But wait, this flies in the face of everything we've been told to believe: Adding another middleman to a transaction actually saves money. Right? AMIRIGHT?

i don't know - i'm staying in an omni tonight for $63 instead of their "best internet rate" of $179 - i think i'm happy being a chump for now.

Yea, you can have them do to me what Hotels.com and Best Western did me. Reserved a room at the Best Western on The Katy Freeway in Houston for the duration of the Offshore Technology Conference in early May (which admittedly is a busy time for hotels). I'm late getting to the hotel (around 7:30 p.m.) and the clerk tells me my reservation has been "canceled" call Hotel.com. Evidently they got the opportunity to rent the room at a higher rate.

I call Hotels.com and they tell me that they can't provide room for the night, but can provide room for the next two nights. All at the same amount I was going to pay for 3 days at the Best Western. They do make a modicum of effort to help me get a reservation at a "non-member" hotel that night. I voice a formal complaint, but it's late and I'm tired so I consent.

Returning home this I send Hotels.com an e-mail detailing the whole thing indicating I want the $130 I paid for the first nights hotel refunded as I had contracted and prepaid for three nights and got two for the same price. Of course they fail to respond. I file a charge back with the credit card and lo and behold 20 minutes later I get an e-mail from Hotels.com offering to reimburse me if I recall the charge back.

Last time I did business with either Best Western or Hotels.com

chris

@dlynch: I guess I am a chump too...got our hotels using Priceline's name your own price for our honeymoon for $35 and $40 a night when they were normally like $149 and $169 a night, respectively. Oh, and we got to stay on the preferred members floor (one of the upper floors where you have to put your room key into the elevator to even access the floor, and included with a free breakfast bar) just by signing up for their free rewards club and emailing the hotel directly to add the rewards number to our reservation.

I booked my hotel in Mumbai, India through the hotel's website. It was by far the best price. My room was less than 5000INR ($100) a night but the same room was $170 on Expedia.

I have found that for extended stays, you can sometimes get the best price by simply calling the hotel directly and negotiating.

@doobes: I still dont understand why chargebacks are effective threats. Simply send you to collections and ruin your credit, thats what my ex-employer used to do.

It's hit and miss. Sometimes you can get a better rate with .com middlemen, but from what I've found it is generally hard to get a great price on the internet in general whether it be hotels.com or the hotel's own website. They don't want to marginalized the perception of the "class" that they are in by offering anything out in the open that's cheaper or much cheaper than they post out in the open.

The one way that you do get a good rate on these websites is when you package hotels and flights together. I went and found a hotel alone for 7 nights and the rate listed on priceline.com was over $1400. Using the same hotel and adding plane tickets from Fargo to Seattle the Total of tickets and hotel rooms was $1384. The plane tickets alone were ~$600rt for the dates I wanted.

I work in the hotel industry and I don't recommend booking with these sites either.

It is so difficult for someone to change anything on one of these reservations simply because it's pre-paid for. This means if you call a hotel to change the arrival on a room you got through travelocity, the hotel can't change it because travelocity is already paid for the room on this night. THEN you get to deal with an unhappy guest who has to deal with god knows who on a 1-800 number that may or may not be helpful!

Also, when booking a room third party, if the hotel is sold out that night guess who's at the bottom of the barrel? YOU. This is why I recommend signing up for every free rewards program hotels offer. If they see you're a member they are less likely to downgrade your hotel room.

Always call the hotel directly first and see if you can't negociate a rate through the reservation desk. Most of the time they are more than happy to give discounted rates because it gets more rooms sold and no comission to worry about.

@JediJohn82: You are missing the point. Get the best online price from the third party sites, like Hotels.com, THEN call the hotel directly and tell them the price. 99 times out of 100, the hotel will meet or beat the online price AND give you a better room, AND give you someone real to talk to face to face should there be a problem.

Many times, the third party sites offer discounts when booking airfare and hotel together. Expedia even offers a good insurance that refunds you your trip cost if you need to cancel it. I've never had a problem booking with them.

