Booking a Cheap Hotel: Do Booking Sites Matter?

There are countless hotel booking sites out there, but how do you decide which one to use? They all deliver a wide range of search results when you're looking for a hotel, and it's hard to tell if there are any differences. I decided to do some testing and find out which sites offer the best deals.

This post originally appeared on Nomadic Matt's Travel Blog .

As much as I love hostels and other forms of cheap accommodation, there is something nice about the luxuriousness of hotels. They are clean and quiet, feature comfy beds, strong showers, and lots of soap I can take for later.

But luxury comes at a price. Hotels certainly aren't cheap and I hate spending a lot of money for a room I am only going to be in for a few hours. It's why I mostly avoid hotels—I don't think they are a good use of money (and there are far better accommodation options out there). If I'm not in a hostel, you can usually find me at a cheap guesthouse or at an Airbnb.

But I've been traveling a lot for work lately, and with the seemingly endless hotel booking sites out there, I decided this was a good time to do some testing. Does it matter which site you use to book a hotel?

I also picked five cities to research: London, Los Angeles, Paris, NYC, and Seattle. I picked bookings close to the current date of research as well as far in advance, on both weekdays and weekends. (I did my research end of March, which is why the dates are different than what you'd expect from a post published in early May.)

I searched six booking websites: Expedia, Hotels.com, Booking.com, Hotwire, Priceline, and a new one called TravelPony in two, three, and four star categories. Below are the data tables with the lowest price shown (Priceline rates are based on their search listings, not the bidding section of the site). If you're not interested in the raw data, just skip ahead.

Seattle, WA

New York, NY

Los Angeles, CA

London, UK

Paris, FR

What Can We Learn from This Data?

I went into this experiment with the assumption that Hotels.com and Expedia would have the most expensive rates and Hotwire would be the cheapest, as was my previous experience. TravelPony has shown a lot of promise but they are new and have limited inventor, sometimes returning zero listings, so I didn't have great expectations for them.

But the data proved my theory wrong.

First, when TravelPony did have available rooms, they usually won, especially in the three and four star categories. They blew the competition right out of the water. In many instances, they are substantially cheaper than their competitors.

Why? Well, for that, let's step back for a moment and talk about why prices are what they are. Hotels have a variety of rates—pre-paid, flexible, corporate, discounted, and more. And while rates go up and down based on demand, they don't (luckily) swing as widely as airline prices. They are a bit more static.

Hotels sell rooms to these booking sites at a discount, which is why you often see rates cheaper on these sites than on the hotel's website. The big booking companies then price in their costs, marketing, and whatever else to come up with a base for their displayed price. TravelPony, according to their CEO, doesn't do that. They simply rely on word of mouth. Plus, they require you register to see the hotel prices, thus falling into a "club" category that allows them to give cheaper rates. They are buying rooms at the same rates as the big booking sites, but don't need to increase their price as much.

As for the other websites, Expedia and Priceline were the cheapest in 17 instances while Hotwire was in only 10. Hotels.com was the cheapest in 13 instances.

The clear loser was Booking.com, which only offered the cheapest rate in three instances.

(If there was a tie, I counted both booking sites as having the lowest price.)

But those overall numbers mask a lot of variance. In the same city, depending on hotel class, we could have a different winner each time. TravelPony was the winner in the US and in higher class hotels, while Priceline was great for two star hotels, Hotwire for three star hotels, and Expedia dominated London and Paris.

I recently did another round of testing and added in two new cities: San Francisco and Rome. The results were pretty much the same, though Booking.com tied with Priceline in two star hotels in San Francisco, regardless of date.

Before I go into what this means for the booking process, it is important to remember that when you book hotels via third party websites, you don't earn hotel points or status for your stay. In order to get that, you must book directly with the hotel. And this is why these online booking sites can offer cheaper prices. In exchange for that, hotels make them give up their customer's right to award and elite status eligibility (also, their massive purchasing power helps).

Which Booking Sites to Avoid

What about those meta search sites like Trivago or Hotelscombined? Hotelscombined claims to search thousands of websites (including hostel booking sites) but my cursory searching showed that they didn't return as many cheap places as they said they would. They showed a cheap three star room in downtown London in June for $134 per night but Expedia came back with $91. And they often didn't show more than just a couple of websites. I'd skip them.

I would avoid Trivago. My research showed that they consistently over-rated their hotel listings. A four star hotel on their site was listed as a two or three star hotel (or a three star was a one star) on the site they took you to for the actual booking process. This was consistent over numerous cities and dates.

They also rated a hostel in NYC as four stars (no hostel is ever four stars). I didn't catch it the first couple of times, but when I did, I was shocked. Because Trivago sends you right to the booking page on another website, this change of class would be easily missed by consumers. You might end up in a two star hotel when you wanted a four star. I don't think they are intentionally misleading people, but the error occurred often enough to where I wouldn't trust Trivago.

How to Book a Hotel (and Which Sites to Use)

I would start with your preferred site—for US domestic hotels, I'd make that TravelPony. Then search two or three other websites, and then check the hotel's website. Don't forget to try calling, as hotels often match rates. I'd spend, at the max, thirty minutes on booking a hotel. I found that the variation between sites isn't enough to justify spending hours looking for a deal. At the end of the day, wasting hours of your life isn't worth trying to save a dollar or two. Moreover, many larger booking sites have their own loyalty reward programs and, if you consistently use one site, the rewards might be worth it to stay with just one site, even if it isn't the cheapest option.

Finally, let's talk about Tingo. Tingo is a website that refunds your money if the price of your hotel room falls after you book it. It's a wonderful way to ensure you don't have to worry about getting screwed. Before I booked anything, I would check your hotel's price on this website to see if it is lower or equal to the prices you found on the other search sites. If it was, I would book here to take advantage of their price drop offer. You can't go wrong with them.

This is how I go about booking a cheap hotel:

1. Start off with Priceline, Expedia, TravelPony, or your favorite booking site. (If you are booking in Asia, use Agoda. They are hands down the best site for the region.)


2. Double check a few more sites just to cover your bases.


3. Skip the poor sites mentioned here.


4. Cross check with Tingo.


5. Book a place.

That's it! Don't spend hours searching for a hotel room. Hotel pricing is a lot more set than airline pricing and tend to fluctuate less, so I wouldn't spend hours searching hotel websites or days tracking prices like people do with airline tickets. The prices just don't fluctuate that much so it's not worth the time. Follow the steps above, get a great cheap room, and enjoy your trip!

How to Find a Cheap Hotel Room: Sites to Use and Sites to Avoid | Nomadic Matt

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Matthew Kepnes is a travel writer and author of How to Travel the World on $50 a day and the creative force behind Nomadic Matt, a website that provides detailed information on how to travel cheaper, better, and longer. His advice has been featured in CNN, BBC, NYT, WSJ, National Geographic, Time, among others.

Image remixed from OpenClips. Photos by Kevin Dooley, Rennett Stowe, and Christy Milford.

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