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The Best And Worst of Our American Road Trip
Do not attempt these stairs after a few drinks: the Hotel Monaco Baltimore
Greetings from soggy London! After six weeks, 20 states and 7000 miles, our US road trip has finally come to an end and we are back in the city of grey. Hopefully we’ll be back to test your speed limits soon; until then, we’ll be wowing London with our awesome t-shirt collection (one for every state) and shouting “USA, USA” at every opportunity. How glad to have us back they must be.
Tags: 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.
Tags: Hotwire / W Hotels / Atlanta Hotels / Road Trip Hotels / → All Tags
How Hotwire Got Us a $259 Room at the W Atlanta for Just $95
Have we mentioned before how much we like Hotwire? Well today we’re saying again because we got a smoking deal with them the night before last.
We were passing through Georgia and instead of staying in another B&B with too-thin walls or a motel where strange men phoned our room in the middle of the night, we thought we’d get some sleep in a proper hotel in Atlanta. And seeing as W has no less than four hotels in town, we thought we’d try one out.
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Our iPod Was Stolen From Our Room at the MGM Grand
We spent a few days last week hopping between Vegas hotels that we’d booked through Hotwire. We landed the MGM Grand for our second night in Sin City, which we were very excited about. And although we got zilch in the way of upgrades and vouchers at check-in, we rather liked our room — it was a little old-looking, but it had a pretty super view of mountains and McCarran airport. We could have watched the planes coming in all day.
Unluckily for us, as it turned out, we didn’t. We went out instead. And, because we were a bit nervous of being mobbed by drunk people, just as we were going out the door, we whipped our iPod out of our purse. We’d already locked our (paltry) valuables away in our suitcase, and we didn’t have time to get the key out, so we just stuck it in the front flap of the case and ran off to watch people humping chairs at Anthony Cools’ hypnotist show at Paris.
Tags: Hotel Video Tours / HotelChatter Reviews / Hotwire / Los Angeles Hotels - Kor Hotels / → All Tags
The Avalon Beverly Hills :: Great, If You Bring Earplugs
So last week, we landed a room at the Avalon for just $118 through Hotwire (booking through the hotel direct would have set us back $270). We had high hopes of sharing the poolside with Paris Hilton and Kathy Griffin, thereby scoring our first LA celeb spot. Unfortunately, it was a Monday night, and a quiet one at that. And so, as sod’s law would have it, there were no celebs. Never mind eh? We saw Billy Zane the next day in Bar Marmont. Anyways, here’s how the rest of it went down.
Room Reaction
Lookswise, we loved the trashy-funk, motel throwback vibe of the whole hotel. The room itself was nicely underplayed – no kitschfest here, apart from the colourful bathroom, you wouldn’t know from the inside that you were in a motel-ly place – we liked the random bamboo column in the bathroom and the way the towels were rolled and racked (like the piles of baby towels posh hotels have in their bogs to dry your hands).
But after five minutes in the room, we realised that the walls were paper thin - we could hear our neighbours’ conversations as clear as if we were part of the chat. And they weren’t just bad at keeping noise out – we got a good few whiffs of how said neighbours spent their night, since we got stoned secondhand from the stench of weed filtering through into our bathroom late that night, and showered the next morning to tones of cheap deodorant (we’re hoping that was to cover the smell of weed, not actually for their pits).
Tags: Hotwire / Viva Vegas / Hotel Upgrades / → All Tags
Want Added Vegas Value? You Need Planet Hollywood
Thought our last encounter with Planet Hollywood was too good to be true? Think again – because we just spent a night there, and they were flashing the freebies like there was no tomorrow.
We booked a room on Hotwire for Wednesday night, and snapped it up for $72 (PH’s website cost would have been $99). The checker-inner commiserated with us on our late arrival – about 9.30pm, having left our hotel in LA before 1pm – and immediately, without any prompts or hints, told us he was going to make things better by upgrading us to a Resort Vista room – one step up from the basic, with things like a massive 42in TV and even massiver bath to wallow in.
Tags: Hotel Video Tours / HotelChatter Reviews / Hotwire / Los Angeles Hotels / Kor Hotels / → All Tags
Quiet In a Good Way: Inside the Chamberlain West Hollywood
So this week, needing to crash in LA for a couple of nights, we decided to let Hotwire do the choosing for us, and got hooked up with the Chamberlain for the first night, and the Avalon for the second. Review of the Avalon to come tomorrow; in the meantime, here’s what we thought of the Chamberlain.
Room Reaction
We arrived late (about 9pm) and grumpy thanks to a malfunctioning car (National, you suck), but were considerably cheered by the nice man on the front desk telling us that we’d been upgraded – not bad, considering we’d already paid $70 less than the normal rate by booking on Hotwire.
