Philip Stoev

Sometimes lastminutetravel.com would say the name of the "secret" hotel right there in the hotel description, for example

Hit this on the first try, with no tricks. Boils down to about 50 EUR/night with taxes. The hotel's own promotions were 110 EUR at best and HOTWIRE had only a single property at $110. Reviews say that it is an older hotel, more like 3* or 4* , which explains the price.

Do a Hotwire seach for Madrid, Spain from Jul 14 to Jul 19th. You get 12 offers with roughly the same pricing category and star rating, and 7 of them, including the top 2 , are from Hotels.com.

This is counterproductive for HOTWIRE, since it shows that Hotels.com has fares in the same ballpark as HOTWIRE, which can be refundable or not, but always give you the name of the hotel in advance.

Same hotel seems to go for $56 at HOTWIRE (minus taxes, charges and fees, which are $48.83 for a 3-day stay).

This is after Priceline refused to cough up anything in that range. Hotwire reported savings of 12%, however the actual savings are about 5 euro. How lame! First time ever neither site delivered a straight 50% discount! Amenities: Restaurant(s) Business Center

I was successfully able to bid for a room at 7pm in Madrid, Spain. Note however that the later you arrive, the higher the chance you will get a smoking or otherwise problematic room and the lower the chance you will be able to refute their "you were the last to arrive" argument.

First tired on PRICELINE, had to check both Vienna Center and South and both 5 and 4 stars, but still got bids rejected at $90 and $95. Note that the icons for Le Meridien appear to have changed. It is now Fitness Center, Restaurant(s), Business Center, High-speed Internet Access Rack rate for this hotel is in excess of EUR230.