There is a big difference between Expedia,Travelocity,Hotels.com and Priceline and Hotwire.

The former generally don't have better prices than some of the hotel site bargains. Hotwire & Priceline are the deep discount excess room sellers. Your going to get a dirt cheap rate at Hotwire or Priceline but you give up some flexibility in the process. I wouldn't use Hotwire or Priceline if your booking a high demand location or date. You might end up in a crappy room.

We had great success using Hotwire for a slow weekend in Chicago at a 4 star hotel that caters to business guests. We were able to get a room with a view and the room itself was perfect. Trying to do that during the week when there is a big conference probably would have resulted in fewer options.

I either go with the hotel and trying to get them to discount the room or go with Hotwire or Priceline if it is a situation where we can be more flexible.

@Davan: I think it depends on the merchant agreements... what company wants to lose a major CC like Mastercard or Visa services for being a dick company? "We only accept American Express or Discover, sorry."

(I could be VERY wrong... please correct me if I am!!)

And I've done 2 chargebacks for improper billing- Both times the company, who first refused to fix their error, called up and changed their tunes within 1 week. Maybe your employer was just THAT dick company who wasn't willing to work with their customers?

I agree with this article for BestWestern.com I've never had a problem with them when I book directly through them and they also have a really good rewards program.

However, when I can't stay at BestWestern or want a cheaper rate I use priceline. Ignore the commercials start at insanely low price. I rented a full size car for a weekend for $25 out the door for next month! Last Summer I got two rooms for 3 days in Atlanta over the weekend for only $100 a night for both rooms at a HILTON. However, I only use priceline when I don't need flexibility and am going for a rock bottom deal.

For International Travel, break out Babelfish... A lot of times countries have Tourist websites in the local language with hotel websites in the local language with MUCH MUCH MUCH lower prices then what are advertised on the English site. So once I have the lower price, I call them and book the reservation and mention that price and they have always given it to me at that price. A couple of years ago I got a 5br penthouse with washer/dryer in Budapest for $300 a week!

@Davan: Usually chargebacks work in the favor of the customer so the business is out the money, plus if a credit card company notices a business has had a lot of chargebacks against them they will cancel the merchant account with that business, so then they lose the ability to accept any of those credit cards

@Davan: depending on the situation, your ex-employer could be violating the law. in chris's example, the chargeback is successful b/c he paid for a service that wasn't rendered.

if your ex-employer is suing people for money that isn't due to him, he is in violation of the FCRA & FACTA & can be counter-sued for at least $1000/violation (plus actual losses of individuals who can prove their credit was adversely affected).

of course, if he's owed the money, he's perfectly within his rights to do what you suggest.

Well I for one use coupons on places like expedia. I have a room booked for $2/night in Vegas for 4 nights plus it comes with a $50 pre-paid visa. So I make $42 just for booking.

I also use Priceline and Hotwire extensivly

@bohemian: Yeah, agreed, including Priceline doesn't really work, because once you've gotten a firm, agreed price from Priceline, you've already booked and there's no longer an option to negotiate a lower price with the hotel directly. And it's not like you can call the hotel directly and say "Hey, I was going to bid $99 for this $299 room, and I'm sure you would have accepted it, so how's about just giving me the room for $99?"

Same thing is often true with airfare...I just bought some tickets from San Jose, CA to Portland, and it ended up being far cheaper getting tickets directly from Alaska rather than using any of the "booking agent websites". Those sites always looked better...until I got to the checkout screen and had the privilege of paying a $100+ "taxes and other fees" charge on each ticket.

I looked for about an hour, and Alaska Airlines' price ended up being the cheapest by about $80.

@dlynch: Yes, I feel your pain as I've lain in the king-sized bed of a newly-renovated Hilton twice in a recent month for the oppressive cost of $60 through Priceline. Granted, I've found the key to getting the best rates is to do this in cities with a number of large hotels and to book the day you arrive.

