Find Lower Room Rates on 'Private Deal' Websites
Many travel websites claim to offer low hotel rates that you can’t find elsewhere. Sometimes, it’s even true.
“Private deal” websites frequently offer rates that are far better than what you can find on more conventional travel booking sites, or the hotel’s own website.
For example, you can save $150 per night off a $450/night hotel room on the beach in Maui, get a $300 New York City hotel room for almost 50% off, or simply shave $50 off a $130 hotel room in downtown San Antonio. Prices consistently beat what is available from major travel websites like Expedia and Hotels.com.
The discounts vary greatly from hotel to hotel. If you haven’t settled on a specific hotel, you may want to take advantage of one of the more highly-discounted offers.
Jump to:
- 1 How do these sites work?
- 2 goSeek is the best single site to check
- 3 Kayak can show private deals, alongside its regular results
- 4 HotelStorm is another great site for getting members-only pricing
- 5 SnapTravel sometimes offers better deals, via a messaging user experience
- 6 Dosh offers private deals with a cash-back twist
- 7 Less useful sites
How do these sites work?
Most hotels control the pricing of their rooms on other websites, so that you’ll see the same “best available rate” on the hotel’s website, and on 3rd party websites like Expedia. “Best Rate Guarantees” help keep hotel pricing consistent across the web.
- “Membership” based sites don’t have to stick to these standard room prices, and are free to kick-back part of their normal commission, or offer rates that are normally not available to the general public. Hotel companies sometimes allow these companies to offer promotional rates, to more price-conscious shoppers, while keeping higher rates on more mainstream sites.
- Members-only rates are usually fully-refundable rates. When you see how low the members-only rates sometimes are, you might expect that they must be non-changeable, non-refundable rates. However, very often they are fully flexible rates. Make sure to check, because it differs on a case-by-case basis.
- In most cases, if you book from one of these sites, you won’t be able to take advantage of the hotel’s loyalty program. Just like when you book on websites like Expedia, you aren’t entitled to your loyalty program benefits, and won’t earn points on your stay.
- Each site offers a different set of deals—it can be worthwhile to search more than one. While there is plenty of overlap, each private deals website has its own set of discounted rates.
Sometimes, members-only prices are only a little bit less expensive than the normal room rate. This savings is mostly the result of the site lowering the normal commission that they keep. For these hotels, we prefer to book with a chain hotel directly and participate with the loyalty program; or through some other site to get some sort of bonus points, cash-back, or other benefits.
goSeek is the best single site to check
goSeek is our single favorite website for finding members-only rates. It revolutionized our ability to get find excellent hotel pricing, at many hotels.
goSeek is not a booking site per-se, but a meta-search engine that searches several different private deals websites. In other words, while you’ll find members-only hotel deals on goSeek, you’ll book them through a partner website.
The site is easy to use, and offers less expensive rates on a large number of hotels in a wide range of destinations. It even compares their member-only rates to the regular rates available from several more mainstream travel sites.
Kayak can show private deals, alongside its regular results
Kayak isn’t as good as goSeek at uncovering private deals, but it has the best members-only offers of any of the mainstream travel sites. You can uncover these deals at the same time you are checking the prevailing hotel rates at your destination. Simply by being signed-in to the Kayak website or app, you’ll see “Private Deals” for a handful of hotels, alongside the regular results. These rates are often cheaper than you can find anywhere else.
HotelStorm is another great site for getting members-only pricing
Along with goSeek, HotelStorm is our other go-to site for uncovering members-only hotel rates. On average, it provides slightly lower discounts than GoSeek and it offers them on somewhat fewer hotels. However, each site offers different deals, so we often wind up booking through both of these sites.
HotelStorm doesn't offer its service directly. You need to access it through one of its "marketing partners".
- The easiest way to get access is through Boxed, a web site that primarily focuses on coupons. Just visit their hotel booking site.
- Another good way to get access is via ShopRunner, a service whose main purpose is to provide free 2-day shipping from many of the largest merchants on the web. Anyone who has an Amex or Mastercard has free access to a ShopRunner account; and anyone who has a ShopRunner account can get members-only pricing at HotelStorm. Just visit shoprunner.hotelstorm.com, and enter “shoprunner” as your access code. Once you sign-in, you can visit the HotelStorm website directly.
SnapTravel sometimes offers better deals, via a messaging user experience
We've also found some very good deals through SnapTravel. In some cases, these deals show up via GoSeek. But, in other cases, they are only available when you access the SnapTravel service directly.
SnapTravel works via Facebook or text messaging, rather than through a website or app. You send a message to their service, and they reply back with a link to view their deals. We find that this can be a bit more cumbersome than using the other services. But, access to the additional deals makes it worthwhile.
Dosh offers private deals with a cash-back twist
Dosh provides a service that gives you cash-back when you eat at one of thousands of restaurants, or shop at hundreds of stores. Behind the scenes, it is run by a company called "Empyr", that also powers Yelp's cashback service. Earn Extra Rewards by Enrolling in Credit Card Dining Programs
Along with the restaurant cash-back program, the Dosh smartphone app offers a "private deals" hotel booking service. But, instead of getting a lower rate for your hotel booking, you pay the normal rate, and get some cash-back later.
For example, for a three-night stay over Christmas Break, the Maui Sheraton is $488 per night on a normal booking site like hotels.com. But, if you book on Dosh, you'll get a total of $439 cash-back ($146 cash-back per night).
In contrast, you can get a "private deals rate" of $322 via GoSeek. This winds up being the same base cost per night as the Dosh offer. However, there are some differences. With Dosh, you'll need to pay hotel taxes on the higher amount. But, you'll earn credit card points for this higher amount as well.
One inconvenience of Dosh Hotels, is that you can only book via their smartphone app. They don't have a regular website available.
Less useful sites
Hotels.com heavily advertises their “Your Secret Price” hotels, but they are pretty sparse; and when they are available, they aren’t usually as good as you can find on the sites above.
Club 1 Hotels is a fee-based website that claims to give you great wholesale rates. They got a lot of press when they launched via an effective blog-outreach program coupled with “free” charter memberships. We find the site difficult to use, and once you factor in their hidden booking fees, it generally doesn’t offer better rates than what you can find on the free websites mentioned above. The service may improve over time.
