timelord

I suspected this was Clarion Inn and Suites, and it was :). Hot.wire was having a one-day sale so I got that discount, too. This is a Saturday check-in for a one night stay (rates at most Atlantic City hotels are WAY higher on the weekends). Listed amenities were free parking, free breakfast, free internet, indoor pool, smoke free rooms, fitness center, pool, business center, self service laundry. Of course I booked through the HOTWIRE link on betterbidding.com. Thanks!

Fitness Center, Business Center, High-Speed Internet Access, Free Parking, Free Breakfast, Accessible path of travel, In-room accessibility, Accessible bathroom, Handicapped parking.

Looking for a Mount Laurel, NJ hotel 8/18 - 8/26, Hotwire shows 1 "best value" 3 star hotel for $58 with Fitness Center, Business Center, High-Speed Internet Access, Free Parking, Free Breakfast, and lots of accessibility features. I need 2 adults and 1 child, otherwise I'd give Priceline a try. Over the last 4 years, I've used betterbidding 3 times before and got Hyatt Place all three times. This time I thought I'd run it by the experts first to see what they thought before I booked. I guess Wingate is a possibility, but isn't that 2.5 stars?

Hyatt Place in Mount Laurel, NJ is already on your list. $54 per night, taxes and fees were $58.89 extra, for a total of $436.89. This is my second week-long trip to this hotel. Last year, the total was $478.95. Thank you betterbidding.com (oh yeah, and thank you HOTWIRE, too). Amenities were complementary breakfast, fitness center, pool, business center, and high speed internet, but this year, a sixth amenity (smoke free hotel) was added. Cheapest rate online was $94 (government rate, for which I qualify and would have accepted if not for Hotwire). Best rate on Expedia et.al. was $130. Last year, the best rate online was $152 per night. This is also a 3* hotel in PRICELINE, but Priceline has up to 8 three star hotels in Mount Laurel, making it harder to get the exact hotel you want (if that's important to you). A member in a competing forum says she got this hotel recently (spring of '09) for $40 per night. I searched for the hotel like this: searching for Bensalem, PA or Cherry Hill, NJ yielded a slightly lower rate ($2 per night less) for this hotel than did searching for Mount Laurel, NJ. Using Firefox instead of IE got $2 per night less. And using Vista instead of XP yielded $1 less per night. It's possible that Hotwire fudges the fees so that the total is about the same no matter what (I did not verify this one way or the other). See discussions on opacity elsewhere in this forum for a possible explanation of why Hotwire does this. I did use the HOTWIRE link on betterbidding.com, BUT... this hotel does not appear with the default settings (2 adults, 0 children). Without closing the Hotwire window, I clicked on the link to the Hotwire home page and changed the parameters to 2 adults, 1 child. The web page remembered all the other settings (dates, location, etc.). Then this hotel shows up. I do not know if betterbidding.com gets credit when I do this or not.

When I do a Hotwire search from the link at betterbidding.com, I get a list of hotels with prices for 2 adults. From this window, if I go back to Hotwire's home page and add a child to the search then book a room, does betterbidding.com still get credit?

There's a couple of threads from 2004 that already talk about this topic (search for "firefox" in the General Hotwire Tips forum). Bottom line is, Hotwire seems to vary the price slightly (over time, over browsers, and over the locality searched) to increase their opacity. The following is my 2 cents worth. So I got my room with Hotwire (Mount Laurel NJ, $59 at Hyatt Place, 8/17/08 - 8/24/08) using FF. Just before clicking the "Book It!" button, I started up IE and did the exact same Hotwire search to double check something (I used a different browser since FF may have set cookies). I was a little surprised to see the price at $64, and I was reasonably sure that this was the same hotel. So I went ahead and booked it at $59 per night and did the Hotwire search again in FF. It was $59. I did it again in IE. It was $64. And to throw yet another monkey wrench into it, when I searched for Mount Laurel, NJ in Hotwire, the prices were slightly higher ($62 in FF, $64 in IE). If I instead searched in Bensalem, PA, Hotwire returned (as one of many choices) what appeared to be the same hotel in Mount Laurel, NJ (it's only 12.5 miles away across the river). But the prices for the Mount Laurel hotel were less in the Bensalem search ($59 in FF, $63 in IE). This also probably has something to do with opacity. So, for a 7 night stay, I saved $35 by using FF and searching for a New Jersey hotel in Pennsylvania. I did not check the Hotwire fees to see if they were calculated differently in each case (oops; maybe I should have). Your mileage may vary.

Hyatt Place in Mount Laurel, NJ is already on your list. $59 per night, fees etc. $65.95 for a total of $478.95. Amenities were complementary breakfast, fitness center, pool, business center, and high speed internet (exactly as described elsewhere on this site). Cheapest rate online was $91 (government rate, for which I qualify and before finding this site, would get). or $152 for AAA and Senior, or $161 for pre-pay. Did not try Priceline since they have 5 hotels in the Mount Laurel area with the same star rating, and I really preferred to go to Hyatt Place (or maybe Doubletree, but not the others in the Priceline list). Note that Mount Laurel and Cherry Hill NJ are suburbs of Philadelphia, so if you're searching for these cities on Hotwire or the web, you may get more hits searching for Philadelphia.