A few horror stores

1. Booked a hotel in Brooklyn via Travelocity. Spent a few nights there. Went to check out and they attempted to charge me. I said it was prepaid, showed the printout, they said not according to travelocity. The hotel manager tried calling Travelocity and was put on hold for over half hour. My flight time was getting near, I finally had to charge it then fight with both companies later, each saying it was the other's responsibility to refund me.

2. Booked two seats to fly on 9/14/01 via Expedia. That was the first day after 9/11 that flights were allowed again but all the airline's planes were in the wrong places, so almost all flights were canceled. US Air said I had to deal with Expedia, expedia was backed up -- understandable. They said I'd get my refund in a few weeks, then it was a few months, then finally I got a refund for ONE ticket, not two. I tried calling them again, they said they showed a refund. I said it was only for one of two tickets. I finally disputed the charge. My credit card company at first denied it saying I already got a refund. After trying to explain I bought two tickets, they finally put it through again, then denied it again saying Expedia told them I got a paper ticket (a lie, it was an e-ticket) and I had to send them it to get a refund. I gave up. Yeah, I know, but my aggravation level was through the roof.

3. I got a free night at a nice hotel when booking a flight through British Air a few months ago. I printed out the voucher I was given, arrived at the hotel, they had no record of my reservation. Fortunately they had a room and took my voucher and said they'd work it out with the travel agent. Props to the Barcelo Hotel in Oxford for handling that one with class.

*EVERYTHING* is more complicated when a third party is involved.

@doobes:

"I file a charge back with the credit card and lo and behold 20 minutes later I get an e-mail from Hotels.com offering to reimburse me if I recall the charge back."

20 minutes after the chargeback? Are you sure about that? If anything it was a complete coincidence, and more likely simply the threat of a chargeback. A merchant would NEVER receive notification from their merchant bank within 20 minutes of a chargeback being filed. It takes several days for the merchant bank to receive a chargeback from the consumer's bank.

@mac-phisto: I went back and read through and could not figure out who the "Chris" is you are referring to, but...

In Doobes's story, his chargeback would likely not have been successful if his agreement with Hotels.com indicated he had to check in by a certain time or his room would be forfeited and he would still be charged. That is why I never use the third party sites. Charge you in advance, too many terms and conditions NOT in the consumer's favor, etc. I'd rather pay a bit more have a little piece of mind if something were to happen. I am a bit of a fatalist like that :)

@weave: 4. My wife and I took her parents to Hawaii a few years back, booking the tickets very early through Expedia. Six months after we purchase the tickets, the airline cancels a connecting flight. Expedia contacts us and tells us that they would rather issue a refund than take time to get our tickets reissued with a valid connection. The problem: if we purchase tickets now (six months later), they will be ~$1,500 more than the price we originally paid.

Eventually, my wife and I call the airline directly to change the flights to make them work (which eventually culminates in going to the airport in person, a horrific experience), then contact Expedia to ask them to please, please stop "helping". Unfortunately, Expedia refuses to stop being our "agent", and after the change is made, their system still doesn't detect that we now have a valid flight. Consequently, every two weeks or so leading up to the flight, we receive an e-mail from Expedia telling us that the flight has been canceled, necessitating the obligatory phone calls to Expedia ("please leave us alone") and the airline ("are the arrangements we made still valid?").

We did end up getting the flight we wanted, but Expedia made it MUCH more difficult than it should have been.

Here in Central Florida, near Disney there is a 7% resort tax that you do not pay when you book thru the online companies.

So if the hotel has a better price on their web site, make sure it beats the National sites by at least 7% just so you break even.

I have found that here in Canada, Travelocity and Expedia will have rates that appear nearly identical to the hotel itself, but the travel sites' rates are listed in Canadian dollars which is a savings of around 20%.

Hotels are high on the fixed costs low on the variable costs. Any room left open is money that is lost. With high fixed cost businesses it's much easier to negotiate. It costs a lot of start up money for a hotel so you can haggle with them. Any business where they have a high cost to build and they are just out the money if they don't have you is likely to make a deal.

My company exclusively books through American Express. They also have the lowest rate guarantee. I usually also get exceptional treatment. I guess the difference is they're a real travel agency, and it's not a prepaid deal.

