courtesy oracle.com

So far, I have said that Hotels.com has the best price match guarantee. I thought I’d analyze their policy a little further and compare it to all the price match guarantees from all of the main hotel booking sites.

Hotels.com

And unlike some of our competitors, we will match the price right up to the time of the property’s cancellation deadline, whether that is three days after you made the booking or three months. So stop worrying and start booking.

• You must have already booked a prepaid reservation.
• This reservation cannot be for one of our non-discounted properties.
• The lower rate must be available for booking with identical specifications of the original request (ex: same hotel, same date and same room type.

…The guarantee applies only to the cost of booked travel, as presented in the hotels.com search results, without including taxes and fees.

“…right up to the time of the property’s cancellation deadline.” Any time you see a price match guarantee on the hotel, it means that hotels.com will match it up until the property’s own cancellation deadline, which I have found to be 1-3 days before the check-in day. Not all of Hotels.com’s hotels qualify for this guarantee, but most do. For a hotel search in the Colorado Springs area, 39 of the 55 hotels had the price match guarantee.

“…without including taxes and fees.” What this means is that this price match does not look at the total price, which would include taxes and fees. Considering that the only main difference in pricing among all the major hotel booking sites consists of taxes and fees, this price match policy isn’t much of a price match policy at all. However, after speaking to 3 different Hotels.com customer service representatives, each of them told me that they’d look at the total price. When I pointed out to “without including taxes and fees” in the terms and conditions each of them seemed surprised but reiterated that they’d still match the total price, which includes taxes and fees. What to make of this? Maybe, if the price difference for your reservation is marginal, they look at the total price. If the difference is too large, they might just point out what’s in the terms and conditions.

Expedia.com

It’s simple! Expedia guarantees you’re getting the best price. If you should find a better price online for the same trip within 24 hours, Expedia will refund the difference—and give you a travel coupon worth $50.

Except as noted below, the Best Price Guarantee applies only to the cost of booked travel, as presented in the Expedia.com search results, without including any taxes and fees.

I called Expedia (which has the same prices as hotels.com), they told me that they’d also match the total price, including taxes and fees. When I pointed out to them that the terms and conditions state that the guarantee excludes taxes and fees, they told me that they’d match the price difference regardless. What to make of this? Again, like hotels.com, my guess is that if your price difference is small, they’ll look at the total price. If the price difference is large, they must just ignore you by pointing out what’s in the terms and conditions.

Cheaptickets.com

It took some haggling and arm-twisting, but we’re confident that any hotel rate backed by our Best Price Guarantee is the lowest online. If you book a prepaid hotel rate that’s backed by our Best Price Guarantee, and then find the same room, in the same hotel, for the same dates, at a lower price online within 24 hours, we’ll refund the difference.

There is no mention of whether this takes into account taxes and fees, but I’m afraid that Cheaptickets official policy is to not look at the total price (including taxes and fees), seeing that Orbitz, its sister site does not look at taxes and fees…

Orbitz.com

With Low Price Guarantee, if you find a lower rate, before taxes and fees, for the same hotel, room type, and check-in and check-out dates on Orbitz or any other Web site within 24 hours following your confirmed reservation on Orbitz.com, Orbitz will refund you the difference upon verification you have qualified for a refund. In addition, with Orbitz Price Assurance, ANYTIME after you have booked your hotel, if another Orbitz customer subsequently books the same hotel, meaning the same check-in/check-out dates, room type, room description, number of rooms, number of travelers, at the same hotel and subject to the same restrictions, that is at least $5 lower than the hotel you booked on Orbitz.com, Orbitz will refund you the difference up to a maximum of $500.00 per reservation.

Travelocity.com

If you find a Qualifying Lower Rate within twenty four hours (found on Travelocity or another U.S.-based Web site) of your booking, we will provide you with the following per booking:

• One $50 Promo Code for a future “Good Buy” Hotel or Flight + Hotel vacation package booking on Travelocity and
• A refund of the difference between the price you paid through Travelocity and the Qualifying Lower Rate.

The Low Price Guarantee applies only to the base cost, and not taxes and fees (or service fees), of standalone Flight, Hotel, Car, and Cruise bookings. For such bookings, any service fee or tax recovery charge is not considered in determining whether you have found a Qualifying Lower Rate.

Gtahotels.com

We are so confident that you won’t find a better rate elsewhere that we offer a 100% guarantee. If you find exactly the same deal online elsewhere for less we will match the other price and we will refund you 100% of the difference.

Price Match Refund Request Form located below must be filled out and sent within 24 hours of making your reservation.

After speaking to their customer service representative, he told me that their price match guarantee applies to the total price, including taxes and fees.

Booking.com

Should you find your hotel room, with the same booking conditions, at a lower rate on the internet after you have booked, we’ll match it. Just contact us within 24 hours of booking, with details of the website.

After speaking to their customer service representative, they told me that their guarantee applies to the total price, including taxes and fees.

Reservetravel.com

All hotel reservations are guaranteed to be the lowest rate available, at the time of booking, for the dates requested and the same hotel. If you find a lower rate for the same dynamics the process is simple: Submit our Rate Guarantee Form within 24 hours of making the booking with us. We will either refund the difference or cancel the reservation without penalty.

