I'm looking for budget hotels in NYC, and in reading the fine print on Travelocity "Value Rate" properties, I was astonished to see the following:

"Travelocity Value Rate Policy
This property has TRAVELOCITY VALUE RATES (Tell Me More!).
If you select one of the TRAVELOCITY VALUE RATES, the deposit,
cancelation, and change policies are a little different:

+ All changes and cancelations will incur a minimum USD 50.00 penalty."

I guess Travelocity is single-handedly trying to take out the "hospitality" in the hospitality industry!

Get out of town, Travelocity... you're making yourself a resource that's good only for finding out going rates and fares in order to book elsewhere.

You're right with your statement if you are not 100% sure you wanna go on this trip.
But if you do know you will, you can sometimes get very good rates, even if the hotel is sold-out on regular rates because travelocity buys a certain amount of rooms.
It's all depending on your travel plans/needs - and a travelocity value rate is roughly the same as a (more or less heavily) restricted plane ticket.

It is not just Traevelocity. Some discounted rates in some hotel chains are also sometimes subject to limited refund/cancellations, indeed sometimes not refundable at all.

I was able to get the Westin LAX this Tuesday night for $79 thru Travekocity vs. $139 via AMEX (I veen had them call the hotel directly and see if they could get that rate for me and the answer was "no" -- the reservation agent couldn't even see that rate).

I then got the Sheraton City Center in Salt Lake on Wednesday for $95 vs. $119.

You are right, that you lose if you need to change/canel...but unlike Priceline, you can pick your hotel, and I believe you get Starwood Q points, which you don't with many of the discount hotel sites.

Just make sure that you read and understand the rules. If it meets your needs and you can live with the restrictions buy it.

The airline restrictions can exceed usual discounted ticket limitations.

Well, I haven't arrived yet, but I'm already having plenty of frustrations. I called the hotel in SLC to see if my Starwood Gold number was in my record, and lo and behold they didn't even have my reservation, despite my pretty confirmation report on the Travelocity site.

So I called Travelocity and after waiting on hold for a while they told me that I had to call the hotel department. They then gave me a seperate 800 number.

Well, it turns out that the hotel dept. is a seperate company called Hotel Reservation Network, which operates the Discount Hotels web site, and that they don't fax in the reservations to the hotels until about 48 hours before arrival. Since the hotel I was inquiring about was for Wednesday, she said my reservation wouldn't be faxed in until later today or tomorrow.

I then asked her about my reservation for tomorrow in LA. She said that yes, that one was faxed in yesterday and should be there.

I then asked if my Starwood Gold number was in my record, and she said that I had to call the hotel seperately and give them that. I found that frustrating, because my Starwood number is in my Travelocity profile, but apparently the two systems don't communicate like one would expect.

I then called the Westin in LA to check on this reservation, and they can't find it, so I faxed them my confirmation.

Very frustrating and inneffective. My guess is that by the time I arrive, it will be there (w/o my Starwood number), but now I have to keep following up.

I am afraid that all I ever see is that Travelocity has dreadful customer service.

I was under the impression that you would get NO POINTS, because payment is not made to the hotel or Starwood, but rather to HRN, which is a consolidator. That is why I never take those "deals."

Lotsa Luck!

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I too learned the hard way. In January, I used HRN (linked through Travelocity) to book a Hilton in Dallas. The price difference between HRN and the Hilton website was only $20, but that was enough to cover my company's hotel cost limit. They took my HHonors # at check-in, but I was not reflected in my account. I questioned HHonors on this and eventually earned credit for the stay, but no points. When I questioned HRN on this, they told me that all hotels are different --- some will honor frequent stay credits and others will not --- they would not tell me which. I won't be using them again.

I stoped using these discounts a long time ago. I found out that they were hard to confirm and not always done right through HRN. The other thing is you do not get credit.

Just to pile on complaints about HRN

I've twice booked hotels through Travelocity's "value rates" and both times arrived to the hotel only to find out that they've never heard of me (even though I have the printout of the reservation in hand).

Both times it turned out to be booked the HRN. Luckily having the printout helped a lot and the hotels were able to figure it out.

I still book regular rooms through Travelocity but refuse to use any of the "special value" rates.

Here's what I learned so far. I called the Sheraton to see if my reservation for today was in the system and the front desk guy confirmed that it was.

I then asked him to input my Gold number and he gave me a hard time, saying that because I was travelling using a prepaid rate that I wouldn't get any points/credit for the stay.

I asked him to try and input the number anyway, and while he still gave me a hard time and said it wouldn't matter and woundn't take, he finally agreed to do it, and it seemed to take, but who knows?

I am very frustrarted/upset, becuase Travelocity told me over the phone that all hotel stays earn points.

We'll see what happens.

Take a look at Expedia "Special Rates". They are comparable to Travelocity Value Rates (actually lower when I've found them at certain chains, such as Hyatt). They charge you upfront just like Travelocity, but will let you cancel 72 hours prior to the stay for a $10 penalty.

72 hours is still pretty tight, but better than Travelocity.

Do you get Q points for hotels?

Try www.quikbook.com