Finding The Actual Hotel Name On Hotwire.com Before Purchase
This is a follow-up to my 5-Step Guide to Finding The Lowest Rate For Hotel Rooms, which includes tips on using “opaque” sites like Hotwire.com and Priceline.com to save on hotel rooms.
Specifically, I’ll show you how to greatly improve your guess as to which hotel you’re actually bidding on Hotwire.com before pulling out your credit card. This was initially inspired by a helpful comment by reader Nasty N8, but I expanded and altered his advice a bit.
Finding The Hidden Hotel
When you run a search for hotels on Hotwire, you only get the price, star rating, and the general neighborhood. For example, here’s a search result for hotels near the Orlando airport (MCO) on 12/20/09.
Hotwire Participating Hotels
I see that I can get a 4-star hotel near MCO for $56+taxes. But which one? How do I know if it is any good? Using the Hotwire Hotel List for Florida at BetterBidding.com, I scroll down to the Orlando MCO section and see two listings: Hyatt Regency Orlando Airport and Renaissance Orlando Hotel Airport (Marriott). Again, this list is not 100% accurate, but it does provide a shortcut possibility and also another data point for later (see scenic route).
TripAdvisor Clues
I click on the red box “Continue” to see the total with taxes per night ($69.45), and also learn more details about the actual hotel. If I scroll down I see some information from TripAdvisor.com:
With this information, I can usually reverse engineer the specific hotel from the TripAdvisor (TA) site. There are three points of interest here:
- Tripadvisor Traveler Rating (Out of 5). Based on customer reviews, this is an average rating of quality. Sometimes they won’t match up perfectly (i.e. TA will show 3.5, but Hotwire will round up to 4), but most of the time they will.
- Number of reviews. This will not be exact, but instead be rounded off to the nearest 20. So if TA has 35 reviews, then Hotwire will say 20+. If TA has 41, then Hotwire will show 40+.
- Date of last review. Simply look at the date of the first review you see on TA, and compare with this date.
Mix-n-Match
Let’s go back to the initial hotel list. Here are the Tripadvisor pages for the Hyatt Regency (4.5 dots, 163 reviews, last on Aug 2009) and the Renaissance Hotel (4 dots, 57 reviews, last on Aug 2009). Remember, 57 is the same as 40+.
We see here that the most likely hotel is the Renaissance Orlando Hotel, with all factors matching. At Expedia.com, this hotel would have cost $112 per night with taxes on the exact same day. By doing a little legwork, you could secure a savings of over $42 per night (38%).
The Scenic Route
If you did not find a match, then the hotel may not be updated on the list yet. Here, you’ll have to run a search on Tripadvisor. Use the “Hotels” tab and act as if you want to book a hotel, using your travel dates and everything. Do not just use the search box. Now, the left sidebar will have a ton of options to narrow down your search results. Again, use your region, your Tripadvisor rating, and also the star class rating. (Note: The hotel class “star” rating by Tripadvisor will sometimes vary from the ratings from Hotwire, so you might allow one star difference either way.)
Here is a nice screenshot that shows how I narrowed it down to 6 hotels. As you can see, the only hotel left that matches the Tripadvisor stats is… again the Renaissance Orlando Hotel!
You can also do this down the line with all the different Hotwire search results. Now that you can figure out the actual hotels, you might feel that $50 a night at a 3-star Holiday Inn is better than $100 at at 4-star Hyatt. Happy hotel hunting!
Find more in Frugal Living, Travel | 8/18/09, 4:50pm | Trackback
August 18th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Why sleep in a hotel? Just use your van.
August 18th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Have you heard of betterbidding.com? For both Hotwire and Priceline, you can look up the likely hotels based on city/area, star rating, and amenities. If there happen to be multiple matches, you can also see what others have recently booked to see what’s most likely.
I’ve used it twice – the first hotel was what I thought it would be, the second one I guessed wrong, but it was one of the ones listed.
August 18th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Sorry, totall missed the mention of using bb as a starting point in the first paragraph!
August 18th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
This is cool. Thanks!
August 18th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
This is cool. Thanks!
Oh, and lol Joe
August 18th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Great detective work! I hope Hotwire doesn’t see this and obscure the number of reviews and the last review date. Both Hotwire and TripAdvisor are owned by Expedia.
August 19th, 2009 at 6:59 am
I just tried to use this method last weekend when we went to Hershey, PA. But it was confusing because hotwire listed the hotel as 3.5 stars, and Tripadvisor said it was 4 stars (after I booked it, I checked). I checked before I booked and thought I knew the hotel, but the actual one was even better. I was suprised, but it was actually really, really nice and unbelievably cheap.
August 19th, 2009 at 8:39 am
I would highly recommend http://biddingfortravel.com/ This site is kept very up-to-date and can be used for hotels, flights and etc (although i only ever use priceline for hotels). It is set up as a forum where the moderators keep lists of hotels in each area plus users key in what rates they are having accepted when they bid.
An example…. Click on ‘Florida – Orlando/Walt Disney World’ under US Hotels >> The first link is ‘ORLANDO HOTEL LIST ‘ >> when you scroll down about 1/2 way you will see ‘Orlando Airport (MCO) ‘ and under the ’3 star’ hotel list you will see ‘Holiday Inn’, ‘Renaissance’, ‘Courtyard’ and ‘Hyatt’. These are the hotels known to be classified as 3 star by Priceline in this zone.
