Hotwire Hotel: 3.5* Los Angeles (Pasadena) Westin

[rgdave]

Westin Pasadena 2 Nts. 10/29-10/31 $84. When searching, a $79 for this 3.5* with the same amenities in Pasadena (so VERY likely same hotel) came up, but when I went to book later it was $84. Soon after I booked, I went to check on a second room for a friend on his computer (who had never been to Hotwire before), and lo and behold, it came up as $79. I had my laptop with me, fired it up, and did the same search on Hotwire, and on my computer it came up as now $86!. I went back and forth between the 2 computers, with both Firefox and IE on each computer, and mine always came up as $86 and his $79. The difference? I was a regular Hotwire customer with a hotwire cookie, and he wasn't a Hotwire customer and didn't have a Hotwire cookie in his browsers. Then I searched Google about Hotwire price discrepencies, and lo and behold, there are dozens of posts about the price discrepency between different browsers and computers for the exact same searches. While Hotwire makes public denials that it charges it's regular customers more, I saw it happen --- and made screen captures. This experience really reduced Hotwire's appeal to me.

And yes, I used the Betterbidding HOTWIRE link to book. I thought that may have been the cause of the price difference. So I went and used the Better Bidding link on my friend's computer, and his computer still came up with a $7 lower price, so using the link wasn't the cause.

[AaronJB]

Congratulations on your success!

Interesting to hear about the price variation, but thankfully you were still able to get a solid deal for this property (lowest rate for these dates is $188.)

Thank you for sharing your results with the board and using the site's HOTWIRE link.

Enjoy your stay.

[thereuare]

HOTWIRE uses a variable mark-up and that is the difference between the price you're seeing between different users... it's not related to new/previoius customer, link, browser, computer, etc.

Enjoy your stay.