Easier to book a room online than find the lowest price

By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff, 10/20/02

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Two weeks ago I went over the basics of booking a hotel room online. Since then, I've heard from a lot of people, some offering helpful tips and some pointing out potential pitfalls a sensible traveler could encounter.

Daniel Saul, president of Smarter Living Inc., a travel information company based in Cambridge, cited a pitfall. When making a hotel reservation by phone, he said, most travelers have become accustomed to repeatedly asking the service agent whether the rate being offered is the lowest one. Booking online requires the same diligence, he said, but often it is not as easy.

"You really need to do multiple searches within the same site," Saul said.

For example, we tried the Web site for Starwood Hotels & Resorts, the parent company of the Westin, Sheraton, St. Regis, and W chains. We checked availability at the Sheraton Boston hotel in the Back Bay for a two-night stay for two adults on Nov. 8 and 9.

The initial rate, without any discounts, was $209 a night, $418 total. This Internet rate required booking 21 days in advance and payment at the time the reservation was made. The lowest rate without these requirements was $259 a night, $518 total.

Next we checked promotional rates, and learned none were available for Nov. 8 and 9. Then we checked rates with discounts included for membership in an automobile association or in the American Association of Retired Persons. These rates, which required no advance purchase, were $229 a night, or $458 total.

Finally, we went back several screens and found a promotion for Sheraton "hot deals." On the nights we wanted, the hot deal was an Internet rate of $239 a night, or $478 total, and it included a $20 credit toward one of the hotel restaurants.

The lowest rate overall turned out to be the initial Internet rate, but a consumer would have no way of knowing that without doing all the additional searches. Indeed, the hot deal was anything but hot. It was identical to the Internet rate except you paid an extra $20 a night for a $20 credit toward a meal at one of the hotel's restaurants.

I couldn't find a lower rate on any other standard Web site for the Sheraton stay, but I did find a matching rate on Quikbook.com. The Quikbook rate was superior in one key respect: It didn't require an advance purchase.

Lynn Santilli, a reader, e-mailed us a tip. Rather than searching each Web site separately, she goes to Travelaxe.com, which does the searching for her. "It's free and extremely easy to use," she said.

Travelaxe scrapes rates from many different Web sites, including Hotels.com, Expedia, and Lodging.com. Plugging in a city like Boston yields dozens of hotels along with a matrix of prices on the different Web sites, with the lowest highlighted in yellow. Travelaxe receives a commission when a customer books a room from its site.

But Travelaxe is still not exhaustive in its searches. For example, the best price on Travelaxe for the Sheraton Boston for Nov. 8 and 9 was $582.40 with Turbo Trip. That was close to $160 more than the price Sheraton's own Web site was quoting.

Carl Samos, president of Travelaxe, said he wants to eventually add hotel Web sites, but they aren't included now except for searches in Las Vegas. Typically, he said, the Web sites searched by Travelaxe offer lower rates than the hotel Web sites themselves.

He offered some examples. At the Renaissance Orlando Hotel at Seaworld, Travelaxe turned up a nightly rate of $149 with OneTravel.com. The best rate on the hotel's Web site was $249 a night.

Many travel Web sites offer price guarantees, but be sure to read the fine print before pursuing them. Hotels.com, for example, promises to refund the price difference or cancel the reservation without penalty. Starwood has a better guarantee, promising to match the lower price and give an additional 10 percent off.

But there's a lot of fine print to wade through first. In some cases, the guarantees seem designed to make the consumer jump through countless hoops. It may not be worth the effort in some cases.

None of the guarantees permit price comparisons to Priceline or Hotwire, online services where the consumer reserves and pays for a room before learning which hotel he is being booked into. For the flexible traveler who doesn't need to stay at a specific hotel, these services offer considerable savings.

For my November dates in Boston, I checked with both companies for prices and availability in the Back Bay/Copley area. Hotwire offered a four-star hotel for $207 a night or a 3.5-star hotel for $115 a night.

Brian Ek at Priceline did a search for me and said he found a four-star hotel for $115 a night in the Back Bay/Copley area. He said he also found a four-star hotel in downtown Boston for $99 a night.

Biddingfortravel.com, where consumers often post their experiences in dealing with Priceline, indicated at least two travelers were able to book the Sheraton in early October for $65 a night.

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hdbriefFrequent flier caution

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The Frequent Flier Crier recently offered an interesting analysis of the mileage transfer offer from American Airlines, which is good through Dec. 31.

Under the offer, AAdvantage members can transfer up to 60,000 miles to other members' accounts and receive transfers of up to 15,000 miles. The cost is $25 for up to three transactions plus a second fee based on the number of miles transferred.

Not including the $25 base fee, the cost of transferring miles ranges from a whopping 5 cents a mile for a 1,000-mile transfer to 1 cent a mile for a 15,000-mile transfer. Noting you can buy miles for 2.5 cents apiece, the Frequent Flier Crier advises caution in making transfers.

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