Pro-Tip: Get the hotel you want on Hotwire.com
Hotel prices keep going up and up. Staying in a cheap hotel and saving money was fun when you were traveling with a group of friends in your 20’s. But, now you are traveling with your family and you want a nice, safe hotel possibly with a few amenities for adults and kids without breaking the bank. This can be hard to do. We all know about the different websites out there to try and get hotel deals. Hotels.com. Travelocity. Expedia. Priceline. Hotwire. Travelzoo. That one with the weird dude in the commercials for the company with the weird name that sounds something like trip but you can never remember.
Sure, sometimes you can get some decent deals on the websites that tell you the name of the hotel and the price up front. But, it is rare. Hotwire, on the other hand, regularly has great deals on great hotels in great cities. The catch? You don’t know the exact hotel until you book the trip. You know the location, star rating, and amenities but not the exact hotel. But, what if I told you there was a way to game the system and be 99% sure which hotel they are offering? I introduce you to betterbidding.com. BetterBidding is a website that keeps a database of hotels offered on Hotwire with a description of the location, star rating, and amenities described on Hotwire. It is updated by staff and users with reported changes following bookings. There is even a forum for every city where you can go and see users reports on property descriptions on recent purchases. You can cross reference this database to the hotel you are considering booking on Hotwire to get a pretty clear idea of which hotel it is.
Let me give you an example. We are going to New Orleans for NYE weekend with another family because airfare to anywhere was crazy expensive that weekend. We couldn’t find a suitable AirBnB for two families in a nice area. So, we turned to hotels. We figured we would use some of the airfare savings and get a nice 4-5 star hotel in the central downtown area. Looking on regular websites, hotel prices were well over $300. So, I turned to Hotwire.
I started my search in New Orleans by concentrating on the Central Business District - right next to the French Quarter but far enough away from the craziness of Bourbon Street - which on Hotwire is listed as "Downtown - Superdome". Then I filtered down to 4 or 5 star hotels. There was a great deal on a 4 star hotel for $199 a night! Now, I opened another browser window and went to BetterBidding.com. I made my way to the section on New Orleans hotels and pulled up the listings for the hotels in the "Downtown Superdome" area. There are a total of 5 hotels listed under 4 star hotels in this area: Hilton, Hyatt Regency, Intercontinental, Le Pavillion, and International House Hotel.
You really can't go wrong with any of these BUT the last one is a small boutique hotel with less amenities that probably wouldn't be the perfect fit for families. All I had to do now was compare the amenities listed for the $199 unknown hotel I was considering to those listed under the different hotels on BetterBidding. I was 99% sure it was the Intercontinental and a quick visit to the user forums showed recent bookings that only further confirmed my suspicions. I booked through Hotwire (with an additional $20 savings from using a link from BetterBidding) and boom - The Intercontinental.
So, I encourage you to play around with the BetterBidding.com website to get a feel for how a little bit of research can land you some great hotel deals on Hotwire.com. Now start planning your next trip!
