Luxe Hotels, Low Prices
With the hotel business booming, great deals on upscale rooms are harder to come by -- but not if you know where to look.
From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, March 2005
Booking abroad
If you're traveling overseas, you'll need to follow a slightly different method for booking hotel rooms. First, use your favorite travel guide to identify hotels in neighborhoods where you plan to stay. We've been pleased with the ratings for hotels at TripAdvisor.com.
Then start your search for deals by looking for those hotels at your favorite online travel agency. Unlike U.S. hotels, overseas hotels often don't offer the best deals on their own Web sites. It's still wise to check with the hotels directly, however. And be sure to contact the hotel by e-mail or fax because it's important to have written confirmation of your reservation when dealing with hotels overseas.
If you use an overseas Web site, be cautious. Natalie Lundsteen, an American living in Oxford, England, narrowly avoided being tricked. When she recently tried to book four nights at the Villa della Fonte hotel in downtown Rome using what she thought was the hotel's own Web site, the site claimed that her requested dates weren't available and suggested another hotel. She phoned the Villa della Fonte directly, and the owner said that not only were rooms available but they were about $13 less than the Web site's quote.
If you'd like to try saving money by booking blind, Hotwire has begun selling hotel rooms in London, Paris, Rome and other major European cities. Priceline also offers rooms in major European cities. But, again, the sites do not reveal hotel names before you buy.
--Research: Amy Esbenshade Hebert
Hotel-booking bookmarks: Little-known Web sites
Groople helps groups get away at great rates by booking rooms (and other travel products) in bulk. It stands out from other booking services, which typically limit the number of rooms you can book at once. Expedia restricts you to three rooms, for example, and Orbitz allows only two. Travelocity uses Groople to book reservations of five or more rooms.
Luxury Link offers discounted prices on stays at upscale hotels and resorts. A recent example: three nights for two at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. The best price at www.pgaresort.com was $1,119, but Luxury Link had it for $629. The site also offers many packages weekly by online auction. You can hunt by destination and travel month. One downside to all of the deals at Luxury Link is that you must be flexible about your travel dates -- which you pick from a limited range after you pay.
Quikbook covers only about 1,000 hotels, mostly upscale, in 74 cities. Using Quikbook became easier in 2004 with the introduction of a "search by neighborhood" option. Another perk: Any deal that you must prepay is marked "Prepay" on first sight. For example, a $195 room at San Francisco's Campton Place was recently marked "Pay When You Stay," instead of "Prepay." Travelocity.com offered the same room for $250, and it did not clearly say upfront that you had to prepay to book its rate.
Sidestep baldly rips off the rates offered on most of the sites you might otherwise visit (plus dozens more) and automatically lists them from lowest to highest. Copycat Web sites, such as Kayak, Mobissimo and Qixo, also turn up deals, but they search fewer sources.
TripAdvisor is the best site we've found for reviewing and rating hotels. The site traffics in reviews from travel professionals, such as Fodor's, and ordinary customers. It also lets you find rates at specific hotels by searching many online agencies simultaneously. Plus, travelers use its message boards to swap tips on countries from Albania to Zimbabwe.