Hotels.com---your opinion
 

Has anyone booked with hotels.com. They seem to have some good prices. I have always booked directly with hotel; have never used an online booking service. Is this one reliable?

We've used hotels.com twice; once as we were pulling into NYC on a spur-of-the-moment decision to see if we could stay over (and we did get a good rate) and once in Boston at the Meridien. They aren't the rates that you might see on the two sites where you bid for rates, but we thought they were very good.

I've used them about 4 times. The thing is that you can get a much better rate on the same places if you use bidding system on hotwire.com. You don't have to use your credit card first, as you do on priceline. AND if you are wise and the market is small where you are going- it isn't very hard to figure out which hotel you are really bidding on. I have had so much luck with hotwire that I haven't been back to hotels.com.<BR>Some people will not book unless they know the name of a hotel. Your choice, but I could never have gotten Westin-Couples Station in St. Louis for $52 a night on hotels.com. You can pick your area so closely that I have never been disappointed.

I use the bidding sites as well, but with hotels.com, I found I could get some places that weren't offered thru bidding sites. <BR><BR>We used it for the Intercontinental Barclay for our first visit to NYC last Christmas. It was a wonderful place at a great price. H.com even had a promo on at the time where you printed off a coupon and sent it in after your stay and they gave you a rebate. I sent it in just for the heck of it (I didn't think we'd get anything since the coupon didn't ask for a reservation #), but a few weeks later we rec'd a cheque!<BR><BR>Have fun on your trip.

I like to use a variety of sites when booking hotels. For my trip to Europe last month I used a variety of sites to get hotel rates - one site was Hotels.com. I did find their pricing info useful but did not book through them. The only non-bidding site I booked through was hrs.com, because sometimes you don't have to use a credit card to make a reservation through them, plus they can have good rates, too.<BR><BR>Domestically, though, I use Priceline.com if at all possible, then I go to sites like Hotels.com or Orbitz for pricing info but in the end wind up booking hotels myself directly with the hotel. If Hotels.com ever gives me a super price I can't beat anywhere else, I'll book with them; if not, why bother?<BR><BR>I've used Hotwire.com all of one time, for a friend who absolutely had to have the Embassy Suites so he could be in the same hotel as his other friends. I had booked three rooms initially through Priceline and got the Embassy Suites (Fort Lauderdale), then later, to make sure my friend would get the same hotel, with Hotwire, because you can sometimes tell which hotel it is from the listed ammenities. But Hotwire cost about $15/night more than Priceline for the same hotel, and from all the checking I've done, Priceline is usually cheaper.<BR><BR>Here's a tip: try Hotwire first, then bid lower on Priceline to see if you can get the room cheaper through them. If not, take the room via Hotwire. Remember that Hotwire tends to rate the same hotels higher than does Priceline - that is, the Embassy Suites in Fort Lauderdale is rated 3 stars by Priceline but 3.5 stars by Hotwire. A 3 star Hotwire hotel might be 2.5 stars on Priceline. This is important to remember if you try to bid one against the other.<BR><BR>Andrew<BR>

hotels.com is reliable. I've used them on several occasions and have never had any problems. The drawback with this service is that you are billed for the full amount of your stay as soon as you make the reservation. Therefore, if your stay is weeks or months away, you could be paying quite a bit of money up front. <BR><BR>hotels.com is most useful when the hotel is sold out, or is sold out of rooms at lower rates. Because hotels.com buys blocks of rooms well in advance, they may have rooms available even when a hotel's web site tells you that the hotel is sold out. To the hotel, the rooms bought by hotels.com are already sold. Its a good site to try if the hotel that you want indicates that they are sold out for some or all of the nights of your planned stay.