HotelChatter

As near as we can tell there isn't that much magic going on behind the scenes. They've compiled a database that has (a) a map of Hotwire hotels divided by region and (b) the amenities and star ratings for those hotels. The folks over at BetterBidding have been doing the same thing manually for years.

But BidFin is much slicker, much more automatic, and - because of that - much faster and confidence-inspiring. The BidFin folks also lean heavily on some sort of opaque "predictive algorithm" that they say claim takes into account past prices, but we didn't see that much evidence of number crunching. Maybe that will change as the site moves out of beta.

To take a hypothetical: let's say your mother-in-law is coming into town and you've convinced your significant other to put her in a hotel because "the house is just too small." Let's also say - again totally hypothetically - that you live in Los Angeles and need this to happen very soon. You go to BidFin and type in the appropriate city and dates:

In comes a list of offers from Hotwire:

You can see how this list emphasizes star rating, amenities, and region: that's not an accident. It's how the database is narrowing the hotels. Since Hotwire only offers one 3.5 star hotel in downtown Los Angeles with amenities "fitness center, restaurant(s), business center, [and] high-speed Internet access," BidFin confidentially tells you that you're looking at the Kyoto Grand Hotel. But there are two apparently two 4 star hotels in downtown offering "fitness Center, pool(s), restaurant(s), business center, [and] high-speed Internet access" - the Omni and the Westin Bonaventure - and the algorithm can't tell which one is going for $89.

Maybe they're genuinely indistinguishable and maybe the site is just helpfully dividing up the map like you could do yourself. Either way the site does automatically and elegantly what used to be a research and time-intensive task. A very nice, very useful niche travel application.