You’ll notice that in the search results for each of the major booking sites (Hotels.com, Travelocity.com, Orbitz.com, and Priceline.com) that you can sort your hotel results by lowest price. How do these search results, from each site, compare to what the competing sites offer? I decided to find out just that with a little test. For this test, I assume that you are sorting your search results by the lowest rates. I also assume that you aren’t affiliated with AAA, AARP, or a group for which hotels, if you deal with them directly, will give you discounts.

How this experiment was conducted:

The hypothetical stay is from 7/19/2009 to 7/21/2009 for two adults. Rates were received on 5/12/2009. Everything you see in italics is when there was a tie between the booking sites. For each hotel on each website I picked the room type which was showing as the cheapest on that particular site. I then used this same room type when finding the prices for the hotel from the other sites. There were a few times when a competing site was offering a lower rate for a different, but similar, room type.

Hotels.com

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Above you see the first 15 hotel results when you sort your search results by “lowest price” for the Omaha area. The only real competitor to Hotel.com’s rates was Orbitz.

Travelocity.com

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Above are Travelocity’s first 15 search results when you sort by “lowest price”. As you can see, Hotel.com and Orbitz.com stole most of the lowest rates away from Travelocity. For one of the hotels, I could find a lower price by looking at the hotel’s own website and for two of the hotels I found a lower rate by calling the hotel directly.

Orbitz.com

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Above are the first 15 hotels you see in the search results when you sort by lowest price on Orbitz.com. As you can see, Hotels.com, as well as dealing directly with the hotel, yielded better prices for a lot of Orbitz’s listings.

Priceline.com

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Above are the first 15 hotel results when you sort by “lowest price”. Based on this example, Priceline is very poor in terms of its standard hotel listings.

So, when you are looking for cheap hotels in Omaha NE, which is the best booking site to use in terms of pricing? Although we can’t come to any conclusions based off of one example, it is safe to say that Hotels.com and Orbitz.com really do give you good deals when you ask the sites to sort your results by lowest price. Also, you should try dealing with the hotel directly by either going to their website or calling them. I only really started negotiating by phone when I compiled the data for Orbitz and Priceline, which is why the “Call Hotel” column has a lot more wins for the last two tests.

You might be asking yourself: Don’t the booking sites have price match guarantees? If one of these sites has a price match guarantee shouldn’t I just then shop only with that site? In Price Match Guarantees of the Major Booking Sites I examine all the price match guarantees from all the major booking sites. Neither of the 4 booking sites in this study have a price match guarantee which looks at the total price, including taxes and fees. This means that you aren’t safe when booking with just one site, you have to shop around. But based on just price alone, both Hotels.com and Orbitz.com have very goods prices. So it would be wise to start you search for the lowest price from either 2 of these sites.

What does this all mean when you want to book a hotel?

You can, of course, shop only through the individual hotel websites and feel safe with their price assurance policy, but you’d also be missing out on the other types of hotels you can stay in, which you can only find when you search through hotel booking sites.

If you want to book a cheap hotel for the Omaha area, or any city for that matter, here’s how I’d do it, based on my case studies thus far (I assume that you don’t mind not having a cancellation policy)…

1. Sort your search result by “lowest price” with either Hotels.com or Cheaptickets.com

2. Pick a hotel

3. Compare the price you see to Travelocity.com , Hotels.com or Cheaptickets.com (whichever one you don’t use first), the hotel website, and a call to the hotel. To be safe you can also search for the hotel in one of the metasearch sites like Kayak. This will ensure that you are getting the best price.

Do Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com give you the same exact prices for hotels? Is that the same with Hotels.com and Expedia.com? Seeing that Orbitz and Cheaptickets are both owned by Orbitz Worldwide, Inc. and Hotels.com and Expedia.com are both owned by Expedia, Inc., it’s worth a look.

Lets start with Orbitz and Cheaptickets. For each site I’ll search using Colorado Springs with my dates being May 27-29. I’ll only search for hotels for 2 adults. After calling Orbitz and speaking to one of their customer service reps to see if they have the same exact prices as Cheaptickets, I was told that “they are two different websites and they’ll have different prices.” Really?

Courtesy of blogcdn.com

Here are the search results from each of the two websites sorted by lowest price:

The first 10 hotels from Cheaptickets.com and the average total per night for the basic room type…

Howard Johnson Express Inn – Colorado Springs: $55.49
Days Inn Colorado Springs: $58.77
Super 8 Motel – Colo. Sprs./Garden Of The Gods: $61.72
Days Inn Colorado Springs: $64.50
Super 8 Motel – Colorado Springs Airport: $65.40
Super 8 Motel Colorado Springs: $66.13
Rodeway Inn & Suites: $67.03
Crestwood Suites of Colorado Springs: $71.77
Econo Lodge Downtown: $73.16
Days Inn Colorado Springs/Garden of the Gods: $73.83

The first 10 hotels from Orbitz.com and the average total per night for the basic room type…

Howard Johnson Express Inn – Colorado Springs: $55.49
Days Inn Colorado Springs: $58.77
Super 8 Motel – Colo. Sprs./Garden Of The Gods: $61.72
Days Inn Colorado Springs: $64.50
Super 8 Motel – Colorado Springs Airport: $65.40
Super 8 Motel Colorado Springs: $66.13
Rodeway Inn & Suites: $67.03
Crestwood Suites of Colorado Springs: $71.77
Econo Lodge Downtown: $73.16
Days Inn Colorado Springs/Garden of the Gods: $73.83

Same exact rates, same exact hotels, same exact discounts. It should be noted that when you sort your search results by “best value” for each of the two sites, you’ll see different hotels. But if you compare the prices from these “best value” search results on each of the two websites, you’ll find that both have the same exact prices. The one major difference I found between the two is the price guarantee from each site which you can find in Price Match Guarantees of the Major Booking Sites.

