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Priceline Launches an iPhone App That We May Actually Use

October 30, 2009 at 1:28 PM | by juliana | 0 Comments

It's no secret that we love the bargain rates you can get on opaque booking sites like Hotwire and Priceline, even if it occasionally means a repeated stay at a hotel with flippant service. It's also no secret that we have been thoroughly disappointed with the iPhone apps that hotels put forth, with most of them not doing much beyond offering a mobile reservations site.

But Priceline's new Hotel Negotiator iPhone app is one that we may actually use. And it's not just because we want William Shatner on our iPhone.

Again, nothing totally new has been invented here. Basically, it's the Negotiator booking function on your iPhone. But the app does have GPS location allowing you to name your price at a hotel that's closest to your current location. It also displays the most recent average winning bid for the last three weeks for hotels in different neighborhoods at different star levels. And it's got a cool "fist bump" icon for when you want to Negotiate with Shatner.

Then again, we take our opaque booking process VERY seriously and we'd need to be able to cross-check sites like BetterBidding.com to see which hotel we might be booking. We love a good deal alright but we also like to know which hotel we'll be shacking up in.

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Travelocity Now Offering Hotel Guests a Price Guarantee

October 28, 2009 at 9:10 AM | by juliana | 0 Comments

The economy may not be feeling back to its old self, but there is more good news for hotel guests looking to get a better deal.

Travelocity announced today that it would not only eliminate change and cancel fees for hotels and vacation packages and offer guests a special $50 discount for travel but that it would also offer a price guarantee, something that other online travel booking sites have yet to do.

A price guarantee is a common feature found on hotel's websites which allow guests who find a lower room rate elsewhere to receive that lower rate instead of whatever the hotel is offering. It's a nifty little way for guests to sort of negotiate with hotels to get a better rate. For hotels, it keeps guests booking directly through their site, rather than with a third-party booking site, with whom they usually have to split a sort of commission.

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Want to Score a Deal at Getaroom.com? Pick Up Your Phone

July 8, 2009 at 11:38 AM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

Today, the founders of Hotels.com launched a brand new discount hotel booking site to go up against the opaque booking sites (the Hotwires and Pricelines) of the 'net — except this site is sort of not so opaque at all. Getaroom.com (ha! That's like what you shout to your big sister and her boyfriend when they're making out under the bleachers) offers travelers "the benefits of opaque pricing without being kept in the dark about where they will be sleeping."

It promises the same sort of discounts as opaque booking sites like Hotwire (where you don't know which hotel you'll be staying in until your credit card gets charged for your rezzie), but it touts itself as a wallet-friendly competitor in three ways:

· Everyday Savings. Getaroom.com provides discounts up to 50 percent off regular rates.
· Special Non-published Rates. Registered clients booking accommodations via the getaroom.com Dallas-based call center 800-HOTELS-8 (800-468-3578) can receive additional savings at select hotels with getaroom.com's special non-published rates. Offered at most properties, the discounts are an additional 10 percent to 50 percent in savings.
· Deals of the Day. Select properties are featured daily in the Deals of the Day program enabling travelers to save an additional 15 percent to 40 percent off their accommodations compared to internet rates offered by other websites.

Naturally, we surfed over to the site, grabbed our phone and put it to the test.

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Booking NYC Hotel Rooms Online Might Be Getting a Bit Pricier

June 29, 2009 at 2:54 PM | by Jenna | 3 Comments

Uh-oh. We're pretty sure lots of online hotel booking sites are going to have something to say about this: according to WNYC, New York City's Mayor Bloomberg "will sign a bill into law today that should bring in a lot of additional tax revenue for the city" — that is, travel sites will now have to pay taxes on the full retail prices of the NYC hotel rooms they sell.

Per WNYC:

The city believes it's currently collecting less hotel tax than it should. That's because some travel websites pay hotel taxes based on the wholesale rate of the rooms they buy. Then, the websites charge their customers the same hotel tax on retail room rates, and pocket the difference.

