservations are absolutely the best policy in many cases--any trip to San Francisco or New York, for instance, most journeys to distant resorts, and just about any trip with a young child. After all, the nationwide hotel occupancy rate is about 70%, and the vast majority of those lodgers book in advance.

At Hilton Hotels and Resorts, where most guests are business and upscale leisure travelers who plan well ahead, vice president John Luke estimates that just 2% to 3% of guests are walk-up bookings. (At more affordable chains, the number of walk-ups is generally greater.)

But if you’re heading for a second-tier sort of destination, or going on weekday nights to an area without many business travelers, or traveling in a season of reduced demand, you might consider the wait-and-see approach. European tourists routinely travel this way. Americans seem to do so in smaller numbers, but after hearing one too many gleefully told tales of improvisational triumph (perhaps readers of this column have one or two?), I decided to test the waters too.

Abandoning my usual reservation-making, I made a couple of trips this summer without rooms lined up. It was wonderful.

The travels: a road trip along the Mississippi River and a loop through Northern California--places that get their share of summer tourism, but not a full-fledged flood. The result: The trips were livelier, my itineraries could bend to accommodate discoveries and disappointments, and on both journeys, spontaneity was greatly magnified. Room-hunting probably took 30 to 60 minutes from each day at about 5 p.m., but I was on the road to explore anyway. Also, I think it was cheaper.

A few cases in point:

* On a road trip down the Mississippi, it begins to look like my wife and I will need a New Orleans hotel room on the night of July 7. That morning, we ask advice from our innkeeper in St. Francisville, who the night before rented us a spectacular room, normally $135, for $95. He mentions the Richelieu Hotel on Chartres Street in the French Quarter (brochure rates: $95 to $150) because it’s cheap and has free parking, a great rarity in that part of town. We call, and a few hours later roll into our free parking space, stroll past the swimming pool and ride the elevator up to a room that costs just $90--an excellent bargain in the conventioneer-fueled New Orleans lodging market.

* A month later, I’ve just rolled into Ferndale, the Victorian village in Northern California, and stepped up to the snazziest B&B; in town, the Gingerbread Mansion. It’s nearly 8 p.m. on a weekday night, and they have one room available. The brochure says it goes for $140. The innkeeper offers $130, and I hesitate, saying I love the room but didn’t want to spend that much. She excuses herself and returns a moment later with a new price: $100. Done.

* Humboldt County again, a few days later. It’s a little past 7 p.m., and I’ve just turned up at a handsome Arcata B&B; in a Victorian building--but they’re full up. So I call the Eureka Inn, grandest hotel in the county, with bold Tudor design and a history dating back to 1922. Yes, they have rooms, the voice says, at $110 per night. Arriving, I mention the auto club, which shaves the rate to $97. Then I ask, winking, if there’s anything else I should mention. Perhaps, a little bird tells me, I should mention that I’m traveling on business. Ahem. Why, yes, of course I’m traveling on business. I give a company name (nobody even asks to see a business card), and behold, the price of my $110 room is now $78.

No one should do this blindly. In both cases, I had a rental car with a back seat littered with auto club directories, regional guidebooks and pamphlets from local visitors’ bureaus.

And there’s bound to be some bad luck with the good. The tap water in the Greenville, Miss., Holiday Inn (about $60) was brownish, and Weaverville Hotel in Northern California ($39.50) was seriously threadbare. My friend and colleague Vani Rangachar, arriving in Puerto Rico during a week of unusually high demand, once ended up bedding down in the downstairs offices of a booked-solid San Juan hotel.

But when you book rooms on the spot, you do get to inspect the place before you pay. One July night in Quincy, Ill., we looked at three rooms in a dismal Days Inn, then fled to the far more pleasant Holiday Inn ($82) down the street.

No, reservationless travel isn’t for everybody or every destination. But it is an option that can be explored in half-doses. You can book your first night or two in a new town and fill in the following nights after arrival. This is one way to recapture a sense of serendipity. After all, that’s one of the things that travel is supposed to be about.

Reynolds travels anonymously at the newspaper’s expense, accepting no special discounts or subsidized trips. He welcomes comments and suggestions, but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053 or e-mail chris.reynolds@latimes.com.