At times, I feel like I’m beating a dead horse with a stick by saying this, but the key to this game is flexibility and diversity. You don’t need to be a millionaire or even have millions of points and miles for your travel dreams to come true, but if you’re flexible it will help you save another buck.
One of the greatest tools for our travel bank that provides us the ability to save cash as long (as we’re a little flexible) are travel consolidators. The premise behind Hotwire, Priceline, Expedia Express and other travel consolidator sites is that they make excess inventory of hotels, airlines and rental car companies available to consumers at potentially 50%+ discounts. The catch is that when you book, you don’t know which hotel, rental car or airline you’ve booked with — and your purchase is non-refundable. Additionally, if you’re a frequent traveler, you shouldn’t expect to receive any elite benefits/points towards your purchase (other than those you earn from your credit card).
If you’re completely flexible, comfortable with prepaying (no refunds!) and not loyal to any hotel, rental car or airline program, these sites make monetary sense. But I think most of us have concerns with these caveats in general. The good thing is that you can get your feet wet with an inexpensive booking and we’ll show you a few tips on how to quell the fear of “not knowing.”
For purposes here, we’ll focus on the two big programs: Priceline and Hotwire. While similar in that they won’t tell you exactly what hotel you’ll be staying at or what rental car agency you’ll be renting from, they take a fundamentally different approach to pricing. With Priceline, you bid — you define the price you’re willing to pay and Priceline approves or not. In some circumstances, you can bid again (change the category of the rental car/location for a hotel) but otherwise you have to wait a day to bid again. Hotwire, on the other hand, shows you the price and the category of rental car/stars of the hotel and you decide if the price presented is acceptable to pay.
Remember both of these sites offer great discounts, but come at the cost of not knowing exactly who you’ll actually be staying with or renting from. There are also options to use these sites for airfare, but from my perspective, not knowing what airline or what your flight times just seem like too much of a risk. Sure, they’ll guarantee no red-eyes and will limit the number of connections, but that is past my comfort level to wager.
I’ve personally used both Priceline and Hotwire for hotel rooms and rental cars. As I started traveling more for work and my flexibility lessened, the need to be able to cancel a reservation became more important. I very rarely use either site for work travel, but still do occasionally for personal travel with dates that are set in stone.
All of my experiences have luckily worked out well. I know others have had issues due to schedule changes or family emergencies and have lost out on their potential savings, but that is the risk we take here. If you want to give yourself a better idea of what to bid with priceline or what hotel you’re likely to get, you’re in luck. Priceline and Hotwire won’t tell you, but the sites BetterBidding and BiddingTraveler will tell you what you’re likely to get when going through the bidding/booking process and will even make suggestions on how much you should bid.
BetterBidding is an online forum where readers contribute what price they paid/bid for a given hotel star category and location, and what they won. The power of this site is the readers and contributors. More data points allows the site to build a database of what properties are likely to be the ones you’re bidding for. Additionally, forum contributors will help guide you through the process on what you should bid and expect to get. They have both a database for Priceline and Hotwire hotels.
BiddingTraveler focuses on Priceline and its concept of bidding. It has maps just like Priceline and guides you through what it thinks makes sense to bid for a specific region and star category. It helps take out that unknown of “am I bidding too much or too little?” While it isn’t a guarantee, it is a guide and arms us with some knowledge based on past experience.
Additionally, one of my favorite techniques is to look at the price posted on Hotwire, and knowing that both sites classify hotels about the same, I’ll use the price Hotwire has and use that as a guide for bidding on Priceline. If there’s a $120/night hotel listed on Hotwire, I would go to Priceline and maybe bid $90 or $100. Sure, it isn’t free, but another 20% off an already discounted rate might work out well for me.
An important thing to keep in mind here is that the price won’t always be the best! If you’ve got an AAA card, an Entertainment book, belong to AARP or are active duty military, you might find a better rate directly with a hotel or rental car agency. Always check those rates first. Refundable/cancelable rates mean we have flexibility, which keeps the power in our hands.
The circumstances that I’m most likely to use these sites are:
- A quick weekend getaway where I need a rental car for a day or two
- An airport hotel the night before a flight out somewhere
- Last-minute booking
So, if you’re wondering if using consolidator websites makes sense for you, ask yourself these questions:
- Do I need to be able to cancel my reservation? If you need the flexibility of cancellation, don’t even think about using these sites. The potential savings just isn’t going to be worth the heartache of knowing you may be throwing money down the drain.
- Am I okay not knowing if I’ll be staying at a Hilton, Marriott or Sheraton? Remember, if you want to give yourself a better idea, using BetterBidding and BiddingTraveler can get you close. It may not be exact, but its better than a pure crapshoot.
- Do I need a specific bed-type for my hotel reservation? The consolidators will guarantee a room for 2 adults — that is it. You can certainly ask for a specific room, but don’t bank on a room with 2 queen beds because you may end up with a single bed.
- Do I need to earn credit towards elite status? Nine out of 10 times you won’t earn any credit. I’ve heard of folks earning credit with rental cars by upgrading their car class, and with hotels by billing a charge to the room. No guarantees, but that $1 bottle of water charged to the room may pay off.
In the past couple of years we’re seeing more and more consolidator-like sites pop up. The more the merrier! Competition (while at times can make things confusing) nets us lower prices in general! Sites such as RocketMiles, PointsHound and TravelPony offer discounted rooms or ways to earn points differently! Consolidator sites are another tool that we can use to save a few bucks. They may not be your first stop when booking travel, but if you’ve got flexibility, you could very well find yourself saving hundreds.
I know both Priceline and Hotwire purchases report in the “travel” category, so if you have a card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred where you’ll earn 2 points per dollar spent this is the one to pull out for your purchase.
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Earn 50,000 bonus points when you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $625 in travel when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards® Read Review » |
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