Priceline will buy meta-search engine Kayak.com for $1.8 billion. Readers of Loyalty Traveler may know I am a frequent user of kayak.com. Both sites rank in the Top 10 travel sites in the USA.

Priceline makes most of its money from hotel bookings. Kayak makes 80% of its revenue from flight search referrals according to the Financial Times.

It should be interesting to see how the Priceline/Kayak partnership takes on the Expedia online travel network.

Priceline.com is the biggest competitor to Expedia.com who owns TripAdvisor.com, hotels.com and hotwire.com.

Then there is Google who owns itasoftware.com.

The online travel market is consolidating into technology empires.

TopTenReviews has an informative article 2013 Online Travel Sites Comparison with reviews of leading online travel sites and a highly detailed chart of their features.

I need to plan eight stays over the next two months to reach SPG Platinum for 2012. I outlined why I want to requalify for SPG Platinum in my earlier post, Differences in my stays as SPG Platinum and Gold elite.

This post shares how I plan out hotel hopping for stays when I want to find the cheapest rates for my stays, but also try and stay in the best hotels I can find without busting my budget. I will be paying for my own travel so finding lower rates is important to me. Read More…

I scored a free hotel night yesterday applying Choice Hotels Best Rate Guarantee. In fact, I found potential Best Rate Guarantee claims with Choice Hotels, Best Western and Marriott yesterday as I planned a Sierra Mountains road trip through California for this coming week.

This post covers the Choice Hotels Best Rate Guarantee details followed with an example of how two Best Rate Guarantee claims I made yesterday with Choice Hotels and Best Western Hotels had different results. Read More…

We have all done hotel rate searches and you may already have a strategy that works well for you. I just completed a hotel rate search for family members planning to stay 7 nights next month in Washington, D.C.  

Here is a case study of how I approached the task of finding a hotel deal in Washington, D.C. for July 2009.

The search was more challenging than I predicted, primarily due to constraints of

1)      Two kids

2)      No hotel changes during stay

3)      Must be near metro in downtown DC

The Search Process:

# 1 Check rates on meta-search engine like Kayak.com or search engine of your choice to get comparative rates for Washington, D.C.

Hilton Washington at $115 for Wednesday and Thursday night looked like the best weeknight deal in the rates shown on Kayak.com. The rate for the week was only $106 per night. The Renaissance M Street was even less at $99 per night. There was a $200 range in upper upscale hotel brand rates for weeknights Monday through Thursday night.

Friday and Saturday nights had widespread hotel rate deals with many upper upscale hotels under $100 per night: Grand Hyatt ($99), Crowne Plaza The Hamilton ($90), Westin D.C. City Center ($95), Marriott at Metro Center ($109), Hilton Garden Inn Downtown ($98).

These downtown D.C. hotels were averaging $100 on weekend nights and $250 on weekday nights.

Sunday was a variable day depending on hotel. Some hotels were only $20 more on Sunday night than Friday-Saturday rates and other hotels were $100 more for Sunday night compared to the weekend rates.

Initial check shows possibility for major brand, upscale hotels with Renaissance M Street ($795 after tax) or Hilton Washington ($850 for 7 nights after tax).

# 2 Check Rates for Priceline, Hotwire Successful bids

Checking a website forum where people post their winning bids is crucial for the traveler planning to use Priceline or Hotwire for hotel bidding. Here are the two most popular websites for Priceline bid info:

http://www.betterbidding.com

http://www.biddingfortravel.com

Rates on bidding threads in the sites listed above for Priceline looked like an average of $75 would likely secure a room.  The 7-night rate with Priceline would be right around $600 for an unspecified 3.5 to 4 star room bid. Recent bids for Washington D. C. indicated likely hotel winning bids would be at Renaissance Mayflower for around $75 per night, Marriott Wardman Park ($65), or Renaissance M Street ($70).

Priceline looked like a pretty sure bet for one of the Marriott Hotels.

The hotel guests I was working for did not want to go with the uncertainty of Priceline, although I thought that was a good choice.