A trade group representing travel web sites says the change is, quote, "exactly the wrong approach", and will result in more vacant hotel rooms.

Uh, hmmm. Yikes. We'll keep you updated as we learn more about how much this is going to affect the price you're going to be paying (if it does) — in the meantime, we suspect the travel sites are not really going to be so down with this.

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Book a Hotel Room, Bookit.com Will Give You a Blackberry

May 11, 2009 at 2:11 PM | by shiralevine | 5 Comments

Yet another incentive to travel! (Besides, well, the trip.) Bookit.com is offering a free Blackberry (or other smartphone/music phone of your choice) if you book either a flight, hotel stay, travel package or car rental.

Valued up to $349, the offer does have one of those requisite two-year service agreement contract stipulations (upgrade and renewal options too) and you have to pay the $36 activation fee as well as sign up for a plan that's a minium of $39.99. Otherwise, it really lives up to the free and easy promise. It's an instant rebate with none of those mail-in rebate shenanigans.

To book you need to complete your hotel/flight/travel booking on Bookit.com. Then click the special "Free* Phone" link and follow the steps on the phone order page to get your phone.

Note: Blackberry is included and iPhone is not included in the offer.

[Photo: LymStylez]

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Hotels.com's Memorial Day Sale is Kinda 'Meh'

May 4, 2009 at 3:18 PM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

Our sweet baby sibling VegasChatter got ahold of us (via the ol' friends and family plan) to let us know that they thought the Hotels.com Memorial Day Weekend sale that just kicked off today was kind of so-so for Las Vegas. Still, we were still enticed by the promise of "discounts of up to 50 percent off at more than 450 properties" and the additional incentive of scoring a $50 Prepaid MasterCard card if we booked a three-night stay at certain hotels, so we held onto some faith that maybe other non-Sin-City cities may prove a little more successful.

Well: nothing exciting to report in New York City (The Alex for $216 on the night of May 24th), but over in St. Louis we could snag the brand-new Moonrise Hotel for $159 (same as the opening rate) with the third night free (plus the $50 card). The Hotel Triton in San Fran is going for a "meh" $175 per night over Memorial Day weekend, but the Shangri-La Santa Monica turned up a pretty decent kickback at $214 per night for a two-night stay.

Check out the selection for yourself if you're planning a trip somewhere over Memorial Day Weekend. To book through the Hotels.com sale, you must book by May 25 for travel between May 21 and May 27. Also, the prepaid Mastercard is for guests who book three nights or more for travel through September 15. However, again, all travel must be booked by May 25 — and that Mastercard doesn't get into your hands until four to six weeks after your stay.

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If You Consider The Soho House For $625 To Be a Good Deal...

April 28, 2009 at 5:10 PM | by juliana | 2 Comments

...then you'll like this new deal feature from Tablet Hotels.

We've always loved the selection of hotels offered via Tablet Hotels, and we were excited to peruse their newest Last Minute options in hopes of scoring "exclusive access to rock-bottom rates only available for the next 7-14 days."

We first started off with NYC and found that Gild Hall had rooms for as low as $129 this Sunday. That's great news! But rooms at The Soho House were going for $625 for tomorrow and Thursday night, down from $950. Not good news at all.

The last-minute options on Tablet were only available for a handful of properties across eight cities: Buenos Aires, Florence, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, Washington DC and Miami. The cool thing is you can see what the rates will be like for the next 7-14 days, a tool not usually found on other booking sites. Now if only some of those prices could come down.

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'Hotelicopter' is Actually a New Hotel Search Engine. Oh.

April 8, 2009 at 3:54 PM | by Jenna | 1 Comment

Okay. So. The Hotelicopter — which, in its originally-marketed form, was touted as the "world's first flying hotel" — was initially an April Fool's Hoax. We called it out, and our suspicions were confirmed when the whole thing was outed as a joke — but something curious happened. The images used in the prank were lifted from Yotel's website, and someone at Yotel sort of made it sound like the whole thing was a Yotel marketing campaign when they spoke to some journalists — when in reality, while it generated plenty of publicity for Yotel, Hotelicopter was actually a totally separate company that had just used Yotel's cooperation in this viral marketing campaign. Got it?