>> Hit the back button and you can see recent winners in the MCO area
There is a definite strategy to priceline bidding in order to work the system, get free-re-bids and bid many many times for the same hotel by changing inconsequential criteria (such as bidding on a 4* and adding a zone that does not have a 4* hotel). This is a long read but it can all be found here: http://biddingfortravel.yuku.c.....ic/id/2560
It’s a fun, competitive and frugal way to travel. Enjoy!
August 20th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I used to work in a hotel, and would suggest one more thing–call the hotel you’re going to be booked at and ask what their best rate for the nights you’ll be staying are. Only a small percentage of our customers ended up paying less than what we would have charged for a direct reservation. This especially applies if your reservation is in the middle of the week, in the off season, or would be eligible for a AAA or AARP discount. Most guests assumed they were getting a deal, and did no further research.
August 20th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Useful, thanks!
August 24th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Just used this to book a hotel room for a night.
Expedia Price: $101
Hotels.com Price: $102
Hotwire Price: $53
yep… 50% off.
Not bad. Only downside, its for work, so they save the money, not me. Keeps the boss happy at least.
August 25th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
[...] Stuff This site shows you how to figure out what hotel you are being offered to stay at when using Hotwire.com. [...]
August 26th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Remember that even when you locate the hotel – or think you have – that the hotels themselves really do not prefer Hotwire bookings. They are just to fill up a small number of vacant rooms that the hotel feels are more than they will get from walk-ins. What this means to you is that the hotel is selling the room really cheap because they do not receive all of the rate that you pay. With that in mind, when you book through Hotwire, you will likely receive the worst room in the place. Smallest, near the elevator, maybe on a freeway side of the hotel where the noise is the worst. They will book you into that “worst” room and then hold any better rooms for the walk-ins.
August 29th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Thanks for your useful information. I’m going on a trip to Canada and using this info to book a hotel. However, I think Hotwire just obscured the number of reviews. It was available a few days ago, but now I can’t find it.
August 29th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Yup, I agree with kj – I just tried to follow your instructions, and Hotwire no longer shows the number of reviews from TripAdvisor.
However, BetterBidding and BiddingForTravel both still work to identify 80% of the hotels out there.
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Hotwire has elimated the # of reviews on the TRIPADVISOR rating
February 8th, 2010 at 2:08 am
I tried to use the advice you give regarding the discovery of the name of a hotwire hotel. One suggestion was to see the Tripadvisor
rating and the date of the last review but checked it out and see that Hotwire no longer includes the Tripadvisor rating and the date of last review but has a rating based on the customers feedback. So how can I proceed to know the name of the anonymous hotels listed???
April 24th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
I found a website that makes this whole process much easier to do http://www.hotwirerevealed.com , simply go to hotwire.com and find a hotel, then go to the website and you should be able to find and identify that hotwire hotel in a few seconds. Hope this helps some people.
June 30th, 2010 at 9:39 am
All of these third party bookers are owned by Barry Diller. Just call the hotel and book. They will give you the best rate. When you book through a third partyyou get the worst rooms. Just tell the clerk on the phone waht you are doing and they will give you the best rate.
Only once in a while will you get anything more than what the Hotel will give you. If you do get it. What is your time worth?
February 20th, 2011 at 8:35 am
A good site for helping you figure out the best Hotwire deals is http://www.bidgoggles.com
You flag the amenities that the deal has and it computes the matches.
A little easier than forum searching.
March 21st, 2011 at 9:31 am
I just reserve the room direct from the hotel website. I am a member of 3 hotel chain clubs, and you build up points for every night you stay. I have been getting pretty good rates from Best Western. I got a room with a king size bed and a jet tub for 55 dollars a night. That is from reserving off of their website.
July 5th, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Ummm no way you get just as good of a deal directly from the hotel as you do from hotwire. I recently called the hotel i knew was the hotwire hotel, just to check-the walk in rate, it was 97 dollars (not bad for a hotel on the beach), but 5 minutes later i booked through hotwire for 49. I think if you book through one of these opaque sites during holidays or busy seasons you might get an inferior room, but i had a very decent room, and i paid half of what the others paid..well worth it to me. If you have certain expectations it might not be for you.
July 23rd, 2011 at 4:33 pm
http://5thingshotwirewonttellyou.blog.com/
The above tips were learned through a first time purchase made through Hotwire on 07/20/2011 Confirmation # 5090426857. Customer service refused to consider that I was given less than what I paid for even though they saw the complaints and lower star ratings on Obitz, Hotel.com and Expedia. I hope my experiences with Hotwire Hot Rates® will help someone else shop smart. Happy Traveling!
May 11th, 2012 at 12:32 pm
I recently phoned the call center for Expedia. I specifically wanted to know if I booked one of their 4 star unpublished rate hotels in the Huntington Beach area, would it be one of the 4 star hotels that WAS published on their site. The answer was NO. Expedia lists three 4-star hotels in Huntington, yet if I were to book the unpublished rate, a mystery 4-star would appear out of nowhere! I’ve searched other sites and only three 4-star hotels exist in this area!??? Needless to say, I”m not going with Expedia.