Another problem with Priceline is there is no guarantee the hotel will honor the reservation for 4 guests (2 adults and 2 teenagers).

# 3 Checked SkyAuction.com and LuxuryLink.com for hotel and timeshare offers. Nothing found.

My family looked for apartment rentals on their own and found a $1,400 all-in one bedroom apartment for the week.

# 4 Check individual hotel sites for special offers. 

This is a process that is generally limited by time. There are dozens of hotels, each with several special offers, and a rate check is the only way to know if the special offer is a good deal. Checking all the special offers of 20 hotels can take a day of rate searches. Limiting your searches is imperative.

I found loads of high-value special offers, however, nothing was even close to the price of staying at the Renaissance M Street ($800 all-in for week) or Hilton Washington ($850 all-in for week) or Priceline ($600 all-in for week).

#5 The Starwood Loyalty Preference

After coming up with the Marriott and Hilton options, I was asked to look into Starwood Hotels more closely. The hotel guests have 40,000 Starwood points. These Starwood members have one stay so far during the free weekend night promotion and will earn a free weekend night with a second paid stay in Washington, D.C.

Sheraton Suites Old Town Alexandria is only $108 per night, but the commute into D.C. is a consideration and they decide being in downtown is more important than price.

#6 Break down potential rates within the selected set of hotels including a Search of Hotel Special Offers

The primary difficulty in finding the lowest available hotel rate is the lowest rate is usually some special hotel offer that is only accessible through the hotel’s own website links. This means that for the 6 Washington, D.C. hotels in the Starwood chain, the lowest rate is likely available through a link on the Hotel Offers page on one of the 6 websites for these specific hotels.

Kayak, Expedia, and Travelocity do not show these hotel special offer rates.

UpTake.com is good at pulling up hotel special offers, however, I still have not found them to lead me to the lowest rates in the few searches I have conducted through the website.

The problem with special offers is that you need hours and hours to check all the possibilities.

The feature that narrowed my search was the discrepancy between hotel rates over the weekend among the Starwood brands.

Washington D. C. Hotel Weekend Rates for Friday and Saturday nights

The rates at the Four Points, Westin City Center, and Fairfax at Embassy Row were so much lower for the weekend than the other Starwood Hotel options. With the list narrowed to these three hotels I could easily search special offers, free nights, and Cash & Points for the best 7-night value at a single hotel.

Westin D.C. City Center had a 3-night rate of $119 for Friday through Sunday for the lowest overall weekend rate. Westin DC City Center also had Cash & Points awards for all the dates around the weekend. Four Points Downtown and Fairfax at Embassy Row only had Cash & Points for 2 days of the 7 night stay.

# 7 Focus on a single hotel and special offers for Westin Washington D.C. City Center

3^rd Night Free brings the rate down from $119 per night for Friday-Saturday, and Sunday nights to $300 for 3 nights.

The big score was when I found availability for three nights at the Westin D.C. City Center using the pay your BirthYear rate at $180 for the first night and $36 for the second and third night. This rate was $50 less than the 3rd night free and brought the nightly room rate down to $84 per night.

Final reservation choices:

a)      $287 for three paid nights at Westin Washington D.C. City Center and 4 nights free for 40,000 points.

b)      $287 for three paid nights and 4 nights using Cash & Points award for $240 + 16,000 points; $275 after tax.

$562 + 16,000 points = Final Booking for 7 nights in July 2009 Washington, D.C. at Westin DC City Center.

16,000 points provided over a $1,000 savings on the published Starwood Hotels rate of $1,683 after tax for the Westin DC City Center for my family’s travel dates.

Supreme Court, Washington, D.C.

There is value in a website like DealBase.com for finding hotel bargains. Here is another metasearch engine to find price discrepancies between the hotel website and the online travel agency hotel rates.

The difference with DealBase.com from just another Kayak.com is the ability to look for hotel bargains by category or tag.

