Can anyone share their secrets on how to get a great room rate (without using hotel points - we don't have any) in NYC at a good hotel?!? We are going on a weekend and have a couple of good quotes already; I'm just curious as to the different ways people get good rates. Thanks!

Recently returned from NYC. Stayed at the Hotel Beacon at 75th and Broadway. Nice hotel in a nice area. Cost $180 per day with AAA discount. All rooms have kitchenettes. Cost seemed reasonable to me compared to other hotel prices. Have seen many recomendations for this hotel on this website.

A couple of websites that you might want to check:
www.travelscape.com
www.hotres.com
www.hoteldiscounts.com
Good luck!

Hotel consolidators. Two of the best for NY are Quikbook (www.quikbook.com) and Express Reservations (www.express-res.com)

Jen, Does it have to be a hotel? The Commerce Court B& is tucked away in a quiet corner of Greenwhich Village. The rate was $145/night including tax (2 years ago). Greg

TC, thanks for posting the Quikbook site. It looks to be very helpful! The hotel descriptions alone are excellent, and it covers several major cities. It gives me the warm fuzzies finding good Internet sites.

I've had the best luck with Quikbook, Hotel Reservations Network doesn't seem to have very good prices at all, to me. I think the key thing is timing, you won't get good deals from the hotel or those reservations system during high-demand, peak times. For example, I went to NYC for Thanksgiving last year and couldn't get a discount for that weekend (and in fact many places were booked up way ahead of time) because that's a popular weekend in NY for tourists, shopping, everybody has time off. But rates would be a lot lower in February, I presume. At that time, to be honest, I found the rates on Quickbook and other sites were identical to the rates you got by just calling up the hotel (which is what I did to get a little more clarification on type of beds, etc), but I think you can get deals in nonpeak periods. Other than that, I've heard Priceline bidding isn't a bad way to go for hotels, better than for other products, as long as you aren't too picky, as you can specify quality and location to some degree, I think (ie, a 4-star hotel in midtown area or something).

I wanted to add something about bidding on Priceline - it takes some patience & research (which it sounds like you've already begun,) but can reward you with some very good deals. I recently had excellent results bidding for a room in Philadelphia.
There's a web site that compiles people's various bidding experiences, explains how to obtain the best results, and will give specific bidding advice if you ask. I learned about it on this board, and have written about it here previously. It's worth a look if you're even considering going that route. At the very least reading the rates previous posters have obtained by Priceline bidding will give you a basis for comparing the quotes you got.
Here's the URL: http://pub4.ezboard.com/bpricelinean...iabidding.html