So Hotelicopter — the real company called Hotelicopter, who had devised this whole flying-hotel joke to generate buzz and drag the word "hotelicopter" onto our screens — actually launched today.

And guess what it is? Oh, it's a hotel booking site. Kind of anti-climactic since it's, you know, not really as cool as a flying hotel, but we still think it was an absolutely brilliant way to launch.

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CheapOair.com Launches New Hotel Booking Tools

September 15, 2008 at 11:28 AM | by juliana | 0 Comments

Despite its focus on cheap air tickets, CheapOair.com allows travelers to book hotels rooms on their site. And now, CheapOair has just launched a new way for travelers to do their comparison hotel shopping.

Going to hotels.cheapoair.com will give customers the chance to search up to 500 hotels on one page without having to do any extra clicking or backing and forthing.

CheapOair Hotels gives customers two ways to view results: the Qwik view, a unique display that allows hundreds of hotels to be viewed and compared at once and a standard list view.  For each hotel, consumers see all details displayed in one window, including photos, price, star rating and address instead of taking the customer to new pages, adding more ease and speed.

If you're looking based on price alone, then the Qwik view is the best "view" for you. If you want to see a little more about the property, then switch to the "List View" tab to get detailed information.

All the hotel deals listed on CheapOair.com are all protected by the site's rate guarantee. Overall, the site has 85,000 hotel rooms in inventory worldwide.

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Online Travel Companies Under Pressure To Pay Up Owed Taxes

July 24, 2008 at 10:30 AM | by juliana | 0 Comments

We've posted before on how several online travel agencies are in hot water with local municipalities over hotel room taxes and it looks like the tug-of-war will be going on for a while.

Several towns and counties have complained that online travel agencies like Expedia, Hotels.com and Travelocity have pocketed hotel room taxes which rightfully belong to the city or county that the hotel is located in.

You know what those taxes are like. You see them on your check-out bill and it usually is listed as a state or city tax or both. For instance, we just checked out of a hotel in NYC and were docked with a NY state tax, an NYC city tax and an occupancy tax, totaling about $45.

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NewYorkology Gets a Family Suite in Prague

July 3, 2008 at 8:56 AM | by juliana | 0 Comments

Everything worked out for our girl Amy at yesterday as we and she knew it would. Tablet Hotels was able to get her into a family suite at the Alchymist Grand Hotel, after her initial hotel missed its opening date.

Here's what is inside a family suite :

These two level Rooms are the ideal combination of two deluxe rooms, especially for families. The Family Rooms feature a two separated bedrooms with one queen size bed and two twin beds on the upper level.

Each bedroom has air-conditioning, LCD TV with premium channels, DVD and CD player, safe, mini-bar and high speed internet access. Family Rooms have two separate bathrooms, one with shower corner only and one with a shower, bath-tub and bidet. The size is 60 square meters or 650 square feet."

Awwww, that's the kind of happy ending we like to see!

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Alchymist Residence Nosticova in Prague Misses Opening Date; Leaves NewYorkology A Little Frazzled

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: Nosticova 1, Prague, Czech Republic, 118 00
July 2, 2008 at 3:22 PM | by juliana | 0 Comments

Our good friend Amy over at NewYorkology wrote to us this morning to share some nerve-wracking, last-minute, unplanned changes to her travel plans to Prague.

It turns out the Alchymist Residence Nosticova has not completed its reconstruction, despite taking reservations on its website as recently as a week ago.

Since Amy booked through Tablet Hotels, the boutique hotel booking site is doing their best to relocate her. However, such a change the day before she's due to take off has not made for easy pre-trip organization.

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