# Hotels through Hotwire



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

I booked a trip to San Diego, and Hotwire again brought me a fantastic hotel at an amazing price. Here is the procedure I used and this method has served me well over the years so I'm sharing:

1. Check hotels.com. If checking US hotels, make sure it's in CAD currency as I've often found the same hotels _significantly_ cheaper when in Canadian mode. i.e. even accounting for forex, sometimes cheaper deals show up when in CAD mode. (Tourism incentives? I have no idea but I once saved 30% on a week-long stay... again this is after adjusting for FX conversion). I narrowed down the selection and found the best/cheapest option was 4 nights at a hotel that cost a total of 645 CAD after all fees. So this is my baseline number... I know I can get a good hotel for *$645 all in*.

2. Check hotwire.com. For the same region and same days, I quickly found the most attractive option (3 stars, 95% recommended) that comes to 506 CAD all in. It's important to compare total prices, because fees and mark-ups vary. So now I know there's a mystery hotel of good quality at *$506*.

3. Try Priceline bid. I always give this a shot, because sometimes you get a cheaper price than Hotwire. In my experience it's rare to get more than 10% cheaper than Hotwire, so these days I don't bother much with Priceline (it's a lot of work for very little payoff). I pulled up the region and some surrounding regions on Priceline, and made a few bids ranging from 3 stars to 3.5 stars. Again looking at total price, I bid as high as *$450*. None of the bids were accepted. I won't bid higher because with Priceline, _you can get surprised with parking or wifi fees after the fact_... since you are NOT assured of free parking or free wifi, Priceline's results can creep up. So at $450 I'm already at the edge of what's worth bidding, since with Hotwire ($56 more) I know I get free wifi and free parking.

Since Priceline didn't give anything cheaper, I went back to Hotwire and purchased the $506 option.

It turned out to be the same hotel that came up in step 1. This means I just saved $139 versus Hotels.com, or -22% discount versus an already discounted/promo price. Not only that, but I've been to this hotel before and it's a really good one with free breakfast.

This is why I love Hotwire! It works great in certain cities and I've had success in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Seattle, San Diego, Las Vegas. It _does not_ work in Portland.


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## Spudd (Oct 11, 2011)

Thanks for this! Great tips, I will definitely be keeping this in mind for future trips.


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

james4beach said:


> This is why I love Hotwire! It works great in certain cities and I've had success in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Seattle, San Diego, Las Vegas. It _does not_ work in Portland.


I agree with your conclusion. I have also used Hotwire in Strasbourg France and Frankfurt Germany. In each case I got the hotel I would have used anyway. I had a bad experience with hotels.com in Dubrovnik and a great experience with booking.com in Pula.

I have never tried Priceline but now I might.


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

Off topic but go here for sushi happy hour:

http://www.roppongiusa.com/

Best food happy hour on the planet.

This one is quite good too:

http://www.crabcatcher.com/happy-hour


I've been having crap luck with cheap hotels lately. Maybe I'm just going to popular places?


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Thanks for the sushi tip!



> I have never tried Priceline but now I might.


Just be aware of the total cost of a purchase and don't get caught up on the "daily rate" of a hotel. Different web sites sprinkle in different fees so the only apples-to-apples comparison is the total cost after all taxes and fees.

Before booking anything on Hotwire, it's worth a shot with Priceline. Just make sure you bid lower than Hotwire otherwise there's no point to it. It's been a few years since Priceline has worked for me (last time they actually beat Hotwire's price was nearly two years ago) but at times it worked, Priceline gave me very nice hotels at the 3 star and higher level.


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## fraser (May 15, 2010)

We use Hotwire and Priceline (bidding). Just got a Hotwire hotel in Paris for early October. We have had very good success with Priceline bidding in Florida and in some European cities. We refer to bidding.com and betterbidding.com for assistance and help with property identification.


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## Sherlock (Apr 18, 2010)

This requires knowing which town you will stay in advance, correct?

