Hotwire Hotel: Help ID 3.5* Boston Common-Theater District

[KatiesMom]

Hi all,

I am looking to book several hotel rooms for an upcoming visit to Boston. Check in date 2/6/09, check out 2/8, two nights.

I came across something that sounds good: 3.5* in the Boston Common-Theater District, amenities include Business, Smoke Free, Hi Speed Internet, Fitness, Restaurant, Tennis Nearby. Great price at $76 a night. This doesn't match the pinned list. Any thoughts?

I am booking the rooms for my colleagues and myself for a convention we are going to at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. For weeks I saw a property matching the Park Plaza on hotwire for $93 for our dates, but this weekend it disappeared, and my company wasn't ready to commit to a number of rooms.

My company generally likes to stay in the hotel where the convention is, but for $76 I bet I could convince them to stay at the 3.5* if I can get a handle on what it might be. The convention is offering us a rate of $145 a night for the Park Plaza, so anything I can do to save the company some $$ is a very good thing. I want to keep it in the same zone as the Park Plaza so we can basically walk to the convention.

We will need more than six rooms, which is the maximum Hotwire allows us to buy. Does anyone know:

1. Can I buy six rooms with my credit card and my husband another six with the same credit card?

2. If not, I am assuming I can get two computers with the hotwire screen up at the same time and book at least 12 rooms at the same time...?

3. Is there an easier way to book a bunch of rooms? I called hotwire and they directed me to Hotels.com and Expedia...yuck.

Thanks for any help!

[AaronJB]

The difficulty with HOTWIRE and PRICELINE is one cannot have any idea what the inventory status is for a particular listing. I've seen many instances where there's only one room available on HOTWIRE, and after someone bought it, it changed to a different property. While this may not be one of those instances, my worry is that you book 6 rooms via HOTWIRE and then come back and the listing is gone because you bought out the HOTWIRE inventory for those dates for that property.

I'm a little surprised that HOTWIRE referred you to Hotels.com or Expedia.com (although I guess those are also owned by the same company....so....)

I can find the Boston Park Plaza Hotel for $104.25 for these dates via a Starwood special - not too much more than the HOTWIRE rate you saw.

[AaronJB]

You could use HOTWIRE, but you would have to be prepared for the possibility you'd have to select a different hotel after booking the first six rooms. Additionally, my other worry is that if you tried to buy two sets of rooms at once, you may get a message (ex: "This listing is no longer available") for one of the purchases.

[KatiesMom]

Those are some good points Aaron... I am going to check and see what the best rate is I can get from the Park Plaza.

I also now suspect the 3.5* property is the Radisson....it's the only thing that fits.

[ras67]

the radisson is very close to the park plaza, pretty sure its walking distance of only a block or two...

also, i believe you should be able to get a better deal at park plaza using search engines over the internet as they tend to have pretty low prices these days for some reason, but of course thats just for my own search experience and i have been checking out rates for the week before, not feb.

[KatiesMom]

My company decided they really wanted to stay at the Park Plaza, the convention site, so after compiling the best rates I could (the hotel is offering a buy one night get one night free promo as well as a 15% off if you are from New England promo, as two examples) I was able to haggle with the the hotel and get a rate of $105 a night. This is $40 a night less than the convention rate we would have ordinarily paid.

Personally, I would have been fine with the Radisson.... C'est la vie.

As a side note: To anyone staying at the Park Plaza, they have a block of rooms that are ultra ultra small.....Make sure you don't get one of the so-called "Economy Rooms," unless you don't mind a tiny shoebox. The hotel does have many nice rooms, particularly on the higher floors. According to the reservationist, the hotel also now features the Westin Heavenly Bed...which is, well... heavenly.