You know those convenient 800-numbers that every hotel chain has to connect you to their centralized reservation centers? Ditch 'em. The people in a call center in Omaha don't have the power to manipulate a particular hotel's inventory the way managers who are on-site do. Instead, figure out the hotel you want to stay at and call it directly. If you're still out of luck, consider a reseller's Web site.

Hotels, like airlines, overbook reservations because they know that not everyone is going to show up. But some of their inventory goes to third-party travel sites like Expedia, Hotels.com and Travelocity, which contract with hotels ahead of time to sell a preset block of rooms.

Last August, I was looking for a room in Chicago in October (I was running in a marathon). I searched several sites, and at Quikbook .com I found a room at Kimpton's Hotel Allegro - it turned out to be 11/2 miles from the starting line. Even better, the Quikbook rate ($184 a night) was $20 cheaper than the hotel's group rate, which was no longer being offered.