Now that I knew the specific hotel, I looked to see if it was a Name Your Own Price hotel. Right on the beach, recently renovated, family friendly. I spent a little time researching the Westin on TripAdvisor and based on the reviews, it appeared freaking awesome. But combined, I realized that the only hotel that listed the combination of amenities shown on Hotwire was the Westin. Any one of these amenities by itself won’t reveal the hotel. I clicked on over to the South Carolina Hotwire forum and started comparing amenities to the hotels listed. These are the key to deducing which hotel you’re looking at. On Hotwire and Express Deals, they list some of the hotel’s amenities. Since I had already found a really good deal, I wanted to figure out which hotel it was and if it was available on Name Your Own Price (where I’d be able to snag it even cheaper). Better said, they’ll help you figure out what “secret” hotels you might be bidding on or booking immediately in the case of Hotwire/Express Deals. Both of these forums provide valuable information and resources for making more informed bids. For this step, I’ve always relied on BetterBidding, but I recently found another site called Bidding for Travel that’s similar. I was open to anything above 3* for this trip, so a 4* that was cheaper than most 3* definitely looked interesting. When I pulled up a search on these sites, I noticed a 4* hotel for $90 on Hotwire and $80 on Priceline. So to fill these rooms, hotels will offer deeply discounted rates with the caveat being that they don’t disclose the name of their hotel until AFTER the room is booked. Hotels make money when people are in their hotels - even if they’re not paying the standard rate. These sites work off a similar model to Name Your Own Price. That’s where Hotwire and Priceline’s new Express Deals come in. Outer Banks, I knew what the general price range was - and it wasn’t very cheap using a normal search. Having already done a price comparison of Hilton Head vs. You can obviously do some of this research during the bidding process, but I like to familiarize myself before I put my game face on, which looks sorta like Chuck Norris. If you’re planning on a beach vacation, you don’t want to bid on hotels that aren’t near/on the beach. This is a crucial step of the research phase. So we’re going to Hilton Head - awesome! Now it’s time to explore the lay of the land: good areas, not-so-good areas, proximity to nearby attractions (like the beach), range of available hotels, etc. And since Joanna had vacationed there growing up, I thought it’d be nice to go somewhere with a little familiarity. After doing a few basic hotel and rental searches in both areas, I found that our dollar would go farther at Hilton Head. We narrowed our options to the Outer Banks and Hilton Head. This was going to be our inaugural “vacation” with Baby Girl, so we decided we’d keep it within a few hours of home. But you’re going to be drinking up delicious money-saving-travel knowledge from a fire hose, so open wide! Step 1: Choose your vacation destination This post is going to be long and it’s going to be dry. I’ll dissect my travel deal search process using our most recent trip to Hilton Head and how I snagged a $250/nt, 4* hotel for $65/nt using Priceline Negotiator. Over the years, I’ve done an alright job learning how to get pretty good deals on vacations - sometimes amazing deals. So putting those things together is basically the best thing ever. I love traveling almost as much as I love saving money. Because I’m only looking for a single answer and I don’t want to tell you you’re wrong if you don’t say, “When they don’t cost a ton of money.” So now that I messed up the first paragraph, let’s just move along to the second. You know what makes them more great? You don’t have to answer that.
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