For example a site visitor can look up deals in these category listings:

·         Best Hotel Deals

·         Cheap Hotel Deals

·         Best Five Star Hotel Deals

·         Best Four Star Hotel Deals

·         Cheap Weekend hotel Deals

·         Last Minute Hotel Deals

·         Hotel Deals with the Most Items

·         New Hotels Deals

·         Expensive Hotel Packages

·         Worst Hotel Deals

The problem with searching a category is the geographic diversity of the listings.

When I look at a city like San Francisco then I am hit with dozens of hotel offers. The bottom line for me is I can’t really tell whether the discount deal shown is truly a “deal”. 

For example the JW Marriott San Francisco is listed at $194 and up for a champagne and strawberries night. Regular prices are shown as $369 per night. On another of the 15 pages of deals is the JW Marriott at $199 for a parking package and the hotel regular rate is shown as $294 per night.

Is the $369 per night the regular rate for Champagne and strawberries and $294 per night the regular rate for a room and parking?

If I want to see just JW Marriott San Francisco deals, how do I filter those? It is quite easy actually.

Simply click on the hotel name when it comes up on DealBase.com listings and the website will display all the deals for that particular hotel.

Using tags a visitor can check for Starpoints deals and Hilton HHonors deals, although these sections looked to be fairly basic and little analysis for the “deal” attribute of hotel loyalty points bonus offers.

What I did not see how to do in my limited search time was filter for all hotels in San Francisco offering parking deals.

Another problem I encountered was seeing a good parking deal listed for Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf at $130 and up. The dates I tried were $159.

Can I find out when the $130 rate is available through DealBase.com?

DealBase.com looks poised to be a major player in the coming year as hotel travel deals become more a necessity in this travel environment.

If DealBase.com can fine tune the deal analysis section of this website, then I may be seeking employment in San Mateo.

Kayak.com, the travel meta-search engine that scans the web for hotel prices (and airfares) from different online travel agencies, purchased TravelPost.com in 2007. Recent news indicates Kayak.com will try to establish rivalry to TripAdvisor.com’s globally dominant hotel review database with a revamped TravelPost.com site.

Kayak.com has put money into a relaunch of TravelPost.com. My initial glance at the site reveals a major hurdle is still waiting to be leaped in catching up to the volume of TripAdvisor.com hotel reviews.

Major Hotel Review Sites

Last summer I attempted an analysis of TripAdvisor.com hotel reviews compared to some other hotel review sites.  Ultimately I concluded Expedia.com, owner of TripAdvisor.com and Hotels.com, had the most comprehensive database of hotel reviews on the web. No other hotel review site came even close.

Six sites I studied last July were:

1.    TripAdvisor (Expedia)

2.    Hotels.com (Expedia)

3.    IgoUgo (Travelocity)

4.    TravelPost (Kayak)

5.    Orbitz

6.    Yahoo Travel Guides

The basic methodology was to look at the number of recent hotel reviews for several major San Francisco hotels. I defined recent as any review posted on the hotel review website within the prior 12 months. 

Some hotel review sites displayed a good number of total reviews when checking a hotel rating, however, closer examination showed the vast majority of these hotel reviews were more than a year old.  Some of these hotel review sites had seen their popularity wane several years earlier.  TravelPost.com was one hotel review site sitting idle despite having one of the largest hotel review databases.

Last summer TripAdvisor.com appeared to be the only hotel review site on the rise with a database large enough to be generally useful to a broad range of potential hotel guests traveling around the USA and the world.

The Ascendance of Kayak.com

Now in 2009 Kayak.com is stating a commitment to promote TravelPost.com in a plan to tackle TripAdvisor.com in a subtle front against Expedia’s domination of the online hotel review scene.  It is too early to tell whether TravelPost.com can mount a competitive campaign.

The popularity of Kayak.com over the past couple of years is an indicator that TravelPost.com can receive plenty of advertising and referral traffic.  Kayak.com pulled in 6.25 million unique visitors during February 2009, according to Compete.com, compared to 8.19 million TripAdvisor.com visitors.  Kayak’s hotel review site TravelPost.com is still a toddler in popularity at 340,000 visitors in Feb 2009 compared to the giant TripAdvisor.

