Hotwire "Customer Favorite" Hotels

[BEAV]

Today I've run across two "customer favorite" hotels on Hotwire, however the link to click to read the customer comments is missing. Has anyone else noticed this? Temporary glitch or is it a new policy to no longer show the customer comments, which often aided in identifying some hotels?

[indywaiter]

Today I've run across two "customer favorite" hotels on Hotwire, however the link to click to read the customer comments is missing. Has anyone else noticed this? Temporary glitch or is it a new policy to no longer show the customer comments, which often aided in identifying some hotels?

I have noticed that as well. I am assuming that is by design. I hope they go back to the old way.

[pterrell]

I was wondering about the disappearance of the customer comments as well.

I never found them helpful in identifying a hotel, but they did give me a push to select the hotel if the price was right.

[BEAV]

I was wondering about the disappearance of the customer comments as well.

I never found them helpful in identifying a hotel, but they did give me a push to select the hotel if the price was right.

In many cities, if you happened to be familiar with key characteristics of some of the hotels, the customer favorite comments were often helpful in identifying a particular hotel. In San Francisco, for example, both the Omni and Hyatt Regency Embarcadero have identical Hotwire star rating and amenities, and both are designated as customer favorites. Only the customer favorite comments could distinguish which hotel Hotwire was selling. The Hyatt Regency is a contemporary hotel, while the Omni more traditional and old world. There would often be customer favorite comments to this effect, with people calling the Omni "ornate". The Hyatt has balconies whereas the Omni doesn't, so if you read a comment about balconies, you knew they were referring to the Hyatt. I'm sure this scenario played out in many cities, I'm just using San Francisco as an example.

If this is a permenant change by HOTWIRE no longer publishing customer favorite comments, then we have lost an effective tool in identifying many of their hotels they sell.

[djs]

Another perfect example would be the hotel I booked in Denver where the review said (among other things) that they gave the guest a pet goldfish for the duration of their stay. Google didn't take too long to come up with the hotel when I typed the words "Denver" "Hotel" and "Goldfish" into the search string.

[pterrell]

And that would be the Hotel Monaco Denver. So perhaps the folks at Hotwire did think that too much was being revealed in the customer reviews.

I hope they don't remove the Tripadvisor info for the same reason!