Why Hotwire prices sometime change during the day

[Garfield]

Most of the time I see the same hotel (same area and amenities) change price for the same period of booking if you look at it in the morning, afternoon and night. Why is that?

[thereuare]

Hotwire works on a variable profit margin and that is the reason for the minor ($1-$10) price changes.

[Garfield]

So there is no rhyme or reason as to when it would be cheapest, morning, afternoon or night to book? We usually book hotels in the $40-60 range, so even a $5 change would make a difference.

I see on various forums that people say that Priceline is much better than Hotwire. One reason is that people say sometimes Hotwire price are actually higher than on the hotel's web site. This maybe the case for booking hotels on Hotwire that are over $100, but I find that when we book our hotels ($40-60 range), we usually get very good deals, at least half off what people are walking in off the street are getting.

[thereuare]

Nope!

Some people have said that mornings are cheapest while others have said that evenings are better; still others claim mid-afternoon... i've yet to see any pattern.

[hotwirecsr]

At hotwire we vary the price slightly to increase our opacity.

[starlite]

:) When I did my search today for a hotel in Cabo on Hotwire, I had not logged into my account information. I came up with a 5 * at 106.00, so I picked it, got the rate total with the confirmation and then clicked on the area for "my account". This reran my search and came back with the same property at 116.00!!!. I called Hotwire and was told that the rate can change that quickly and there was nothing they could do. Later today, I had someone else run the new search as a newbie user by logging in via a search engine like Google. She also came up with the 106.00 rate. When I logged in with my hotwire id, it came back with 116.00 again! So tonght, I cleared my cookies, history and files and logged in via google. The rate came in as 106.00, so I clicked it, comfirmed and continued as if a new account. It recognized my email, so it took my password. At least I got the lower rate. Made me feel as if being a loyal user was a detriment.

[thereuare]

This is nothing new, but the rate could have just as easily have been lower instead of higher.

Besides this thread (where i merged your post into) you can also see this thread:

HOTWIRE PRICES

[starlite]

It was upsetting to have picked the property, viewed the totals (not just the 1st screen, but the area where you are submitting the confirmation) and then have the item rerouted with my account ID and and get a price increase of 10.00 a night within a 5-10 second time frame. As someone said earlier, it is as if Hotwire penalizes its return customers.

[thereuare]

I understand your frustration, but the rate could have just as easily gone down instead of up. Hotwire takes room rates and adds a random mark-up to them in order to increase opacity.

Unfortunately, Hotwire treats each surfer as unique (keeping track of them by either user name or 'guest' status). The price difference between your two searches (logged-in and logged-out) is attributable to you being treated as a different user once you logged-in, and Hotwire starting the search over again for what they perceive to be a 'unique user'. Since the mark-up they add to the roomrate is a random percentage, the rate could have gone up or down. I'm not saying this is the best way for their system to work, but perhaps this explains things a bit.

If you haven't done so already please add the amenities to your HOTWIRE CABO SAN LUCAS post. <thanks>