pokecheckted

Same here... Never a problem at all.

harryhv

Problems with Aus hotel booking sites: lastminute/travel com au/wotif etc

1. They have got too big. It's now the same business and identical pricing over lastminute.com.au, wotif and travel.com.au. When it was a small site offering overflow rooms the prices were great. Now you can just use wotif to check the regular rack rate before looking around other sites for a bargain: there's always better deals somewhere, at expedia com au, or orbitz/expedia US sites with promo codes.

2. They have got too big - and can't or won't fix the mistakes on the site. The "crooks" epithet reflects a situation where the secret hotel promised "This hotel is located in Perth" when it should have said "This hotel is located outside Perth". Spoke to Wotif customer service, who flatly refused to do anything about it, would not even reverse the booking.

They came up with the same answer you seem to get whenever you report a website failure to a booking site operator: not our problem, call the property. Grr, crooks.

USA_flyer

FWIW, I don't even think about booking on opaque sites unless I know or have a very good idea of what hotel I will end up with. It doesn't take too much effort/research to find out what these topsecret hotels are.

Also, I've used lastminute.com for car hire, air travel, theatre tickets and hotel, all without issue.

ranman1973

I think it is unfortunate that hotel ratings vary so much. Isn't the point of using a rating system to implement a STANDARD. You book a 2-star and you know what to expect. You book a 4-star and you know what to expect.

Ratings not only very across websites but they change from country to country. A 4-star hotel in Rome is not the same as a 4-star hotel in North America, obviously. Having recently travelled to Mexico, I can tell you first hand their rating systems are not the same as up here in Canada.

It really is a shame because we put trust in these sites and their rating of the hotel, especially when blind bidding.

My rule of thumb when booking on opaque sites: identify the hotel before you buy. Sites like www.hoteldealsrevealed.com and others are great for this. Hotwire makes it easy to ID your hotel before you buy because they list the hotel amenities, which is one of the reasons I favour Hotwire over PL.

Thanks for the post. You're right - A picture says a thousand words.

danielonn

I know this thread was started a few years back but I do have experience with using Hotwire in Rome.

The first time in Rome my Father and I got the NH Villa Carpegna which was far from the center for $100 with breakfast.

This November we will be in Rome again and got a 4 star hotel Marcella Royal for $100 as well with breakfast which is a 10 minute walk to the Termini/Republica Metro and close to the major bus lines.

In Barcelona we used Hotwire and got a 4 star Hotel $100 a night at the Amister Art Hotel which is a Boutique Hotel.

I like to look for the Boutique Hotel Listings on Hotwire as they have been good. In Athens I got the Airotel Parthenon for $85 a night with Breakfast.

Both Hotels got excellent ratings on TripAdviser and they are both in good locations. What I do is look at the map of the area and then take a chance.

We were pleasantly surprised that the Rome hotel includes breakfast as there was no indicator on Hotwire.

The Boutique Hotels we have stayed at have exceeded our expectations. In Barcelona when the room was not what we had expected and the safe was not working the kind manager upgraded us to a Mini Suite with a Balcony and comped us breakfast. Every night Cava was served and the breakfast here was amazing.

ch3232

It was my birthday a few weeks ago and my boyfriend flew over from America. I am a student but wanted to try to get a decent hotel within my budget.
I saw one on Lastminute.com Secret Hotel deals - they advertised it as a 4-star- I called on two occasions and spoke with phone agents. I told them expressly that it was my birthday, I felt sure my boyfriend would propose and that I needed a room that was 4-star and suitable for the occasion. They re-assured me both agents!) that this hotel was 'perfect for my needs' and 'you will not regret it', 'it is a luxury hotel with several fine dining restaurants to choose from' 'perfect for a weekend with your significant other.' So I booked - only to find out 1) they refused to confirm whether it would be two single beds or a double! 2) it was the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum- full of flight attendants and cheap tour coaches from Europe and China. The restaurants definitely weren't 4-star and most other search engines do not rate this as a 4-star hotel. How Lastminute.com gets away with giving their own rankings, mis-selling to people when they know what they need a room for (breach of the Sale of Goods Act as to implied terms of quality and fitness for my purpose - which I made known to them) I don't KNOW! I guess they feel they can rip people off since consumers can do little to combat this. I ended up staying elsewhere in the end- and losing £500 of my student money. As if I am going to stay in two separate beds on a weekend with my partner whom I hadn't seen for months. Lastminute.com would not respond to me - as far as I am concerned this is a wholly dishonest and crappy business - great for them but I will never be a customer of their EVER AGAIN!

WillTravel

It's quite likely you can upgrade (quite possibly for a fee) at the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum. This is a pretty standard 4* hotel in London (I've stayed there). For what you are looking for, you would have needed a 5*, and the bedding issue would have been the same with any "secret" booking site, unless they specifically allow bedding choices.

Write a nice letter to the manager at the HIKF, and I suspect he or she will help you.

chgoeditor

I'm sorry about your experience. That said, it's my understanding that star ratings in England are awarded based on a very strict criteria/uniform standards and the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum is, in fact, considered a four-star hotel.

ritesa

If it's that important to you to get exactly the hotel you have in mind, e.g. for a special occasion, don't book a secret hotel deal!!! It's as easy as that.

erik123

Did he?

Bluebirdnick

FWIW, a chargeback is the only language lastminute understand. I booked a top secret hotel in NYC. Two nights came to about £360. It was advertised as a "21% discount". Once the hotel was revealed, I compared the "top secret" rate to the non-cancelable rate offered by the hotel. The "top secret" rate was slightly more expensive than the non-cancelable rate. It did represent a 21% discount on the cancellable rate offered by Lastminute for an opaque booking, but that is irrelevant: a top secret room is non-cancellable, so the advertised 21% discount for booking an unknown hotel should be by reference to a non-cancellable rate.

I asked lastminute to credit me the difference between what I'd been charged, and what a 21% discount would actually represent. They refused to. I asked my credit card company for a chargeback of this amount (about £65). Beautifully, they said "no - it's blatant mis-selling" and recovered the full £360 charge. Net result was that I had two free nights in NYC, courtesy of Lastminute's daft approach. I also got to keep the £30-odd cashback from TCB for the booking.

Often1

Zero sympathy here. When you have specific needs, you need to do the research to make sure that your specific needs are being met. Using "*" ratings and the like is plain silly. Nobody tells you that their place is a dump and heaven forbid that a property in Europe have guests from Europe and Asia !

Here, one might have checked out the place and called the specific property to make certain that the specific room type you needed was available, done the research on the restaurants and what is nearby (it is London after all and it is not as though it is without eateries).

I am not a defender of last minute deals of any kind, but they are great for people who are flexible and just want to be somewhere. But, the great prices are a tradeoff.