Tag: Bidding Sites
View All TagsHotwire / Hilton Hotels / Bidding Sites / Beverly Hills Hotels / Los Angeles Hotels / → All Tags
Hotwire Saved Us $296 At The Beverly Hilton This Weekend
You already know that we love Hotwire long time. But we’re of the “if something’s worth saying, say it again” school, hence we’re going to tell you about our latest bargain.
We were in LA this past weekend and were in need of somewhere to stay on Saturday night. Yes, Saturday, the night before the Oscars. Yes, in LA. No, we had little chance of finding anything to suit our budget. Or so we thought.
Miraculously, Hotwire, as ever, came up with the goods. We wanted to be in Beverly Hills to increase our chances of sharing the elevator with celebs, and found a 3.5 star for $124, or a 4 star for $129. Cross-referencing with www.betterbidding.com, we worked out that the 3.5 star could either be the Andaz (yes, 3.5 stars seemed odd to us too) or the Crowne Plaza. The 4 star was almost certainly the Beverly Hilton (the only one with a tennis court and golf course on the listings). Seeing as we wanted to avoid the Groan Plaza, we plumped for 4 stars.
Hotel Booking Tips / Bidding Sites / Hotwire / HOWTO / BidFin / → All Tags
BidFin Tells You Which Hotwire Hotel Is Which Before You Buy
We had our mind on Thanksgiving Turkey which is why we screwed up the name of BidFin in the first incarnation of this post. Everything has now been corrected and all traces of BinFin have been changed. Sorry!
A few months ago we told you about a way to definitively determine which Hotwire hotel you were looking at - cracking the bidding site's opaque listings - by using a combination of TripAdvisor and forums like BetterBidding. The loophole in TripAdvisor that made the technique possible has since been closed, so it's back to just using forums and crossing your fingers. That's less than ideal.
Now a new web application dubbed BidFin is making its way through beta, promising to automatically render Hotwire transparent. The site takes your location and dates, runs them through Hotwire, and returns a result of prices plus the hotels that they match. There's a confidence level for each guess and usually it's "high confidence." Helpful!
Hotel Booking Tips / Bidding Sites / Hotwire / TripAdvisor / HOWTO / → All Tags
How To Determine Hotwire's Hidden Hotels Before You Book
Expedia Inc. has been on a bit of convergence spree recently. A few weeks ago our sister blog Jaunted reported on how the travel mega-company integrated Expedia and SeatGuru, and in the meantime they've also integrated TripAdvisor and Hotwire. That last part integration has the potential to be particuarly yummy, though not for the reasons Expedia intended (they thought customers would benefit from seeing TripAdvisor reviews on Hotwire - not so much).
Instead we're excited because the TripAdvisor/Hotwire integration may help Hotwire bidders crack the opaque site's hidden hotels. Hotwire has an interest in minimizing what a customer knows about the hotel being considered, lest they decide that they're not getting a deal and move on.
Customers have the opposite interest and try to figure out as much about the hotel as possible. The new TripAdvisor/Hotwire arrangement exposes so much data that many customers will be able to figure out exactly what hotel Hotwire is offering them, and will be able to accept or decline accordingly.
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