Hotwire.com is a search engine that deeply discounts hotels from one star up to five stars. The catch is that the hotels are disguised preventing you from knowing what hotel you are going to stay at prior to the purchase. In this post I will attempt to show you a way around this to ensure you have a reasonably good prediction of where you will end up.
First Search an Area & Select Star Rating
The first step is to navigate to the hotel search page and enter your location and dates. In my example I will use Las Vegas center strip and select five star hotels. There are only two-five star hotels available to select from. The names on Hotwire.com are “5-Star Condo in Central Strip†at $79, and “5-Star Hotel in Central Strip†at $103 per night.
Next Check BetterBidding.com for Recent Booking Experiences
Betterbidding.com is a great place where you can share your Hotwire.com and Priceline.com bidding experiences with other travelers. Navigate to the Nevada section and see what hotels are currently being sold for in the five star category. In my example of Las Vegas, there are a few hotels that have been selling for in the five star category.
So now we have a reasonable idea that the hotel in the five star category we will end up with could most likely be including the Wynn, the Venetian, or the Trump.
Next Review Hotwire listing for Hotel Identifiers
This is where it gets tricky. The main thing I look for is a cross-reference of the number of Tripadvisor.com reviews listed on the Hotwire.com hotel description page.
Trip Advisor Reviews can Narrow Down the Possibilities
The number of Tripadvisor.com reviews is almost a dead giveaway in my opinion. Tripadvisor.com is where travelers can go and post reviews about hotels. Tripadvisor.com tracks how many reviews have been recorded for a given hotel, and they are fairly unique for each hotel. Go to the Hotwire.com hotel description and view how many reviews for each hotel. In my example of Las Vegas I choose the five star central strip which has over “+1780” reviews.
As you can see it has over “+1780” reviews and now I can cross reference this on Tripadvisor.com with the suspected list of hotels I got from betterbidding.com. Voila, the Wynn hotel has 1809 reviews while the Venetian has 2011 and the Trump has only 224. This is almost a dead giveaway, and since the Hotwire.com room goes for $103 per night compared to the hotel’s website price of $159 that is a $56 savings.
Bottom Line
If you follow a few simply steps using Hotwire.com, you can save big bucks and be almost certain of the hotel you will purchase.
About The Weekly Flyer
The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
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I’m looking at a hotel on Hotwire on the South Strip, 4 stars. It says 500+ reviews. Of the two it could be (MGM and Paris) they have 3700 and 2000 reviews respectively on Tripadvisor. So I guess we can no longer ID hotels based on no. of reviews. (Unfortunately the percentage rating is the same on both hotels as well (79%).