March 10, 2014

How to win at the Hotwire game

Hotwire is a great place to find stellar deals on flights, rental cars, and hotels.  You know, as long as you don't mind being kept in the dark about where you're staying, who you're flying with, or whose car you're driving.

But you don't have to stay entirely in the dark in order to save some moolah, at least when it comes to booking a hotel through Hotwire.  There are ways to figure out with some relative certainty what hotel you're booking before you seal the deal.  I've won at this game twice now. That makes me an expert on hacking Hotwire hotels, right?

Actually, please don't answer that.  I'd like to stay in my little warped bubble in which I am a travel hacking goddess.

But if you do find yourself hunting for a hotel on Hotwire and are hoping for a specific hotel, here's what I've done to ensure that I got the exact place I wanted.  I'll let you decide whether this is expert advice or whether I'm just lucky:

1.  Pull up the location of your choice hotel on Google Maps or equivalent.  If you use Mapquest, don't tell me because I'll make fun of you.

2.  Find the same location on the Hotwire map after searching for the locality that you want.  Various areas with Hotwire deals will be shown in green on the map.  Compare this with Google Maps, and click on the green area on the Hotwire map that covers the location of the hotel you ultimately want. Hotwire will then only list hotels in that specific area.

3.  Look up your chosen hotel's actual website and check the amenities that they offer - free wifi, a pool, free breakfast, pet friendly, etc.  Keep this open and handy.

4. Now, look up said hotel on Hotels.com, Kayak.com, or similar website.  Look at the star classification and the user ratings.  Note that Hotels.com will give classifications by the half-star, but Kayak.com only gives classifications by full-star.  So a 3.5 star hotel may show up in Kayak as either 3 or 4 stars.

4.  Go back to the Hotwire page.  The Hotwire hotels will list all the things that you looked up in #3 and #4.  The "approval rating" may be represented differently on Hotwire than on sites such as Google and Trip Advisor, but if the approval rating is at, say 95% on a hotel on Hotwire and the customer rating score on Hotels.com is 4.5/5 for your preferred place, then I'd say you're on to something. If the star ratings match up fairly well and the amenities are the same, then you're definitely hot on the trail.  If there's only one hotel in the cluster on the Hotwire map that seems to match everything you looked up on your chosen hotel, then chances are you have pinged your hotel.

5.  Book it and see if you were right!  Of course, if you were wrong, don't blame me.  I've only done this twice.  But if you are right, feel free to pat yourself on the back and buy me a drink sometime.

Good luck, and happy Hotwire-ing.


6 comments:

  1. If you want to increase the probability that you know the Hotwire hotel you're booking, check out http://biddingfortravel.yuku.com/.

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    1. How cool! I didn't know about this site. I bet this helps out a lot in dense places like NYC where hotels abound in very concentrated areas.

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  2. I've never used Hotwire to book anything - I like having control over where I'm staying and I've found great deals using other methods (hostels, VRBO, etc.) to not make it worth using Hotwire.

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    1. I prefer staying places other than hotels, myself, and I'm definitely a fan of VRBO, Airbnb, etc. But in both Hotwire cases, I was looking to stay at the exact same place as someone else that had already booked. Hence why I've only used Hotwire twice! But if it's going to be a hotel, I might as well go to the effort to save 30%.

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  3. I've managed to find the exact hotel that I wanted in NYC using a very similar method, so it definitely works, you just need to pay attention to the details.

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    1. Glad to hear it works in someplace like NYC, too!

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