We were leaving on the Friday before Christmas from NYC. To make sure we didn’t miss the ship’s departure, we followed the online advice to arrive the day before departure. While NYC is only a 3-4 hour drive from Boston, we didn’t want to risk traffic, snow, or other delays the morning the ship was leaving. The plan would be to drive down the night before and stay overnight in NYC. Worst case, we could still come down Friday morning, but arriving the previous night would hopefully make for a less stressful departure day.
We were still racing to get to our 50 nights with Marriott by the end of the year, so I looked for the cheapest Marriott property I could find near LaGuardia where we have stayed before.. I focused on refundable AAA rates first as they are often the best rates. Since I was planning several months out I could always rebook if rates went down.
I ended up booking a refundable AAA rate at a Fairfield Inn near my inlaws for about $120 for the night.
Cyber Monday
You don’t normally associate Black Friday and Cyber Monday with travel deals, but I found a deal through Ebates.com for 12% back on a stay booked through Marriott.com. This last part is important. If you book a hotel stay through a site other than the chain’s own website you may not get any benefits associated with your status level and more importantly for us, those nights might not count towards our 50 for the year.
Since Ebates was offering the cash back on Marriott.com bookings, we WOULD be booking directly through the site. Reading the fine print, and from experience, AAA rates normally do not qualify for cash back from Ebates.com so I would have to book one of the other rates.
Since we were less than a month away from the trip, I was confident we were going to stay, so non-refundable rates were in play. I found a rate at a different Fairfield Inn near LaGuardia that was around $100 for the night and I would get 12% cash back from Ebates after the stay was completed.
The $100 rate itself was pretty spectacular for NYC and potentially bringing the effective rate under $90 was even better!
Tomatico Travels 
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