In my experience there are not any real secrets in the hotel booking industry. Cross checking the consistent call-to-purchase claims like ‘buy now or price may go up’, ‘secret deal’, ‘web special’, ‘Gold rewards price’ yielded a pretty flat cross platform pricing landscape. And so, after much laborious research, from the vast number of players in the Finding lodging field I consistently use these:
Trivago . It is a meta search platform that includes listings from the major players – Hotels.com, Booking.com, Expedia, as well as a number of the hotel chain sites. It is rather like Qeeq.com is for car rentals. If I am staying in a place for only a night or two I will use Trivago to click through to the offer that I like, and not do any other research. It is not a perfect resource, as I have found that some of the prices and availability vary when I get to the booking provider, but it is pretty reliable, and picks up many providers that I otherwise would not search out. For longer stays I will comparison shop, including Skyscanner’s hotel tab, and include peer-to-peer options (but check out this AirBnb page for some caveats).
Based on the couple of hundred most hotel stays I most often end up booking through Booking.com (80%) and Hotels.com (10%). I used to be almost exclusively Hotels.com, but they gutted their rewards program and so are much less attractive.
I include HostelWorld as they often have interesting spaces (and foreign kids skateboarding in the hallway). Most do not have private rooms, but many do. I have saved a ton of money in some really expensive cities, and the quirky vibe (and the entrancing hostess in Portugal) can spice up a stay.
Very occasionally (a recent stay in Bologna, and one in Aswan, Egypt) I was shut out in my three search engines. Due to big national holidays the cities were booked out of everyplace under $500/night. I had to cast a wider net, using AirBnb for the former, for an atypical short stay. For the latter I used the travel booking service at Chase Sapphire (did I already say that I love this card?). Chase will never find the cheapest place to stay, but they had inventory in a reasonable price range. Similarly, I keep a significant inventory of ‘points’ on my Chase card that I can transfer to Marriott Bonvoy card to give me extra options if in a jamb.
Of course I could have done prior research at Worldwide Holidays to discover that these cities would be sold out, but I am too lazy to do that for the tiny number of times it makes a difference.
About once a year, on a slow day, I will go back to doing a full cross platform price comparison on a couple of searches, just to see if the ranking has changed dramatically (the same way that I annually re-shop for phone service and insurance). In the meantime I feel rather confident that I am booking at competitive prices, and do not fret whether or not I am getting absolutely the best possible deal on every reservation.