djs

5/4 for 2 nights $119 ($276.72 after taxes/fees). Booked this yesterday, turned out to be Hilton Financial District. Amenities are: Fitness Center, Dining, Business Center, High Speed Internet and Spa). Cheapest (and non-refundable) rate on Hilton's site for same days would have been slighly over $400. Today it looks like the same hotel is $114 per night. Could I have done better on PL? Possibly, but I've had good luck with Hotwire before and I was fairly confident this was the hotel I was going to wind up with and I figured the price Hotwire was charging was a fair price.

A little research can often help identify which hotel you will be booked into. A couple of years ago I was searching for a hotel in Denver and one of the reviews on Hotwire's site for this hotel (which was still unknown) said that they gave the guest a pet goldfish for the weekend. It didn't take long to go to Google and search "botique hotel denver goldfish" and come up with the name of the hotel (Hotel Monaco). That one was pretty much a slam dunk. Today I booked a 4* in San Francisco and again was quite confident (after doing some on-line searching) that I knew the hotel (Hilton Financial District). In both cases the rates were significantly lower than the lowest rate offered on each hotel's website. I did notice shortly after I booked the Denver hotel that the review regarding the pet goldfish had been removed. I imagine the hotel found out about it and told Hotwire that it was too easy to identify them with that reference.