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.

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

In my previous article for finding a cheap hotel in Omaha, on Priceline, I explained how to rebid using 2 zones every time you rebid. Here I explain the core of finding Omaha cheap hotels on Priceline. You should read this first to understand the basics. Usually the 4 rebids you can get using this method is enough. However, sometimes, there might not be enough information to help you decide where you should start bidding. Or maybe you want to bid in $1 increments to be absolutely sure that you are getting a rock bottom price. In this case you want to have more than just 4 bids, how does 16 immediate rebids sound?…

As mentioned in the previous article, the zones for the Omaha area on Priceline are as follows

Bellevue- 21⁄2-Star Moderate-Plus
Central Omaha- 3-Star Upscale
Council Bluffs- 21⁄2-Star Moderate-Plus
Omaha Airport- 21⁄2-Star Moderate-Plus
Omaha Downtown- 3-Star Upscale
Southwest Omaha- 21⁄2-Star Moderate-Plus
West Omaha- 3-Star Upscale

The 4 zones in green are your free rebid zones.

You can use more than 2 zone combinations to get many more bids. Let’s assume, like in the previous article, that you want the Omaha Downtown zone.

Skeet, a poster at Betterbidding.com has the following combinations you can use with “A” being your desired zone:

A
AB
AC
AD
AE
ABC
ABD
ABE
ACD
ACE
ADE
ABCD
ABCE
ABDE
ACDE
ABCDE

verkuilb, a poster over at Biddingfortravel.com has the same combinations except in a different order

A
AB
AC
ACB
AD
ADB
ACD
ACDB
AE
AEB
ACE
ACEB
ADE
ADEB
ACDE
ACDEB

You can use both lists. However, the second list is organized in a way that flows better with Priceline’s site. Unlike the first list, where you have to start a new bid for most of the combinations, in the second list, you only have to start a new bid only half the time. You’ll see what I mean once you try bidding yourself.

Here is how you should bid for the Omaha downtown area according to the second list assuming you want Omaha Downtown and a 3 stars as your preferred star level (Keep in mind that you can substitute West Omaha or Central Omaha for Omaha Downtown because both have stars up to 3):

1. Down.
2. Down.+Bell.
3. Down.+Council
4. Down.+Council+Bell.
5. Down.+Airport
6. Down.+Airport+Bell.
7. Down.+Council+Airport
8. Down.+Council+Airport+Bell.
9. Down.+Southwest
10. Down.+Southwest+Bell.
11. Down.+Council+Southwest
12. Down.+Council+Southwest+Bell.
13. Down.+Airport+Southwest
14. Down.+Airport+Southwest+Bell.
15. Down.+Council+Airport+Southwest
16. Down.+Council+Airport+Southwest+Bell.

For every odd numbered bid in the list above you’re going to have to start a new bid. At the rejection screen, which will look like this…

Priceline.com

, simply click the Priceline logo at the top left and start a new bid. For every even numbered bid you can just add the appropriate zone to where it says “Can you select additional areas where you can stay?”:

Priceline.com

You can use the same method to bid on zones with 2 and 1/2 star hotels, though I see no reason why you would, considering that you can get a 3 star hotel for around $50.

That’s all there is to it. If you want a cheap hotel in Omaha, this is one of the best ways to do so! Happy bidding!