Has anyone tried the hotwire unnamed hotels?

I am a loyal customer of hotwire since 2007. Always worth the money!

Check out betterbidding.com if you have more questions about Hotwire unnamed hotels or Priceline's Name Your Own Price. It is a website/forum entirely devoted to posting what people bid or paid for hotels.

I actually prefer Priceline's Name Your Own Price. You can normally get a little bit better price.

Both Hotwire and Priceline are GREAT if you just want to be in a city/area and don't care what specific hotel you are at.

As stated, betterbidding is where you should head to. I've always used hotwire for the one night stays when I don't really care where I'm staying. They've almost always been cheaper and are great when its late and you just need to pull over and sleep when driving.

Quote from gusamo : I'm taking the family to Florida this year for vacation. We are stopping in new Orleans and staying the night on the way down. Ive been looking for hotel deals on hotwire and they are offering deals on hotels that are unnamed. You learn which hotel after it is booked. Right now they have a 4 1/2 star hotel for $91/night. Has anyone tried these deals, I don't want to get ripped off.

Hotwire is fine with the deals but be careful if you are site/location sensitive.

Quote from jennifer121 : Hotwire is fine with the deals but be careful if you are site/location sensitive.

Site location only matters in case you are a bit scary.

Both Hotwire and Priceline are some of the best places to get the best deals on hotels. To ensure you don't end up in a questionable hotel, simply restrict your search on Hotwire to 4-stars and above and no lower than 3 1/2-stars on Priceline.

Quote from gusamo : I'm taking the family to Florida this year for vacation. We are stopping in new Orleans and staying the night on the way down. Ive been looking for hotel deals on hotwire and they are offering deals on hotels that are unnamed. You learn which hotel after it is booked. Right now they have a 4 1/2 star hotel for $91/night. Has anyone tried these deals, I don't want to get ripped off.

Hahaha...............mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmyeah, I think a few folks have heard of Hotwire before. That's like asking, "Has anyone ever heard of Ebay beore? It's this site where you bid on items like an auction . . . "

Hotwire is on the same plane as any other major travel site -- Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc.......it's not exactly a new site. If fact, they are owned by Expedia and have been around for 12 years. That's EONS on the Internet. Seriously -- do we all remember the year 2000? How many online sites were we all buying from back then? Talk about a throwback!

Anyway -- back to the meat of the matter -- I've checked stuff on betterbidding before -- but with a little examination, you can almost always figure out which hotel it is before you book it. You have to look at the amenities and match those up with the amenities listed on hotels of a similar star level from Expedia and Priceline. Nine times out of ten, there is that one amenity that Hotwire Hotel X has that only one 4.5 star hotel seems to have. Their prices are usually the best -- but not so ridiculously low that you can't figure out which hotel it probably is.

Also check out Priceline's new Express Deals. They have deals just like Hotwire that you don't name your own price on -- they give you the price and amenities and star level without the hotel name the same as Hotwire. Recently, I needed a hotel for a night in a small city where the options were kind of limited (and I was looking to stay as cheaply as possible without staying at a fleabag motel). The cheapest 2-star questionable places were around $66 on all the major sites. Priceline had an Express deal that was a 3-star for $42. I looked at the amenities and figured out which hotel it was -- there was only one hotel in the area with both a swimming pool and a restaurant on-site. The hotel was directly across from the entrance of a major public university, so I knew it would be decent enough. The lowest price I could find for that hotel elsewhere was $71. I booked it through the Priceline Express deal for $42 and sure enough it was exactly the hotel I expected. I can almost always narrow it down.

In New Orleans, you should probably be able to narrow down which 4.5-star hotel it is since there aren't that many. Then you can decide whether or not you're willing to pay $91 for that place. You can also try naming-your-own-price at Priceline at like $75-80 for the night just to see if you can do better -- but then you definitely won't know what you'll get until you book it (unless you spend some time researching on BetterBidding -- then you might be able to reasonably predict it).

Best of luck.

Quote from gusamo : I'm taking the family to Florida this year for vacation. We are stopping in new Orleans and staying the night on the way down. Ive been looking for hotel deals on hotwire and they are offering deals on hotels that are unnamed. You learn which hotel after it is booked. Right now they have a 4 1/2 star hotel for $91/night. Has anyone tried these deals, I don't want to get ripped off.

Hotwire [hotwire.com] doesn't add those fees but the hotels usually add very high daily BS fees like'resort fees', etc.
They add these fees regardless of whether you booked by HW or directly.
Thus HW total hotel daily rate is not very accurate.