How effectively Kayak.com can refer people to TravelPost.com for hotel review submissions will play a key role in the success of this site. With Kayak.com already receiving 75% of the traffic of TripAdvisor.com, a hotel review site would be a natural extension to the one-stop check of Kayak.com.

The Hurdle – who will generate the reviews for TravelPost?

The primary issue I see at the moment is the database of hotels TravelPost.com is accessing.  I rechecked some hotels that I studied last July, eight months ago.

Here is an example to illustrate the database issue hurdle TravelPost.com must overcome to be a competitive hotel travel review website with TripAdvisor.com based on the member activity over the past 8.5 months as measured by hotel review posts.

Westin St. Francis, San Francisco is a major hotel with nearly 1,200 rooms in downtown San Francisco located on Union Square in the shopping district.  This hotel has had thousands of guests over the past 8 months.

 *  The raw numbers in this table indicate TripAdvisor.com grew by 111 hotel reviews in the past 8.5 months.  The reviews for the Westin St. Francis on TravelPost.com appear to have grown by 68 reviews, a respectable number of reviews added to the database.  A closer look at the source of these reviews indicates most of this growth is actually from using IgoUgo as an added database of hotel reviews on TravelPost.com.  There were only 3 reviews accessed from TravelPost.com since July 2008 during the timeframe that TripAdvisor added 111 reviews for the Westin St. Francis Hotel.

This is why TravelPost.com has a huge hurdle.  Getting the public posting is a challenge.

The following is an excerpt from my July 12, 2008 post “Online Hotel Reviews Website Comparison”.

Online Hotel Reviews

Travelers place a lot of faith in consumer-generated hotel reviews. I trust FlyerTalk.com content because there is a large community of travelers who provide opinions and feedback on each other’s comments. Most major upscale hotels around the world have user comments and reviews from the 100,000+ members of the FlyerTalk.com community.

I believe the self-monitoring independent community of FlyerTalk.com provides more accurate hotel reviews than what is typically found on TripAdvisor.com, particularly when it comes to the experience for elite frequent guests in the major hotel loyalty programs.

Social Media Co-Opted by Corporate Media

The best social media websites with consumer generated comments and hotel reviews have been co-opted by corporate media. Social media websites where users generate the content for free has been a successful marketing partnership for major travel industry players. What in many cases started out as independent, organically developed networks of people creating content for free to help other travelers has developed into the current condition of the major global travel reservations corporations like Expedia.com and Travelocity.com owning social network sites like TripAdvisor.com and IgoUgo.com as corporate subsidiaries.

Meta-search engines like Kayak.com who own TravelPost.com, and bulletin boards like FlyerTalk.com and Cruisecritic.com are not sellers of travel, but make money on an advertising model based on travelers frequently interacting as a community creating new content.

Major Online Hotel Reviews and Their Parent Corporations

IgoUgo.com hotel reviews and hotel rate meta-search engine = Travelocity.com (Parent Company)

TripAdvisor.com for hotel reviews and hotel rate meta-search = Expedia.com (Parent company)

Hotels.com has a large database for hotel reviews. Hotels.com is also an Expedia company. Hotel guests must have booked stay with Hotels.com to post a review and most of the reviews do not have any written comments. A point scale survey on Hotel Service, Hotel Condition, Room Comfort, and Room Cleanliness are used to give the hotel a rating on a 5 point scale. This website offers a quick snapshot of customer satisfaction for hotel.

TravelPost.com for hotel reviews and Kayak is a meta-search = Kayak.com (Parent Company)

Orbitz.com generates its own database of user-generated hotel reviews based on hotel guests booking through Orbitz.com and responding via e-mail to a post-stay request for a hotel review.

