Originally Posted by Rut Dog

Old post but very helpful. Thank you OP for this.

I actually wanted a different hotel than the "Last Person Got". The amenities and TA ratings clearly matched the hotel I wanted, and eventually got, but I had never known that they didn't always match the tip off.

So I was glad to find out this does happen.

I imagine they have some obligation to be deceptive in some cases when tipping their hand, to remain opaque in general.

By the way, I watched the price jump after hesitating. My $75 rate jumped to $83. When I didn't bite, it fell to $76. Then it retreated to the original $75. My, they're sneaky.

Originally Posted by gil123

I'll admit I'm not an expert in Hotwire. Never found it worth the hassle and limitations and I think it's a bit like a blind date (except that with one of those, if you don't like what you get you can always walk away) but I have now used it twice, and I'm done. Only reason I used it first time is that a couple months ago they were having their unrestricted $30 off per 4-star booking deal and the numbers worked well for some inexpensive rooms I needed at a hotel in Japan. In that case, there was a "Hurry! Last Person to Book Got the ------ Hotel message". I never knew that existed and called them before booking to ask what it meant in terms of whether I would get the same hotel. Answer was "yes, in most cases". So I took my chances and got the property I wanted. Then yesterday, I found they offer $25 off first app booking so I figured I'd try again, but only if I could get an "unopaque" opaque booking where they tell you in advance. So I find one that reveals last booking as a very nice property that I want, deal works great, and I pull the trigger. I get a totally different property, much worse reviews on TA, and the normal retail price is half the other property that supposedly the last person got, and in fact the whole deal with coupon works out to about what I could get this crappy hotel for on any other website, not that I would ever book it. So I immediately call and complain and the guy listens, repeats a number of times that it is nonrefundable and it doesn't matter that the quoted value of the hotel is completely misrepresented, nor that the hotel I got is only worth half the one that the last person got, and then he hangs up on me. So I call back, take a deep breath, go through the whole thing again and manage to get the next rep to call the hotel and get them to agree to do a voluntary refund without penalty. That was great (though I wasted over an hour of my life on it) and I was surprised I was successful but I gotta say, who needs this? Unless you really don't care where you sleep, or unless price is the only factor, why go through the hassle? The deals are nowhere near worth the aggravation and chance that you will end up in a dump you would never have otherwise booked. Anyway, just wondered how unusual it is that you don't get the same hotel as the "last booked" and think it is rather deceiving of them to say that. If they can't guarantee you will get what the last person got, how can they specify it? And BTW when I called in I asked if instead of refunding me, they can give me the same hotel the last person got and they refused. So apparently the good hotel was no longer even being offered, just advertised to get you to book.

Originally Posted by GUWonder

Unmasking Hotwire opaque properties has become way easier than it used to be. Sort hotels by class on Hotwire.com and then check out the properties with the same number of TripAdvisor reviews as one another and with the same ratings.

Originally Posted by stan1162

I aways thought that if HW listed a hotel as a 4*, it was actually a 3.5* on Pricline non-bid site. But, Priceline were accurate. A 4* "masked" was in fact a 4*.

Originally Posted by stan1162

I aways thought that if HW listed a hotel as a 4*, it was actually a 3.5* on Pricline non-bid site. But, Priceline were accurate. A 4* "masked" was in fact a 4*.

Originally Posted by GUWonder

I’m talking about something like this to unmask properties: matching the X* Hotwire Hot Rate Hotel’s TripAdvisor review count of say 2.436 reviews with the other Hotwire ratesfor an X* hotel with 2.436 TripAdvisor reviews that is shown to you before even booking the hotel.

So do the search on Hotwire and then sort by hotel class in an area. Then match the opaque Hot Rate Hotels with the non-opaque hotels in the search display by relying upon the Trioadvisor review numbers on Hotwire as the means to conclude which hotel will be the Hot Rate (opaque) hotel.

The Hotwire Hot Rate hotels can be unmasked before booking without even considering the use of other sites to try to unmask the Hotwire hotels. Hotwire.com provides all the information you need to unmask the average Hot Rate Hotel hotel without even having to switch between Hotwire.com and any other site.