It's a breeze to book a hotel room online

By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff, 10/06/02

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No wonder Robert Diener is smiling.

The hotel business may be in a severe slump, but his business, Hotels.com, is taking off like an express elevator to the penthouse. Travelers may not be booking as many hotel rooms overall this year, but those who are making reservations increasingly are doing so through online services like Diener's.

In the second quarter that ended June 30, Hotels.com's sales soared 66 percent to $229.7 million and net income more than quadrupled to nearly $19 million. The Dallas company sold more than 4 million room nights last year and expects to top 8 million this year. And there's still a lot more room to grow, since only 4 to 6 percent of rooms are expected to be booked online this year.

"There's tremendous upside," said Diener, the president of Hotels.com, who was in town recently attending a convention in Cambridge. "We think we'll do even better once the economy picks up."

Just as the Internet is revolutionizing the way travelers buy airline tickets, so now it is transforming the way hotel rooms are booked. There's no place to one-stop-shop yet, and there may never be because there are so many hotels out there. But going online offers the sensible traveler the opportunity to comparison-shop a number of hotels in a specific geographical area quickly and simply.

Most online booking sites got their start because hotels wanted a way to unload unused rooms. But as the popularity of booking online has increased, the Web sites are starting to become the first stop for many customers. Instead of adjuncts to the hotel sales staff, the Web sites are starting to replace the hotel sales staff.

The clearest signal yet that booking hotel rooms online has arrived was the formation earlier this year of Travelweb.com. Created by five leading hotel chains — Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, Six Continents, and Starwood — Travelweb is an attempt to sell direct to consumers rather than through intermediaries. It's very similar to what the five leading airlines have done in creating Orbitz, but its task is much greater because the universe of hotel operators is so much larger.

Diener says the strength of Hotels.com is its competitive pricing, its convenience, and room availability. Hotels.com buys blocks of rooms at many hotels as long as a year in advance and, as a result, often has rooms when everything else is sold out. It also is moving into vacation rentals, even time shares.

Diener says his biggest challenge is persuading travelers to give online booking a try. He says his company's research indicates travelers worry the online booking process is too complicated and too time-consuming, and that a better deal could be found using the phone.

My experience has been just the opposite. Booking online is simpler, cheaper, and much faster than using the Yellow Pages.

I went looking for a hotel room in Boston and the surrounding area for Oct. 18 and 19, a Friday and Saturday during the busy fall season. I checked Hotels.com, Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelweb. (Travelocity, another big online travel agent, uses Hotels.com as its hotel booking agent.) I also called the hotels directly. All told, it took me about an hour.

Each Web site brings up a vast array of room choices in many different price ranges. Some require payment in advance, while others let you pay when you check in.

I picked three hotels common to all four sites and did some comparison shopping. In each case, I found lower prices on the Web. Orbitz fared the best overall, but no one site uniformly offered the best price. Hotels.com, which boasts that it has "the best prices at the best places, guaranteed," failed to live up to that pledge.

At the Omni Parker House, I was quoted a price of $478 for the two nights on the hotel's own Web site and when I called the hotel directly. Travelweb quoted me the same price.

Hotels.com was charging slightly less — $470 for the two nights. Expedia offered a low rate for the Friday night, but didn't have any rooms to sell for Saturday night. Orbitz had both the rooms and the best price at $448.22.

At Nine Zero on Tremont Street, there was a much bigger price difference. Hotels.com was charging $639.90, followed by the hotel itself at $598, Expedia and Travelweb at $498, and Orbitz at $490.

For the Holiday Inn Express in Dorchester just off the Southeast Expressway near South Bay, Expedia had no rooms available, and the hotel itself could offer me only one night. Of the three remaining Web sites, Orbitz and Travelweb were a couple dollars less than Hotels.com.

Out of curiosity, I checked the same dates at the same three hotels two days later and discovered everything had changed. Hotels.com was no longer selling rooms at the Omni Parker House for the dates I wanted, and its rate at Nine Zero had inched up $40. Its rate at the Holiday Inn Express was unchanged, but now it was far and away the best deal of the bunch because the rates of Travelweb and Orbitz had jumped to $620.

rrBruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.