I love Hotels.com but it closes on me when it goes into search mode. Are there other sites for booking hotels like Hotels.com that don't charge cancelation fees? Expedia charges $25 to cancel or change booking. Not sure about Orbits. I like the brokers so I can shop which hotels are available for the dates I want. Don't care for PL style of booking.

travelocity and orbitz are probably both good choices, but they may or may not have cancellation fees. I like to go to the city I'm interested in's tourist pages and get a list of hotels, then search them directly, in addition to checking one or two online travel agents (like the ones you listed). You cannot rely on any one site to give you availability. I've had it go both ways - at one time the hotel told me they were sold out, but I got an excellent price for the same dates through expedia. Other times the booking agencies show sold out and the hotel does not. Most hotels will show fully-cancellable rates on their web sites, in addition to any non-cancellable deals if they exist. More and more hotels are offering best rate guarantees as well, and won't charge you a fee for booking with them online (like many of the booking agencies do). It does take more work, though, but it's the most thorough as well.

For our upcoming trip to the Pacific Northwest, I used Hotels.com, Expedia, and Orbitz for looking. It ended up I booked all 5 hotels direct and got BETTER rates than any of the three other sites were offering. And the best part is, all of my reservations can be cancelled up till day of arrival (except one which requires 48 hours). Plus only one had any advance deposit (that's the one in Whistler that also has the 48 hour cancellation). I see less and less reason to book with the online "discount" agencies.

Incidentally, while booking Fifth Avenue Suites in Portland I registered for the Kimpton emails. Last week I got an offer from them, and have rebooked there changing from a King Deluxe Room at $158 to a King Deluxe Suite for $152. Currently the websites show best rates for the same hotel as:
Hotels.com -- $189 for a king room (not suite)
Expedia -- $189 for a king room (not suite)
Orbitz -- $165 for a king room or $179 for a king suite.

I'll stick with booking direct, thank you.

Although neither site covers all areas like Hotels.com or Expedia, my two favorite sites are quickbook.com and expressreservations.com. No cancellation fees, and negotiated (cheaper) rates.

However, express reservations only has hotels in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Quickbook has several more cities.

Jim

I have used quicbook and hotels.com....always confirm with the hotel a day or two later as once my reservation was lost...regardless, I would use them again, and alway check with the hotel site directly to see if they will match or beat rates. More and more hotels are promising best rates these days.

I always book direct with the hotels, they are the most helpful IMO and do not have additional fees.

Until about 6 months ago I shopped on Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity. Found Hotels.com usually had higher rates.

Of late, I also find hotel website almost always has cheaper rates.

Still us above to see list of hotels, then go from there.

I think best answer is to check several places and pick lowest rate for specific hotel. If you call hotel directly, they will often match any other web price.

Other than what's been mentioned depending on what city you're going to you may want to givefunjetvacations.com a try, I recently was able to book my parents the Tradewinds Grand in St. Pete beach for $142/nt tax included, the best rate I could find anythere else was $200/nt. Loews hotel seems to be one of the few hotel chains that discount to Quikbook anymore. In fact, Quikbook has been more expensive > $20/nt compared to what I've been finding on other websites.

And as mentioned above, the hotel direct is usually the cheapest as in most cases.

Well, yes and no. I am like Patrick, I like to use Hotels.com to shop. Then zoom in to see if there are other price offerings.

Lately I have been book Best Western and have found their site to be cheaper than going with their hotel directly, which is odd. One hotel in Santa Barbara was $20 cheaper on website than direct. So, still pays to shop around, is the lesson.

I love Hotels.com for shopping, but for some odd reason, I can't get it to search on my computer. It just shuts it down when I press search button. So, was looking for alternative site. Might try it on my DH's. My computer is pretty pop up infested.

Thanks all, for your replies...

There's also travelaxe.com that you can install on your computer, it searches numerous online booking travel agencies and highlights the lowest price.

One option I've used recently is tripadvisor.com. I used to only use it for hotel reviews, but I there's a link on each hotel page to "compare rates." When you use this, it opens another window and searches for rates (for your specific dates) on various sites - hotels.com, expedia, orbitz, etc. It's a pretty easy way to compare prices on the different sites, although I agree that individual hotel sites are getting better at offering good rates.