Hotwire Hotel Reviews

Hotwire can be an excellent place to book San Diego hotels. Unfortunately, you don’t know the hotel’s name until after you have paid for it. Sound chancy? Well, it can be. Fortunately, there are a couple of websites that can help you decipher the Hotwire hotel choices. Using these websites can definitely help making your hotel reservations even more pleasant.

Hotwire Hotel
I got a newsletter from the Norwegian travel magazine Zine travel today and one of the topics were weird museums around the world. You can view the article here (only in Norwegian I’m afraid). Did you e.g. know that there is a sewer museum in Paris? And there is a British Lawnmower Museum. I think the weirest museum I have been to is the� Museum of forensic history in Bangkok. I went there during a trip in 2002 and the brochure said that this was a museum “not for the squeamish”…and they were quite right.
It is a place were you can see mummified criminals, body parts on jars, babies with various birth defects, skulls with bullet wounds etc.� It was really a bizarre place and I left the place kinda nauseous.� But I guess it depends what you are used to seeing…when I went there, there were school classes visiting and they did not seem to mind. Anyway, you can see more photos at the bottom of the Thailand 2002 trip report.
With hotels experiencing the lowest occupancy rates since the kinds of companies that track such things started collecting data, it’s no surprise that hotels are cutting rates like crazy – even in notoriously expensive destinations like Manhattan. In fact, the hotel industry is suffering more than any other sector of commercial real estate, the New York Times reports.
In recent years, finding a decent room in New York for under $200 became almost sport. But now room rates are averaging just under $200 a night, making them almost a one-third less expensive than in 2008. That’s still a lot higher than the national average of $96.77 per night in June 2009.
The Redang Kalong Roesort boasts of ultimate privacy because no other resort is within its view. They have a nice stretch of beach, with lovely waters and excellent snorkeling and diving. While I checked in here, I met up with at least 6 divers in just one day. Most of the divers were from America and Europe. Apparently this place is well known in the divers world or circle.
A recent search for San Diego hotels on Hotwire yielded a couple of interesting selections. One was a 4.5 star hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter. Its amenities were listed as being a Boutique Hotel with Smoke Free Rooms, a Fitness Center, Pool(s), Restaurant(s), Business Center, and having High-speed Internet Access. A search on the Better Bidding website showed that recently, members had booked the same hotel in the same area with the same amenities and that their selection ended up being the Hotel Ivy.

A quick search on Expedia showed that the Hotel Ivy for those dates was being listed at $176 per night. On the Hotwire site, that hotel was listed at $110 per night-a savings of $66 per night.

Another search turned up a 4 star hotel located in the Sea World-Mission Bay, Shelter Island area. Its amenities included it being a resort with a beachfront property, fitness center, pool, restaurant, business center, and high speed internet access. A look on Better Bidding yielded members who had recently gotten the same hotel on Hotwire and it turned out to the Hilton Mission Bay. When looking at Expedia, the rates for that hotel were $220 per night. On Hotwire, the same hotel went for $120. That is a savings of $100 per night!
There are a couple of ways of figuring out how to decipher the Hotwire San Diego hotels. Better Bidding offers an excellent forum where members can write in and give the hotel’s amenities and number of stars while other members help them figure out what it is. There is also a page where the site has garnered a list for most major cities that are listed on Hotwire. The list appears to be a little outdated, however, so you might be better off by using the forum.

There only seem to be a couple of Hotwire hotels that haven’t been deciphered. If you want to get cheap rates on San Diego hotels and you want to use Hotwire, but you’re afraid of getting a hotel that you don’t want, then using Better Bidding in order to figure out what you might be paying for could be your answer. Not only will you save a lot of money, but you will also have more control over where you stay

So, how did I end up here? Well, on one of my projects from traveling Malaysia, I asked my tour agent to just book me a nice and quiet resort on Redang Island as I did not want to stay at the main Long Beach (Pasir Panjang) and this was exactly what they gave me. The sea view rooms built in a longhouse style living was actually quite nice. Not the best, but averagely alright. To me, it could have been slightly better but according to the divers I met, they just need a place to crash after diving.