Expedia/Hotwire 'Which Is the Best to Go With?

Don't use any. I look at hotel.com see what their prices are and then call hotel directly. This way if you need to cancel, you do not lose money. Usually get something better.

You are taking a big chance every time you use a discounter. SO, figure out if it is worth your time to save a little money and possibly be stranded at an airport with no customer service, have a rental car and be stranded, not have a hotel room when you think you do, etc.... the list goes on.

I do all of the bookings for our personal and business travel. I do not use discounters because, if an airline, hotel or rental car agency needs to bump someone..... the discounters are bumped first.

Example.... we are diamond level priority with Hilton family of hotels. When I book my hubby, if the website says no rooms available, all I have to do is call the hotel directly, give my diamond # and someone, somewhere who was scheduled to be there is shifted to another property. That sucks, I know but it is how the programs work. My mom had a discounted airfare ticket and she was bumped from a flight home because she was on a Travelocity discounted ticket.

When you use a discounter..... you will pay upfront and you will not know what you are getting as far as hotel, car, airline until it is time for you to check in.

I ALWAYS use the direct website for American, Southwest, Thrifty car, Hilton and any other place we might be looking at for travel. A lot of sites have discounts available, you just have to call and ask.

Bottom line, sometimes it works out well for some people but there are those who have the vacation or business travel from he$$ because they tried to go cheap.

Just beware and read the fine print. It is not worth my time, money, or possibly missing an important meeting with a client to go with discounters. I can lose WAY much more money if I lose a customer.

I use priceline a lot. I have brought up multiple sites and they all produce pretty much the same results within a dollar or two.

I always book directly with the hotels. I was checking out Monday morning and a woman was losing her mind because she booked through Travelocity. The hotel couldn't fix any of her issues.

I work at a hotel & I would say call the hotel directly. All the discounts places charge you on the spot and are non-refundable. If you have to cancel for any reason you can't, and you will lose money if something comes up. Hotels are more willing to work with you if book directly with them. The discounted rooms usually will get whatever room type is left when you check in. Honestly, the discounted rates are really not much better than those offered by the hotel. Expedia/Hotels.com are the same people and just for a heads up, their customer service is awful! We have had many unhappy guests that have booked through them.

Hotwire is going to have the best deals. The trade off is that you don't get to exactly pick where you'd like to stay. They will let you know what class of hotel it is, the general area, it's amenities and how previous customers rate it, but not the exact hotel until purchase. That's how they keep the price down.

I agree with the other moms. Book directly at the hotel itself. That way, you won't incur penalties for any changes that may need to happen later, and there's very little chance of your reservation being lost. When it comes to airlines, again, I like to reserve directly on the airline's website. The fewer middle men, the better.

They are all very similar. If you are willing to take a chance and with lots of research you can use priceline to pick a price and not know what hotel you're getting until the bid is done. But you have to do a great deal or research to use this. I've been VERY successful with this approach gotten suites for less than the price of a room, gotten rooms in gorgeous new hotels for less than 1/2 price. We haven't been disappointed yet but we only will select 3 stars or higher and start with a low bid and move up as neccessary.

But what I do when I must stay at a specific place is I research the best price from all the online places and then I call the hotel directly and lock it in that way, I ask for upgrades if possible. Generally using my AAA membership I can get the lowest rates other than priceline's bidding process.

I've done this tons of times of family vacations and travel for work. If you need airfare and/or rental cars you will often get better deals by bookin seperately - it's more work but on our upcoming Disney trip I'm saving enough on airfare and car rental to pay for upscale hotels. Woohoo!

Good luck mama. Basically the more time you can spend the better deals you can get.

Travel. Agent.

We used the dot coms for several trips over many years and have found that paying to $200-$300 more for a travel agent (sometimes nothing) was WELL worth it. Not every trip went wrong, but when they did no one would help. With a travel agent - it was a single phone call and fixed.

All of the discount sites are pretty close in price. And not all of them have all options. If your flying, Jet Blue and Southwest usually have the best fares, better than these sites but they are not on them. Hotels you can can get good deals on, but you have to be careful because you sometimes don't know where your staying until after you've paid. It depends on which site you use. Also, if a site says you can get a room for say $50, the hotel has to give part of that to the site as a fee, so they make maybe $30. If you call that same hotel and say you see this price at whichever site, and offer them $40, they'll ussually take it because they don't have to pay that fee which means they get $40 instead of $30, and you pay $40 instead of $50, and everybody is happy (except the middle man that you just cut out).

When I travel I start with bookingbuddy.com. I can check flights, hotels and car rentals, but they also have an option to allow me to compare other discount sites, so I can open windows side by side for all the discount sites, then if I find something that works for me, I go to the website or call the hotel, or car rental company directly.