Yahoo! Travel uses a couple of different hotel review databases. When conducting hotel searches through the Yahoo Travel homepage the results use Travelocity and the hotel reviews are the same as Travelocity. When using Yahoo Travel Guides or FareChase for hotel searches the hotel reviews are a different set.

Update March 28, 2009: Here is a link to Elliott Ng’s blog discussing UpTake.com for metasearch of hotel reviews. You should defintiely take a look at the UpTake.com site.

San Francisco seems like a good place to hang out for St. Patrick’s Day. There are quite a number of Irish pubs in the City.

Tuesday night hotel rates in San Francisco can be astronomical at any time of year.  Find yourself in town on a convention night and the upper upscale hotel room is going for $350+ per night. Hit a quiet weekend night or holiday and rates can plummet to $90 for a four star and $120 for a five star hotel and all its associated loyalty program benefits.

Starwood Hotel Rates

San Francisco,

Tuesday night March 17, 2009 (St. Patrick’s Day)

Fisherman’s Wharf is the best rate, but a Union Square/Market Street hotel is going to be more conducive to a pub crawl.

San Francisco has a 14% hotel room tax and at $189 for Westin Market, the one night hotel rate is going to cash out at $216 for a night. I want a better priced option than that.

Kayak.com Comparison for Hotel Rates

A quick survey of Kayak.com rates showed discrepancies between Westin Market Street displayed for $129 at Hotels.com and The Palace Hotel at $119 at HotelClub.net.

I tested the Palace Hotel with HotelClub.net and the system kicked me out near the end of the booking process. When I restarted my search the room rate for the Palace Hotel increased to $249. I also tried other sites still showing a $119 rate for the Palace Hotel and all searches resulted in a rate change with the third party online travel agency to the rate shown on Starwood Hotels sites.

I tried the Westin Market Street through Hotels.com and the rate actually came up even lower at $109 for a Traditional room and the rate was bookable. Even better, an added value certificate for $50 on a future two night Hotels.com booking would accompany the $109 room rate.

I rechecked the Starwood site and the lowest priced room for the Westin Market Street was $169 and called a Grand Deluxe. The Starwood Hotels internet rate had dropped $20 on the room between 6:11pm and 6:53pm.

The Palace Hotel had also dropped in price during the hour, from $249 to $211.

I filed a Best Rate Guarantee claim for the Westin Market Street citing the $109 rate at 6:57pm, March 12, 2009.

Westin Market Street Hotel, San Francisco

The Day After

I checked my email this morning and there was nothing from Starwood Hotels Best Rate Guarantee.

I checked SPG.com for St. Patrick’s Day hotel rates in San Francisco. The Westin Market Street was still listed at $169 for a Grand Deluxe room at 8:00am, March 13.

I saw another opportunity for a BRG claim at the Le Meridien San Francisco for this weekend at $119 on Hotels.com compared to $139 at Starwood Hotels sites.

I checked a few times today looking for the Starwood BRG email, but nothing came.

5:40pm March 13, 2009; Starwood Hotels response came 22 hours, 43 minutes after filing my BRG claim for the San Francisco Westin Market Street. My claim was approved. The Starwood rate is $233.75 and if I book a room at that rate within 24 hours, then my rate will be adjusted to $109 and I will also receive 2,000 Starpoints (a $70 value) for a successful BRG claim.

The $233.75 rate puzzled me so I went to SPG.com and searched rates.  The Westin Market Street rate was displayed as $289. When I selected the hotel rate , the rate dropped to $159 for a Premier room. Premier is a higher category room for $30 less than last night’s initial search showing a Grand Deluxe San Francisco hotel room on the Starwood sites for $189.

The fundamental question I considered these past 24 hours was whether a hotel chain, not Starwood per se, but in general,  ‘Could a hotel skirt the best rate guarantee by just altering inventory to move cheap rooms through third party sites?’ 

A hotel chain could maintain higher category rooms at higher prices on its own sites at times for the guest who doesn’t search around to get better rates or from loyal customers who may not go elsewhere to compare rates.  Best rate guarantees that do go through could technically be voided because the room types are not the same when a lower category room is on a third party site and that room is not bookable online at the hotel chain’s own site.