The room was huge, with a step-down living area from the bedroom, a balcony (sadly no chairs) and a TV that spun between the two. The bathroom was quite small, with a sunken bath. It was also spotless. The only problem was it felt a little dark – those of a work bent could do with an extra light or two. But then that’s always a personal grumble of ours.
Tags: Hotwire / LA Hotels / Hotel Booking Tips / Kor Hotels / → All Tags
Booking Our LA Hotels: A Hotwire Experience
So we had to book a couple of nights in LA this week. Where to start? So many hotels to choose from, so little money to afford them was the general obstacle we came up against. Being fans of Andaz London, we were up for trying out the WeHo branch, but we lacked the $196 to do that.
So we went the Hotwire route. In the hope of scoring the Andaz for less, we asked for hotels in West Hollywood, where we found a 4 star for $121. We booked it for a night, thinking we could find out which it was and come back for more if we liked it.
Tags: Deal Drop / HotelChatter Reviews / Viva Vegas / Hotwire / → All Tags
How $54 on Hotwire Turned Into a Seriously 'Suite' Upgrade
We're bringing back the Deal Drop!
Since last fall when the economy crapped out, we've been bombarded with travel and hotel deals. Reading about shockingly low prices (hello, Vegas!) and affordable packages has been great, especially since we get to share them with you dear readers.
But we're tired of hearing about deals from the hotels. We wanna know about the deals that YOU have booked yourselves. Whether you booked the deal through the hotel, Expedia, Hotwire, Priceline or even your travel agent, let us know where you got such a great deal. After all, if we were able to find half-price Christian Louboutins (or for dudes: half-price courtside tickets), we'd share our secret with you.
And just to reiterate our love of sharing, we're kicking off today's story with our recent deal at Planet Hollywood in Vegas.
Tags: Thompson Hotels / Hotwire / Getting Walked / Tips / → All Tags
Thompson Hotels Walked Us and We Liked It
We typically wait until the last minute to book our hotel rooms. Call it poor planning, a genetic pre-disposition, procrastination or absent-mindedness, but that's just what we do. So last Tuesday, we were surfing around Hotwire to find a hotel room in New York for the following night.
We took a chance on the site's blind booking process--otherwise known as hotel roulette--and after doing extensive research on BetterBidding.com, we were confident that our four-star hotel in downtown was Gild Hall. And we were right. Even though we could have booked online at the Thompson Hotels website for about $10 more, it was more fun to do the Hotwire thing.
Except when we arrived at the hotel at around 10:30pm, we were told that the hotel was full-up and that they would have to send us to a sister property. Ugh.
Tags: Room Rate Drop Watch / Andaz Hotels / Hotwire / West Hollywood Hotels / → All Tags
Andaz WeHo Now $169 a Night on Hotwire
When the old Riot Hyatt reopened as the Andaz West Hollywood (with a spiffy new interior and nightlife scene), the rates were holding steady around $295 a night. But thanks to this new deal on Hotwire, you can stay here for $169 a night during the week and $189 for a weekend. Not bad!
The restrictions are that you must book by March 31 and there are blackout dates from April 28-30 and from May 1-3. You also have to complete your stay by May 31. Use code TT083 to book.
Just out of curiosity, we checked two other famous hotels on the strip for the same night--The Mondrian and The Jennifer Aniston Hotel Sunset Tower Hotel. For the weekend of April 10-11, the Hotwire deal gave us $189 at the Andaz. The Mondrian had a standard room for $295 a night and Sunset Tower's superior queen guestroom was available for $325. So if saving money is a top priority, you know which one to book.
For a closer look at the rooms inside Andaz, check out our video here.
Tags: HotelChatter Reader Deals / Hotwire / Hotel Booking Tips / Santa Monica Hotels / → All Tags
3.5 Star Hotel in Santa Monica on Hotwire for $119 a Night
If the recent discounts at Oceana Santa Monica are still out of your price range, then you should definitely skip on over to Hotwire.
The booking site has a ton of deals for the Los Angeles area and we found a listing for a 3.5 star hotel within walking distance to the beach for $119 a night. The hotel also has a pool onsite, as well as a restaurant, a fitness center and a business center. We headed over to BetterBidding.com to sift through past Hotwire bids and results to see just what 3.5 star hotel this might be.
At first, we considered the Sheraton Delfina, but that is not really within walking distance to the beach. It's actually on a busy stretch of Pico about four long blocks away from Ocean Avenue. It could however be the The Georgian Hotel which is just across from the beach.
Well, ok. Nothing is "across from the beach" here in Santa Monica. Staying at the Georgian involves walking down to the Pier to get beach access or finding one of those stairway passages that lead you over the Pacific Coast Highway and then onto the sand.
So unless you are staying at the Loews, JW Marriott or Shutters on the Beach, every hotel in Santa Monica "on the beach" will involve a bit of a walk.
If you book this deal on Hotwire, let us know what hotel it was!
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