Today, Travel Blissful has the pleasure of hearing from Hotwire’s travel expert Clem Bason who gives invaluable tips on saving money and how to find the best travel deals. Whether you need a last-minute hotel room for New Orleans Jazz Fest (April 25-27), a cheap airline ticket or a good car rental deal, Hotwire.com is the site to visit.
Erica Johansson: For someone who is unfamiliar with Hotwire, how can they find the best deal on your site?
Clem Bason: In order to answer this question, I thought it would be helpful to give a brief overview into what Hotwire is and how Hotwire works.
Hotwire.com is a discount travel site that delivers prices that consumers can’t find on any other website. Hotwire is able to do this due to their unsold inventory business model. With the economy taking a turn for the worse and no one knowing how it’s going to play out, consumers are holding back on their discretionary spend more than ever before. And, while hotels, car rental companies and airliners don’t want to overreact and would rather not disrupt their regular rate structure, the fact is, travel is down and rooms are sitting empty right now. When hotels, car rental companies and airliners have unsold inventory, they use Hotwire to fill it.
Hotwire benefits consumers:
Hotwire believes that consumers deserve to travel, and they deserve to get the best price. The site saw an opening in the marketplace where it could provide consumers with deep discounts without relying on bidding, hassles or games. Here’s how:
- By partnering with hotels, airlines and car rental agencies, Hotwire can offer the consumer unsold inventory at prices you can’t find on other travel sites
- Examples: Hotwire consistently delivers 4 star hotels at 2 star prices; the site uses name suppliers; Hotwire has instilled star rating system for hotels that is accurate and accountable; the site is so confident in its low price deals that if you find a hotel for a lower rate on the internet, it will double the difference between the two prices guaranteed; Hotwire also has an active customer care group that is available 24 hours a day to help travelers.
Hotwire also benefits suppliers:
- Hotwire allows suppliers to sell their inventory without disrupting their pricing models.
- Excess inventory is an inherent part of the travel business. However, unlike physical inventory like a sweater, suppliers have more urgency to sell their excess. Planes have to take off and hotel room nights are fixed in time. Hotwire takes advantage of that urgency and pass the saving on to the consumer.
- However, these discounts don’t mean suffering: Hotwire works with the same top travel brands (same rooms, same seats, same cars), but we offer deals you can’t find on other travel sites-in some cases discounts up to 50%.
- We focus on the discounts and make it easier for you to find and book deals.
- Major airlines, top tier hotels and car rental companies are comfortable giving us great deals because you don’t see their brand before you buy.
Hotwire has very strong deals:
Hotwire has very strong inventory in hotels and cars.
- Hotwire offers discounts on hotels up to 50% off of retail fares
- Hotwire’s cars start at 13.95 a day -and there are no hidden fees
One can also find deep discounts on airfare:
- Hotwire offers special deals on airline tickets that allow consumers to save up to 35% off retail fares. There are no booking fees on Hotwire.
Hotwire also offers tools that can help consumers find deals and save money:
TripStarter
The Hotwire® TripStarterTM planning tool is an online resource to offer historical air and hotel pricing data, helping travelers decide when and where to go on vacation and providing information on weather, local events and attractions for domestic and international destinations.
TripStarter shows:
- The best times of the year to save on travel
o Seasonal pricing trends for the past two years
o Tips on how to get the lowest airfares and hotel rates
- How to make the most of your getaway
o Listings of local festivities, fairs and other fun events
o Photos, maps, points of interest listings and more
Airfare Savings Hub
- The Airfare Savings Hub takes the leg work out of the hunt for the lowest price by proactively recommending alternate routes and dates for those travelers willing to be flexible with their plans to save even more money. These recommendations will appear along with the lowest available price for their exact flight request*:
- Suggests nearby alternate airports for both departure and arrivals if cheaper tickets are available.
- For instance, the airfare savings hub has found savings for travelers flying into West Palm Beach or Fort Lauderdale instead of Miami and Carlsbad instead of San Diego.
- Suggests that travelers adjust their travel by one or two days if savings are available.
- With ASH, customers can also look for the lowest fare for their route within 30 days. Hotwire’s Flexible Date Search will find the lowest fare for a specific destination within a 30 day period.
- Suggests nearby alternate airports for both departure and arrivals if cheaper tickets are available.
Deal engine: When a hotel changes or cuts their price – Hotwire has an embedded engine that compares it to the previous week and everyone in the market and alerts the consumer to this.
TravelTicker: A bi-weekly travel newsletter that promotes insider travel deals, limited-time offers and small hotel vacancies. This is for the price aware and flexible traveler. TravelTicker offers relevant, hard to find vacation deals no-one knows about
Last minute flight deals – picking deals starting yesterday that span through to Monday or Tuesday
Double the difference price guarantee: If a consumer finds a lower price on the internet, Hotwire will pay the consumer double the difference
So our advice to price savvy travelers looking for a great deal is to shop! You will find that Hotwire’s consistently delivers.
What are your best money saving tips?
Here are tips we like to tell consumers who are looking to save money:
- Be flexible – sometimes just shifting your trip start and end dates by one day will save you huge amounts of money
- Look for alternative airports – often big cities have more than one airport – and those airports may have much better deals than the ‘big guy’
- Take advantage of shoulder seasons – check out when the most popular times of year are to visit your particular destination – when you travel during peak times, prices skyrocket. Most consumers don’t know that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is one of the least expensive times to travel
- Take a drive trip – with the price of gas mounting, you will be well served renting a car and taking that drive trip you always wanted.
- Use planning tools – check out Tripstarter and airfare savings hub.
I hope you can make use of Clem’s moneysaving tips on your next vacation. Happy travels!
Possibly related posts:
Well, you can go on vacation too! Come to Amsterdam!
I’d love to visit Amsterdam someday, but first I’m going to London. That’s definite.
Hi Erica – I didn’t know about Hotwire’s TripStarter. That’s a pretty useful tool. I included a link to your post in my roundup today.
I have to apologize though, I accidentally misspelled your name at first, but it’s fixed now. Have a great weekend!
Thanks Sheila. Have a great weekend you too!
Thanks. I love your site.
Everybody I believe is trying to save were they
can in today’s economy when they travel.
BEWARE: I booked two rooms via Hotwire. On the Hotwire website, it showed an example of a 2 star hotel as being the LaQuinta at the location I was visiting. Not wanting a LaQuinta (having stayed at that particular LaQuinta on a previous visit) I opted to go to the next higer category. Low and behold, my reservations were booked by Hotwire at the LaQuinta, and I was billed at the next higher category rate, not at the 2 star rate.
I brought this to the attention of customer relations, and even an executive from that group, and they basically told me that the star ratings are meaningless as they can vary from one location to the next. So, do not rely on examples provided by Hotwire….maybe you would be better warned to not use Hotwire, as they show no interest in providing satisfaction to a customer.
Thanks for letting us know about this, J Walker. I appreciate it.