The point was moot anyhow since Starwood Hotels honored my Best Rate Guarantee claim for $109, a rate $60 less than the $169 Starwood rate for the Westin Market Street, San Francisco, despite the room types being different between the Starwood Hotels and Hotels.com sites.

Hotels.com showed the rate at $229 for March 17, 2009 when I checked just after I received the email of my successful Best Rate Guarantee claim.

Kayak.com is not your best friend for hotel rates.

I haven’t gone through my OTA rant in a few months now.  OTA is Online Travel Agency. 

Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz are the dominant players in travel searches for hotels.  The value of an OTA is the ability to get a quick snapshot of prices in a city and then quickly book your hotel stay.  Recently all the OTAs have had sales claiming 20%, 40%, even 50% off room rates. 

Kayak.com is on a lot of travelers “Favorite” list for hotel rate searches.  I use Kayak to get an idea of the prevailing hotel rates for an area when I start planning travel.  Kayak.com is a meta-search engine and not an OTA. 

Kayak.com does not actually sell hotel rooms.  A meta-search engine quickly goes through the hotel rates or airfares for a variety of OTAs and pulls up the prices.  Kayak.com takes you to an OTA like Expedia or Orbitz for booking your hotel room or flight once you make a specific selection among the hotel or airline search returns.

Kayak.com is very useful for finding low airfares, but much less useful for hotel rates.

The problem with Kayak.com and OTAs in general is the inability to locate special offer rates or group rates commonly available like AAA and senior group discounts.

Renaissance Eden Roc, Miami Beach – A Tale of Two Travelers

Ellen is a busy executive, but a do it yourself travel planner.  She gets a thrill from looking at websites and picturing herself in the perfect bathing suit, on the perfect beach, in perfect weather, at a great hotel, at the best price.

Ellen goes to Kayak.com and finds the Renaissance Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach listed at $330. 

Kayak.com shows Eden Roc Renaissance, Miami Beach for $330

A pop-up window search for Travelocity.com shows $369 for this Miami Beach, Florida hotel. 

Travelocity hotel rate for Eden Roc, Miami Beach $369

Based on Renaissance Eden Roc’s TripAdvisor ranking of #23 of 207 Miami area hotels and its 4-star rating, Ellen believes the $369 rate pulled up on Travelocity is a fair market rate for this hotel and compared to other hotel rates on Miami Beach like the Fontainebleau.

TripAdvisor Rating for Eden Roc, Miami Beach, #23 of 206 Hotels

Kayak.com search shows $330 per night through gtahotels.com website.  This may be a good way to save $78 and tax for the two night stay. 

GTAHotels rate is $330 for Eden Roc, Miami Beach (Kayak search lead)

Ellen is a savvy traveler and she knows Marriott.com should have the same $330 rate. She will earn Marriott Rewards points by booking through the Marriott website. 

She heads over to Marriott.com and rechecks the rate for Eden Roc, Miami Beach, January 11-13 for two nights.  The rate shows as $369 on Marriott.com for a 14-day advance reservation rate that allows a no penalty cancellation up to 3 days before arrival.  A reservation canceled within three days forfeits one night’s room charges of $416.97.  She doesn’t see a $330 rate on Marriott.com.  Perhaps this is a potential “Best Rate Guarantee” claim with Marriott.

Marriott.com rate for Renaissance Eden Roc, Miami Beach is $369

Always Check Hotel Rate Rules for the fine print on cancellation. 

From the Marriott Website for this $369 rate:

Rate Rules

Holding Your Reservation

·         We will need a credit card number to reserve your room.

Canceling Your Reservation

·         You may cancel your reservation for no charge until January 8, 2009 (3 day[s] before arrival).

·         Please note that we will assess a fee of 416.97 USD if you must cancel after this deadline.

If you have made a prepayment, we will retain all or part of your prepayment. If not, we will charge your credit card.