I guess this is one of those "YMMV" things, because I've booked through third-party sites for years and have never had one iota of a problem.

I also want to note that just booking through a third-party *is not* always paying in advance. It's just like making a credit card reservation with a guaranteed rate. We just booked a trip (flight + hotel) to Vegas on a third-party site, and only the plane ticket was paid for--the hotel reservation requires a credit card at check-in, because it has not been paid for.

If you name your own price, you're going to be really limited in terms of your cancellation and upgrade options--usually. We booked through Priceline once and ended up getting trapped at home in a blizzard, and Priceline simply called the hotel and canceled the reservation. Simple as that.

I just don't see any of these nasty things happening when we book through third-party sites. Oh, and I've NEVER been able to get a hotel to match prices on these sites.

every time I've used Hotels.com or Travelocity or something, they've screwed up somehow and only had me for one night and I woke up the next day to a confused other patron trying to get into my room.

@lauy: chris = doobes. if you look at the bottom of his post, he signed "chris".

i was commenting more on the practices of your ex-employer though & not so much on the chris "doobes" story.

anyway, i don't use travel sites either, but i've found that the travel industry as a whole frequently has t&c that are very anti-consumer.

my anecdote for the day:
i remember my father once reserving a room at a hotel with a credit card, asked for late check-in, called when we were about 3 hours out & had them charge us for the room b/c we were expected at 9pm & weren't getting in until 11:30pm. still, they gave away our room & charged my dad for it b/c their t&c allow them to do it.

we got a room somewhere else & my dad got his money back, but my point is the piece of mind you're referring to is often an illusion.

@JediJohn82: Priceline's different than Expedia -- Priceline is like the Big Lots where they're dumping extra inventory, and there are great bargains to be had if you're willing to abide by Priceline's terms. Expedia is just a much better way to search all hotels in the area at once; the prices are not "bargain basement."

I always use these sites to search hotels and search rates, and then go right to the hotel's site to book. (Do it for airlines, too.)

Sometimes their package deals are good, though, where you get airfare/hotel/car all at once.

@Eyebrows McGee:
Ditto, but instead of using Expedia and co., I just rely on Kayak.com as a meta search engine it saves me time and then reach out to the Hotel/Airline directly.

@bohemian: It definitely depends on what you want. My spouse and I got a dirt-cheap price on a super pricey hotel in Vegas because the room faced a construction crane - we didn't care about the view because we just needed a place to stay overnight (and really, views? in Vegas?).

@mac-phisto: Well I guess the situation is important. I can see a chargeback for an improperly billed fee or something being valid, if you can prove it. In my specific case, it was an online computer retailer, and people threatened to chargeback when we wouldnt allow them to return their computer or whatever it was they bought. We always simply said, go ahead and do a chargeback, when you hear from collections let us know if you want to fix it then. It always shut em up, I never heard of someone going through with it after that.

Obviously, if you send someone to collections and they dont even owe the money, that is a completely different barrel of monkeys. But in the above case, where he sends a chargeback, he agreed to the modification to the agreement in order to get a room. Whether or not a judge would side with him if it went further is not really whats important here. I just am surprised that companies seem to be so eager to buckle at the threat of a chargeback.

@Roclawzi: Mysteriously enough, it sometimes does. Case in point- Hong Kong. Rakuten Travel gave me lower rates than the hotel by some 30-odd percent. And the hotel had no rate-matching policy, so it was a no-brainer.

@Davan: And be subsequently dropped by Visa/MC/AmEx?

@jamar0303: *shrug* never happened to us, I dont know the truth or conditions behind this statement myself. I seriously doubt that hotels.com is in a position where visa or amex is threatening to drop them at any second, if just "One more irate customer dares to send a chargeback!! To the moon!!"

@dronnac: I do the same thing. The last two hotels and flights I booked were found through kayak and purchased directly from the hotel/airline since they were the cheapest

@bombledmonk:
I forgot to add, The 1384 included week long car rental too.

