How to Use Mystery Hotel Sites

Like most people, I’m not one to pass up a good deal, and one place to find the lowest hotel prices comes with the most risk: mystery hotel sites.

Hotwire and Priceline are both great resources for booking your next vacation or staycation, but knowing how the sites work and how you can make them work for you can be the difference between roughing it several miles out of town in a 1 star motel or sitting pretty 2 blocks from your destination in a 5 star luxury room – for the same price. These sites offer incredibly low rates in exchange for not knowing the name or exact location of the hotel beforehand. Sounds scary? It can be, but it can also be amazing.

How do I know? I’ve been using these sites for years to book short stays, business trips, and even full vacations. My best trip was $22/night at a 4.5 star hotel in Charleston, SC! Let me teach you my ways.

1. Limit the search area. Any real estate agent will tell you, the key to good living is location, location, location, and that applies to hotel stays too! If you don’t know much about your destination, do some research about the parts of town that are the most desirable. With Hotwire you can limit your search parameters to certain neighborhoods within a zip code.
2. Don’t search for hotels below 3 stars. It’s very tempting to go for the absolute lowest price possible, but that also opens up the possibility for getting the worst hotels on these websites’ lists. Protect yourself and book smarter! I don’t search below 4 stars myself, but there are a lot of Holiday Inn and Hyatt hotels that fall within the 3 star range and are clean and safe, so with 3 stars you should be okay.
3. Try to match the hotel name to the description given. The sites will usually offer a brief and generic description of the hotel along with a list of some (but not all) of the amenities. You can use this list to your advantage by checking out hotels in the area and seeing which ones fit the description the best.
4. Use forums to help ID the hotels. Betterbidding.com and FlyerTalk have forums for Hotwire and Priceline bidders to match hotels with their descriptions. Sometimes they’re correct, sometimes they aren’t, but it’s a good way to see which hotels are commonly booked from those sites.
5. Use bid revealing sites. I’ve not used these myself, but bidgoggles.com, roomrevealed.com, and a host of other sites claim they can help you guess your hotel before you bid or buy.

Have any other tips for finding secret hotels and super low rates? Leave them in the comments!