Colfax

I made my first purchase through Travelocity Top Secret Hotels this week. It worked out as I got the hotel I was expecting at a better rate than I found anyplace else, including Hotwire, which was offering the same hotel.

I got the Menlo Park Inn in Menlo Park, CA for $59.51 plus tax/fee.

TTSH doesn't offer as many hotels as Hotwire but what they have can be ID'ed with a high degree of confidence. TTSH rates each secret hotel 1-5 on eleven criteria (bed comfort, cleanliness, pool, etc). Those TTSH ratings come direct from Travelocity's regular listings, where the hotel's name is disclosed.

To ID a Travelocity Top Secret just note the eleven subratings, then look for a match in Travelocity retail. Travelocity makes it easy by displaying Retail and Secret listings under two tabs on the same page. That's much simpler than trying to ID Hotwire hotels where the "clues" come from TripAdvisor stats and IDs require toggling back and forth between two different websites.

TTSH transaction fees were lower than Hotwire's too, at least for my purchase. Don't know if that's always the case.

Travelocity: $59.51 + $6.67 tax/fee = $66.18

Hotwire: $59.00 + $12.86 tax/fee = $71.86

A $59 purchase on Priceline would have had tax/fee of $14.81 = $73.81. That's not an apples to apples comparison though, as the Menlo Park Inn might have been available for a lower bid price than $59, offsetting some or all of Priceline's usually higher transaction fee.