What about Hotels.com and Expedia.com?

courtesy of Monster.com

The first 10 hotels from Hotels.com and the average total per night for the basic room type…

Travelodge South: $46.75
Howard Johnson Express Inn – Colorado Springs: $50.99
Days Inn Colorado Springs South: $55.24
Rodeway Inn & Suites: $55.24
Super 8 Colorado Springs Co: $56.10
Days Inn Central: $58.65
Super 8 – Colorado Springs Airport: $59.49
Crestwood Suites of Colorado Springs: $59.99
Super 8 Motel Colorado Springs: $60.35
Airport Value Inn And Suites: $63.00

The first 10 hotels from Expedia.com and the average total per night for the basic room type…

Travelodge South: $46.75
Howard Johnson Express Inn – Colorado Springs: $50.99
Days Inn Colorado Springs South: $55.24
Rodeway Inn & Suites: $55.24
Super 8 Colorado Springs Co: $56.10
Days Inn Central: $58.65
Super 8 – Colorado Springs Airport: $59.49
Crestwood Suites of Colorado Springs: $59.99
Super 8 Motel Colorado Springs: $60.35
Airport Value Inn And Suites: $63.00

Same exact hotels, same exact prices, same exact discounts. If you sort your results by “Hotels.com Picks” and “Expedia Picks” you’ll notice that they still have the same prices and hotels, it’s just that the hotels aren’t in the same exact order. Price Match Guarantees of the Major Booking Sites notes the price match polices between Hotels.com and Expedia.com, which is the only difference I see between the two.

Main tips:

Which is better, Orbitz or Cheaptickets? They have the same prices and virtually identical price match guarantees. I don’t think there is a difference whether you book with one or the other, assuming you are just shopping for hotels.

Hotels.com or Expedia.com when you want to book a hotel? They have the same prices and the same weak price assurance policies. I’d say that it does not matter whether you book with one or the other.

courtesy of www.roadtripus.net

If you are looking for Omaha cheap hotels, you have a lot of excellent options to choose from. Here are the various ways you can do so in no particular order:

1. Priceline

Although it has a standard listing of hotels, it is known for its “Name Your Own Price” Service which allows you to bid on hotels. What Priceline essentially does is match hotels, which have unsold rooms, with visitors who want hotel bargains and don’t mind not knowing which hotel they’ll be staying in. When Priceline says that you’ll end up saving around 50% off the standard price you see on the typical hotel booking sites, they aren’t kidding! If you want to learn how to find cheap hotels in Omaha using this service, I have a 2 part series which tells you how to do so specifically for the Omaha area. Part 1 and Part 2

2. Hotwire

Hotwire is the same as Priceline except, rather than letting you bid on hotels, Hotwire has pre-determined prices. Here are some tips for using Hotwire to find cheap hotels in Omaha NE.

3. Metasearch

Metasearch sites pool in data from pretty much all of the hotel booking sites and then allow you to sort your results by things such as popularity and price.

Here are some you can use:

Kayak

Hotelscombined

Uptake

Tripadvisor

Sites like these do a very good job of gathering information (including prices and reviews) from all the bookings sites.

However, if you want to search by lowest price, metasearch sites don’t give you the the list of hotels with the lowest prices because taxes, which all hotel booking sites charge, are not included in all of their calculations.

Also, if you want to have the option to cancel, I haven’t yet found a metasearch site which allows you to sort your results by lowest price and by cancellation policy. Usually the lowest prices are also non-refundable.

Furthermore, because you have to open up a separate window to actually book a hotel, it might be easier to open up a new page for each of the major hotel booking sites (Hotels.com, Cheaptickets.com, Travelocity.com).

4. Browse the major booking sites

Assuming you sort your search results by “lowest price”, Hotels.com and Cheaptickets.com are both good choices to start your search for a cheap Omaha hotel. In the case studies I’ve done thus far, I found that Hotels.com and Cheaptickets.com usually have the lowest prices, at least for the criteria I used. I am 99% sure that you will get the same prices on Expedia.com as you do on Hotels.com and the same prices on Orbitz.com as you do on Cheaptickets.com.

If you want to book a cheap hotel for the Omaha area, here’s how I’d do it, based on my Omaha case study (I assume that you don’t mind not having a cancellation policy)…

1. Sort your search result by “lowest price” with either Hotels.com or Cheaptickets.com

2. Pick a hotel and write down its price

3. Compare the price you see to Travelocity.com , Hotels.com or Cheaptickets.com (whichever one you don’t use first), the hotel website, and a call to the hotel. You can also search for the particular hotel using one of the metasearch sites just to be safe.

If you want a cancellation policy, you’re going to have to do a little more homework. I suggest you pick a refundable hotel option from either Hotels.com, Cheaptickets.com, or Priceline.com (Priceline allows you to cancel for all of its hotels), compare the price you get to whichever two booking sites you didn’t get the hotel from, the price from the hotel website, and the price you get by calling the hotel.

Extra tip: Go to the Omaha Visitor’s Bureau. Click on “special offers”. You might find some deals there.

Also, if you want a hotel and a flight check out How much are you really saving on Travelocity?.

That’s it! With these methods you are sure to find Omaha cheap hotels for your stay.

Local Attractions (more to come!):

Our interview with Andrew Hershey of the Bemis Center.

omahacityweekly.com

Our interview with Craig Bond of the Shelterbelt Theatre.

From Shelterbelt With Love

Our interview with Bill Seidler, founder of the Bancroft Street Market.

bancroftstreetmarket.com