Hotwire Hotels Revealed

I was in a pinch. I was traveling to LA for the weekend and (as often happens) I had left it to the last minute to book my hotel. I checked Expedia and everything half decent was out of my price range. My thoughts turned to Hotwire where a 4-star downtown hotel was being offered for $80. Now most people would probably snap this deal up without thinking twice, but I’m a little funny when it comes to hotel standards, and I’m also very cautious when it comes to spending money. Everybody knows that if something looks too good to be true it probably is!

What if there was a way to find out which hotel Hotwire was offering? Well, there isn’t any way to guarantee the hotel, but there is a way to sometimes get an educated guess. When you select a hotel on Hotwire, in addition to the price and star rating, Hotwire also provides a list of icons or hotel amenities offered by the hotel. It will also sometimes provide a traveler rating on Tripadvisor. Armed with this information you can visit a travel forum, and read what hotels other travelers were given that matched the star rating and hotel amenity list. For example here is the Hotwire Hotel list for California from betterbidding.com. If you scroll down to “Los Angeles (Downtown)” you can see that there are three 4-star hotels listed. When travelers buy a hotel on hotwire they report back which hotel they were given. You can try and match the star rating and the amenity list of the hotel you are considering, to see if it matches a hotel that somebody was previously given. The lists are far from complete and subject to constant change, so there is no way to guarantee which hotel you will get. But, if you are looking to save money and would like a better idea of what sort of hotel customers have previously “won”, these hotel lists are invaluable to your Hotwire shopping experience.