Hotwire Hotel: "$XXX on other sites" Number

[AmandaNJoey]

I am confused about this piece of the puzzle. It seems like it should be a helpful tool, but it threw me off on my first booking, so I'm trying to understand it better before I make the same mistake again. It seems to me that, according to their disclaimer on their crossed out price, the number listed should be consistent across all hotels in the same area with the same star rating. According to the Hotwire legal text, this number is explained as:

*Savings based on median published rate we've found on leading retail travel sites in the last 24-48 hours for the same neighborhood, star rating, and stay dates.

But as the attached photo shows, two North Strip Area hotels rated 5 stars have completely different "on other sites" figures. To my untrained eye, this smacks of hinting to customers that option two would result in The Venetian/Palazzo (listed at 174 on many other sites) while option one might be another property (haven't run across this exact number so not sure about that one.) It seems like 174 is a strangely specific number to happen to be the median for all 5*s in the North Strip Area. I don't mean to suggest Hotwire is purposely employing trickery, but this rings inconsistent to me. What am I missing?

[AaronJB]

The "retail" number is not a reliable indicator; it is an "average" of comparable hotels in the same area for the same date/s.

Thank you for using the board's HOTWIRE or PRICELINE links to start your purchases and searches.

[Roadguy]

I'll guess that one set is WITH Casino, the other withOUT. The averages are for which set they are in

[AmandaNJoey]

Thanks, the casino/lack thereof makes sense. I understand that it's not a reliable indicator of what hotel you'd be getting, but it's a confusing number to be showing up differently all over the place.

[thereuare]

Thank you for using the board's HOTWIRE or PRICELINE links to start your purchases and searches.

2x

Please click the requested links above and reply to this thread if you wan to continues this discussion.

Thanks.