Although I haven’t yet confirmed whether their low price guarantee looks at the total price, I’ll update this page when I get a response from them.

Hotelclub.com

None

Easyclicktravel.com

None

Conclusion: Price match guarantees from the major booking sites are not as glamorous as they seem. Hotels.com, Expedia.com, Travelocity.com, Orbitz.com, and quite possibly Cheaptickets.com only look at the base price (excluding taxes and fees) to determine if your reservation applies for a price match guarantee. This is disturbing considering that taxes and fees are the only things which make prices different among these sites. The base prices for hotels, from all these sites, is, if not the same, very very similar.

Although Gtahotels.com, Booking.com, and possibly Reservetravel.com say that they look at the total price, I’m not 100% sure that they honor their promises.

Jay Miller, “Downtown Colorado Springs” October, 30 2007 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.

If you are looking for Colorado Springs cheap hotels, or any cheap hotel for that matter, you might be suffering from information overload. You want a good price, but where do you start? I break down the options…

1. Priceline

When hotels have unsold rooms and are looking to sell them off at discounted rates they use Priceline and/or Hotwire to fill them. Both sites connect these hotels to bargain shopping customers. For the year of 2008 Priceline ranked second , only behind Hotwire, for customer satisfaction among all travel sites. If you only look at pricing, Priceline is the site to find hotels for the Colorado Springs area. Using Priceline to Find Colorado Springs Hotel Deals tells you how to get immediate rebids with Priceline for the Colorado Springs area.

2. Hotwire

J.D. Power & Associates has ranked Hotwire number 1 in customer satisfaction for 3 straight years (2006-2008). Hotwire works the same way as Priceline. The main difference between the two is that Hotwire’s prices are predetermined/fixed. If you want to use either Hotwire or Priceline for finding a cheap hotel in Colorado Springs, but can’t decide on which one, check out Hotwire vs. Priceline: A Comparison.

3. Metasearch sites

Metasearch sites gather information from hundreds of hotel booking sites.

Sites which allow you to sort your hotel search results by lowest price include:

Kayak.com

Sidestep.com

Hotelscombined.com

In my non-scientific test for the Colorado Springs area, when I sorted by lowest price for each of the above three, Kayak.com and Sidestep.com gave me the same exact results. This is not surpising considering that Kayak now owns Sidestep. Hotelscombined.com gave me slightly different results. Regardless, all three gave me the same range of prices, with the lowest price for each starting at $47 for the “Travelodge Colorado Springs South”. This means that you’d be safe with either of these 3 metasearch sites.

Uptake.com is another metasearch site. Although you can’t sort your hotel results by lowest price, it does a good job of reporting the reviews from the various hotel booking sites.

Tripadvisor.com is known as the review site. Although it doesn’t gather review information from all the different sites like Uptake, it already has a lot of reviews on its own site to help you make an informed decision on where to stay. I found that when I sorted by “lowest price” for the Colorado Springs area, the hotels I saw were very similar to what I saw on Kayak, Sidestep, and Hotelscombined.

So, which of these sites (Kayak, Sidestep, Hotelscombined, Uptake, or Tripadvisor) do you use when you want to find cheap hotels in Colorado Springs? It’s all up to you. There is no “perfect” site out there to find a cheap hotel. If you like seeing reviews, check out Uptake or Tripadvisor. If you want some of the lowest prices, check out Kayak, Sidestep, or Hotelscombined. There are other sites out there that you can use but I guarantee you that if you use only 1 of these sites, you’ll make a good decision.

4. Browse the major booking sites/websites of the hotels themselves

Why browse booking sites such as Hotels.com, Cheaptickets.com, or Travelocity.com as well as the hotels’ websites when you can just sort by lowest price on the metasearch sites? Well, price isn’t everything. I have yet to find a metasearch site which allows you to sort your search results by lowest price and by cancellation policy. You’ll find that many if not most of the lowest rates are non-refundable.

Even if you find the lowest price from one of the metasearch sites such as Kayak, prices change all the time, minute by minute. In Price Match Guarantees of the Major Booking Sites I examine the price match polices of all the major booking sites.

Although metasearch sites scan “everything”, it is unlikely that you’d be getting ripped off if you buy from one of the major booking sites after comparing prices amongst the booking sites and the hotel website. Prices from different hotel booking sites is not like the stock market. There is a price floor which all prices gravitate towards to. Which of the major booking sites are closest to this price floor? So far I have found that Hotels.com and Orbitz.com/Cheaptickets.com have very competitive prices, although other sites will have better prices for different areas.

5. Call the hotel

Once you get a price by using either one of the metasearch sites or comparing booking sites and hotel website prices, try calling the hotel to see if they can’t get you a better deal. Although I didn’t have much luck over the phone using this method in my Colorado Springs Hotels case study (A lot of the hotels told me that they are too booked for my hypothetical date due to graduation), I had a lot more luck in my Omaha Hotels case study when I booked my hypothetical stay months in advance.

Keep in mind that whichever way you use to book your hotel for the Colorado Springs area, you might not be getting the best price. You’ll be getting a good price. And, when looking for Colorado Springs cheap hotels, that’s all we’re looking for.

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.