@wyleeguy: For the Asia area in particular, Rakuten Travel is a good place to start. The nice thing is they make it easy for you- the deals on the EN version of the site are just as good as the ones on the JP vesion.

@Eyebrows McGee:

That's very interesting. I was also going to post here defending Priceline. A few years ago I went to a week-long convention in Indianapolis. Through Priceline I got a roundtrip airline ticket and a week at the Courtyard Marriott (in a very nice double room with good TV). I actually didn't use the air ticket at all, as I was getting there another way. Even with the roundtrip airline ticket from the East Coast (yes, total cost of airfare plus room), my Courtyard Marriott room was nearly half the cost than if I'd reserved the hotel room directly with Marriott. That's when I became a Priceline fan.

It's YMMV thing. First thing is to compare hotel site and third-party site. I did this when I was going to LA and hotels.com offered me a better deal.

I use priceline and haven't had any bad deals. I was hooked when I once needed to book a last-minute room in Seattle during SeaFair weekend. I am a Marriott frequent-stay member, so when all the hotels in the Bellevue area I wanted were sold out on hotels.com, travelocity, and even the hotel websites, I called Marriot to see if they could hook me up. All they had to offer was a studio suite at a Residence Inn in Bellevue for the low, low, price of $279.00.

Desperate, I hopped on Priceline, never having used it before. I entered the area I wanted to stay and a price of $99.00, which was rejected. I changed the price to $109 and VOILA! I got a room. And guess what??? It was a studio suite at the SAME Residence Inn in Bellevue that Marriott wanted to charge me $279 for!

I'm now a Priceline junkie.

I have worked in the industry for 10 years: from 5 star to 2 star. I hate having to deal with Travelocity, Hotels, Carson W, Expedia, and Apple. They pay for the room with a pre-paid cc. This is an immediate cost to the hotel with a merchant fee. They charge a high commission: customer pays $69 we charge them $52. If there is a billing or cancellation problem the toll free number takes forever. It makes us look bad and aggravates the guest. If you want a cheap room call the hotel yourself: the cheapest rates are for per diem people govt, military, or extended stay.

@DarklingLena: I work in the car rental industry and everything you just said also applies. Just FYI for everyone out there nay-saying the article and giving examples of when it HAS worked for you. In my experience people lose out more often than succeed with these third party sites.

Sometimes to get the best deal you have to think outside the box (meaning outside the country). Instead of going to the traditional American sites such as Travelocity, you can go to mobissimo.com which lists international web booking sites such as venere.com. I suspect that hotels often offer rooms at a lower price to international clients possibly because they know that such clients may not be able to afford the higher prices. (That is why we end up paying more for prescriptions than residents of most other countries-the drug companies "know" that we are willing to pay the highest prices.) Although I have never had problems, I take the following precautions when booking with anybody these days:
1. I make sure I know the cancellation policy and any extra fees.
2. I never book with my regular credit card number. I generate Citi Card virtual numbers that are good for one time only and expire withing a month.
3. After a few hours of booking I call the hotel, get the name of the clerk, and make sure he or she can confirm the reservation in the hotel system.
4. I print out a copy of the reservation, write down the name of the clerk, time and date, and take it with me when I check in to make sure nobody can deny the existence of my reservation.

When i went to Blizzcon in Anaheim back in October, i REALLY wanted to stay at the Hilton because it is literary ten feet from the convention center.

The cheapest room was $260 A NIGHT!!!

i went to hotwire at the advice of other people going to the show and got the Hilton at $75 a night!

Granted hotwire doesn't tell you what hotel your staying at until after you pay them, and no refunds. So in the end it was a crap shoot and i made out like a bandit, sitting at the pool talking to other people they were shocked i payed so little.

@HawkWolf: That would be the fault of the hotel NOT the third party site. When you book a room via Expedia, Travelocity, etc. the hotel receives a fax confirming the booking. The person on the receiving end (the hotel) then must input the reservation into the reservation system. That's where your reservations are getting screwed up, the hotel employee is inputting the reservation incorrectly.

You should always call the hotel after booking a 3rd party res to make sure they received notice of your reservation & to make sure the details are correct.