This fee equals 1 night of your room charge plus tax (for the first night of your reservation).

Modifying Your Reservation

·         Please note that a change in the length or dates of your reservation may result in a rate change.

·         Your current rate may be available if your modified reservation still includes:

·         A reservation made 14 day(s) before your expected arrival.

Ellen knows AAA usually brings the rate down even more and repeats the rate search on Marriott.com with the AAA box checked.

Marriott.com AAA rate for Renaissance Eden Roc Hotel, Miami is $386

Oddly enough, the AAA rate is actually more than the 14-day advance reservation rate.  Reading the rate rules, Ellen sees there is no advantage or benefit to the more expensive AAA rate.  The AAA rate also allows a cancellation up to 3 days before arrival date.

Ellen books the two night stay at the Eden Roc Renaissance Resort for $833.94 through the Marriott website because the points and stay credit make the higher price a better value for her hotel lifestyle than the $39 + tax per night she would have saved through her Kayak.com search using gtahotels.com for her booking.  Ellen will earn at least 7,380 Marriott Rewards points for her two night stay at $369/night.

Marriott.com Total rate for Renaissance Eden Roc Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida

January 11-13, 2009  $833.94

Hotel Special Offers are Where the Best Deals are Found

Loyalty Traveler booked the Eden Roc Renaissance Resort for the same room type, on the same dates, on the same Marriott.com website and paid $291.54 for his two night stay.  And Loyalty Traveler will earn a $100 hotel credit for his next stay at the Eden Roc Resort.

Marriott.com $129 Special Offer Rate for Renaissance Eden Roc Hotel, Miami Beach, FL 

Why is there a $542.40 difference in the Marriott.com room rates?

The Loyalty Traveler took the time to look through 12 pages of Marriott Rewards special offers found here.   An offer on page 9 for the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel showed a $129 special rate valid through January 31, 2009 for Marriott Rewards members:

Marriott Rewards Members’ Sneak Peek of the Bold New Eden Roc

Resort and Spa!!

Includes a great introductory rate, welcome amenity, and a $100

Resort Credit to be used on a return stay in 2009.

Resort Credit cannot be used on current stay*

Resort Credit cannot be applied to room and tax*

Based on Availability*

Restrictions may apply*

Valid 10/24/08-1/31/09*

Marriott.com Special Offer Rate of $129 for Renaissance Eden Roc Hotel, Miami Beach

Special Offer Rate of $129 even includes a $100 credit towards a future Eden Roc stay.

And remember to check the fare rules:

Canceling Your Reservation

·         You may cancel your reservation for no charge until January 8, 2009 (3 day[s] before arrival).

·         Please note that we will assess a fee of 145.77 USD if you must cancel after this deadline.

If you have made a prepayment, we will retain all or part of your prepayment. If not, we will charge your credit card.

This fee equals 1 night of your room charge plus tax (for the first night of your reservation).

The fare rules for the special offer rate of $129 are the same cancellation rules as the higher $369 rate.

Hotel Corporations are in the business of making money.

Great deals are available on the hotel’s websites, however, a standard search on the corporate-branded websites does not automatically return the lowest available rates for your stay.  You must specifically search special rates like AAA, Senior, and Promotional rates. 

The code is M11 for the $129 special offer for the Renaissance Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach.  Marriott.com automatically uses the M11 code if you click through the rate search using the special offers page link.

Keep in mind when planning your hotel travel that Kayak.com and OTAs are useful tools, but the best discounts for your hotel stay are often hotel special rates and offers unlikely to be found by these sites.  Even using the hotel-branded websites like Marriott.com will often keep these low rates hidden when searching hotel rates.

There are great hotel deals all the time.  Knowing where and how to find them is the challenge.

If You’re Going to San Francisco,

Be Sure to Where Some Flowers in Your Hair,

And also check for the $134 special offer rate for the Renaissance Stanford Court on Nob Hill:

http://www.marriott.com/specials/mesOffer.mi?marrOfferId=358706&displayLink=true