We wanted to have an adventure when we booked our online travel reservations, so we thought we'd test out Hotwire. Arranging your travel on the Internet gives you the opportunity to peruse all of your options from the comfort of your home. There are dozens of websites popping up that allow you to search for flights and hotels while offering you information about special discounts and deals. When the Star Reviews' team decided to tackle this popular market and compare travel planning websites, Hotwire was one of the first sites we visited. How did they do in our travel website comparison? Here's the scoop.
What’s New?
- Flexible Date Search
- Daily Flight and Hotel Deals
- Trip Watcher That Notifies You When Prices Drop
Our Favorite Feature:
We really like Hotwire's last-minute hotel bargains, offering a fresh supply of good deals for last minute planning. A bit impulsive? Want to get away this weekend, but no idea where to go? Check out Hotwire's last-minute deals for inspiration and savings.
The Hotwire Experience:
When we visited the Hotwire website, we were disappointed by the fact that page loading was slow and problematic. We kept receiving a message that the site was busy and frequent disconnects were an issue. We’d visit a while, get kicked off and then have trouble getting back on.
During the time we were actually able to view the site, we determined that the layout and design, while simplistic, did not contain all the helpful information some of the other sites provided. That being said, if the connectivity issue is addressed by the company the site can be useful to those who don't need the "extras" such as destination information or travel advice.
That being said, we do have to give Hotwire credit for some great search features. We were able to conduct searches using dates, destination and type of travel. You have the option to build a package that includes flight, hotel, car or any combination of these. Unfortunately, flight searches don't show up in a comparison grid, making them harder to read than some of the competition's results.
Searching for a hotel is pretty straightforward. You enter your dates and destination and receive a list of hotels placed in order from the lowest to the highest price. There are star ratings available and clicking a link can take you to detailed information about specific hotels. While these tidbits of info were helpful, they don't match the power of being able to read real customer reviews.
Hot Wire Features:
- Deals on hotel rooms, car rentals, flights, cruises and vacation packages available.
- Price drop alerts.
- Last minute deals.
- Planning tools.
- Flexible date search.
Hot Wire Pricing:
Hotwire is free to use. You do, however, have to pay for any travel that you book and a fee is added to those prices, varying based on type of travel and which company you book with.
Hot Wire Customer Service:
Hotwire offers customer service via email, phone and an online FAQ. If you have simple and straightforward questions and want quick answers with minimal hassle, the FAQ is probably your best bet. If you need to get a live person to answer your concerns, try email support. They got back to us within one business day. Phone support, while available, proved to have extremely long hold times, making it more of a hassle than a benefit.
Upside:
Competitive pricing, price-drop notifications, flexible date search.
Downside:
We felt the website was poorly designed with limited information.