dw

This actually gave me a good laugh, so I wanted to share...

I was checking rates at the W San Francisco for a possible July visit. Browsing Expedia, the first hotels to show up were the ones that Expedia has allegedly negotiated "Special Rates" with. Some of the "guaranteed lowest" rates really made me laugh because I am sure the hotels' standard weekend rates are lower.

The one that really surprised me, though, was for the W. The rate for several weekend dates in July is $629! This is compared to weekend rates for the same dates (offered either through Starwood or many other booking sites) of $269, and prepaid rates of $239 offered through Starwood. The "Special Rate" is even higher than the hotel's Rack Rate of $509 for the same days!

And of course, because these are "Special Rates," they are ineligible for Starpoints or airline miles.

Of course this is probably an extreme example, but again I did see many other properties with what looked to be inflated rates. I hope there aren't a lot of consumers who go ahead and book these rates without first shopping around.

NickyD

That's pretty outrageous... I was looking at the W San Francisco for April 19th and expedia was offering two nights for approximately $230/night. Which isn't a great discount because booking through the Starwood Preferred Guest Number offers a Best Available Rate of $269.

LLM

My favorite is when they show "no availability" and the hotel website has plenty of cheap rooms. This happens with other chains, too.

fly co to see the yanks

for some reason expedia -- more than any other site i have seen -- shows hotels have no availability even though there are scads of rooms for the picking on other sites.

Steve M

This often happens with hotels that have antiquated reservations systems. If the system does not have real-time integration with the various CRS's out there (Sabre, etc.), then there's no way for them to check the hotel's availability in real time. Instead, the hotel blocks of a certain percentage of inventory for each day, and "gives" it to the CRS. So, let's say that they keep 50% for themselves (bookings at the property, via the hotel's 800 number, etc), and give 30% to Sabre and 20% to the others. If you're making your reservation through anything that uses Sabre on the back end (such as Travelocity or many travel agents), as soon as that 30% is booked out, the hotel will show "sold out," even though rooms may be available with the hotel chain itself. This can occur on a smaller scale with certain properties within a chain, if the chain has realtime connections to the CRS's, but the hotel (usually a franchise) doesn't have a realtime connection with its own chain. These days, all properties at most major chains don't have this problem.