I sometimes take overnight motorcycle trips but do not know which town I will spend the night in (how many kms I can do in a day depends on how tired I get), so would this method still save money?

Let's say it's evening and I find myself in Thunder Bay and decide I want to spend the night there. Can I look up a hotel on my phone and use hotwire to book a room at a discount? Or would that not work because they require you to book it several days in advance in order to get the discount?


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

I booked a hotel in Vegas while taking the skytrain in using my iphone. Easy.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

I booked a hotel the day before without issue. I imagine you could do same-day as well, but the rates may become less favourable and inventory might be limited.


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## fraser (May 15, 2010)

My understanding is that you can bid up until 6PM of the same day. It might have changed.

We have booked on the road. Stopped for coffee at Starbucks one afternoon and snagged a great Priceline bid on a hotel in Chicago for that evening.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

I have booked same-day stays on Hotwire and Priceline. In fact, I had a memorable experience in London England where Priceline literally saved my butt. I walked around visiting hotels in person, there was no availability anywhere. Prices on standard web sites was sky high, Hotwire had nothing. Then I found a nice Holiday Inn at Kensington @ $200/night. Hardly a bargain, but cheaper than other options in a sold-out city.

By the way, I've had better luck with Hotwire & Priceline in US and Canada. Not so much in Europe. In Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, the best is WOTIF.COM and BOOKING.COM


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## fraser (May 15, 2010)

We have had very good success with Priceline bidding for London and Paris at least three times in both cities. We found it especially good for Heathrow, Gatwick, and CDG one night stays prior to an early flight. We have a winning bid for a 4 star in Paris on the first weekend in Oct that we bid two months ago. Only every had success in Italy (Milan) one but it was a great win. 

We used wotif.com a few times in Australia. We also got a great last minute rate in Sydney, Australia through laterooms.com.


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## PrairieGal (Apr 2, 2011)

I have used Hotwire and Priceline many times in the past with good to excellent results. Just be aware that bookings are non-refundable.


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## lh0628 (Dec 17, 2013)

PrairieGal said:


> I have used Hotwire and Priceline many times in the past with good to excellent results. Just be aware that bookings are non-refundable.


This.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Non refundable is not as bad as it sounds, but you have to be strategic.

A usual strategy -- which I follow -- is to make a placeholder reservation of the typical, refundable type. Then when you become confident the trip is happening, use Hotwire and get a better price. With about 90% likelihood you will find a better deal on Hotwire, and then you'll cancel your original reservation.

Also don't get too freaked out about nonrefundable bookings. Unforeseen problems will come up, but this is such a low probability event that you will still (net) save money with Hotwire, even though you may once in a while forfeit and waste a booking.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Aha, a Priceline success tonight (this hasn't happened to me in a while). I was trying to book a US hotel at the 3 star level. The cheapest that Hotwire had available was $97 a night (= $120 total) which was really disappointing. It wasn't even cheaper than a regular hotel booking.

I went to Priceline and started bidding a few days ago, again for 3 stars. I worked my bid up from $60 up until $68 (= $90 total)

At $68 Priceline said that if I increase my bid by $13, I'll get it. This is a ploy they sometimes use. I rejected the advice and increased the bid by only $2, putting me at a $70 bid.

And sucess, a very nice Hilton Garden Inn that I stayed at before and loved. Funny enough, the price tag came in lower than their pre-computed total, and the final screen says $87 total.

In this situation, Hotwire did not show any meaningful discount (in fact you could do a regular expedia/hotels.com booking at that same price), but Priceline worked ... it was 28% cheaper than Hotwire.

Gosh I love those two web sites. _Writing this from a Hotwire-won hotel in California... this 3 star hotel cost 79 USD/night before taxes & fees... regular rate $138/night_


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## Sherlock (Apr 18, 2010)

I wonder how airbnb is affecting priceline/hotwire.


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