Hotel quality, location, and pricing options on Priceline and Hotwire. On the other hand, Priceline often provides bigger neighborhood zones than Hotwire since it wants you to win a winning hotel bid—how that's it generates money.
As a result, your Hotwire hotel may be better suited to your requirements.
However, Hotwire is more precise about the hotel you might get, whereas Priceline's opaque pricing applies to both rooms and flights. Although both Priceline and Hotwire offer similar discounts, they appear to have a wider selection of deals available.
It's possible to save money by booking a hotel through Hotwire, even if you don't know the exact name or location of the establishment. To my knowledge, the star ratings on this Hotwire forum are a little too liberal. Other sites may only give a hotel three ratings, while Hotwire gives it a rating of 3.5 stars instead.
Priceline
Priceline, a Booking Holdings Inc. (BKNG) subsidiary, is the more established of the two, having launched in 1997, making it somewhat of an online institution in its own right. William Shatner's long-running commercial campaign helped make it a household name among Star Trek enthusiasts.
Priceline is a safe and secure service. In the travel sector, only the most respectable lodging providers cooperate with them, and they are known for their integrity. You can use a credit card or a Payment processor to pay for your bookings, and both methods are secure.
Priceline's Special Deals
Priceline's Name Your Price feature, which made it famous, was phased down over the last three years and will be gone by early 2020.
Instead, this website uses Pricebreakers and Express Deals, specialized features. Using Pricebreakers, you'll be presented with three hotels, all giving the same overnight rate; click "select," and you'll be allocated one of them.
Hotels, flights, and car rentals are all included in the Express Deals program. Although they'll identify the rental vehicle companies (Avis, Hertz, etc.) engaged in this arrangement, this is a "blind booking."
Blind booking indicates that the company you're doing business with is "opaque" until you've placed a reservation. As a result, you won't be able to learn the name of the service provider or other specifics until you've agreed to the terms of the transaction. As a rule of thumb, you can narrow your search to include a hotel location, amenities, star rating, flight duration, and a car's size and attributes.
Other Ways to Shop
Even though Priceline is a big source of revenue for many travel companies, the site has a wide selection even months in the future. There are 420 hotels in the Chicago area, with rates starting at $39 per night and rising to $525, according to an April search of hotels in the area for a three-day weekend two months in the future. There were 19 nonstop flights from LaGuardia Airport in New York City to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, starting at $231 per ticket for those flying from LaGuardia.
As a whole, Priceline guarantees discounts of up to 60% on lodgings and 40% on flights and rental cars (if you use the Express Deals feature).
Hotwire
Expedia Group (EXPE), the company behind Hotwire and Expedia.com, was founded in 2000. Hotwire, like Priceline, lets customers compare prices on various travel-related services, including hotels, flights, car rentals, and holiday packages (but not cruises). Hotwire, like Priceline, claims to save customers up to 60% on hotels, 40% on flights, and 40% or more on car rentals.
There is a pricing option on Hotline that is similar to Priceline Express Deals and Price Breakers for rooms. Hot Rate Hotels displays a price, general location, and star rating, but the hotel names are obscure until you actually book. Like Pricebreakers, if you click the "which hotel will I get?" option, the site will present you with a choice of three hotels, guaranteeing that yours will be one of them.
According to Express Deals and other sources, only "our selection contains these brands" are assured to show up in the search results. Occasionally, the Hot Rate Hotels discounts go even further than 60%. It is more probable to encounter actual hotel names than chain names if the star rating category is higher.
Hotwire has a wide variety of options, although they aren't as extensive as Priceline's. For the same weekend in the Chicago area, we looked on Priceline and found 30 hotels with rates ranging from $39 to $213 per night. There were 18 endless options for travel from LaGuardia to O'Hare, with prices starting at $259 roundtrip.
