Who doesn’t like planning a vacation...or at least looking? Star Reviews found Hotel Discounts in our Google search and had to see what they offered you travelers. It wasn’t love at first sight when we clicked on their link, but this site offered so much more than we expected from its plain, no-frills website interface. Find out what you can expect below.
What’s New with Hotel Discounts Reservation Services?
- Today’s Specials - Select cities and hotels on sale, as well as discount group booking rates.
- Rooms for Soldout Dates - Hotel Discounts delivers; Even where so many other hotel reservation sites left us hanging, they snagged us all the rooms we wanted.
Star Reviews Favorite Feature:
We loved how Hotel Discounts gives travelers two options when producing search results. You can either choose ‘all available hotels’ or ‘all available suites and vacation rentals.’ This separates many unwanted search results for an easier reservation process.
Hotel Discounts Reservations Features:
- Toll Free number for telephone booking
- Vacation packages
- Hotel Discount Newsletter
- Up to 70% off hotel rooms
- Guaranteed Lower Rates
- View/Cancel Reservations
- Local attractions, maps, images
Navigating the Hotel Discounts Website:
Our team felt Hotel Discounts was painless to navigate. They didn’t offer much in the way of features, forums, or community functions like blogs, but they do take hotel booking seriously. Don’t expect anything fancy here. You will be given useful information like fun activities to do when at your specific destination, driving directions, room amenities, and hotel information. It’s very easy to find important link tabs like ‘Customer Care’ and ‘Vacation Packages.’ There wasn’t much to this site, so navigating it shouldn’t be too treacherous.
Hotel Discounts Search Results:
We were pretty pleased with the numerous hotel listings we snagged through Hotel Discounts. Simply click on your city of choice and type in the dates you’re interested in traveling on. You’ll be presented with a comprehensive listing of numerous hotels Hotel Discounts requests travelers enter their city of choice, nights planned and number of individuals to a room.
Your hotel reservation matches will result with available rates, as well as hotel booking information. There aren’t any hotel room images or virtual tours and the only image you receive is a thumbnail of the hotel itself. If you cannot find a hotel you were banking on reserving, check out the box on the left-hand margin and Refine Your Search. You can sort out hotels based on criteria like ‘Has pool or restaurant’ if you so desire. Talk about convenient. We also noticed how low their hotel prices were, coming in below many of their competitors’ rates.
Booking on Hotel Discounts:
No membership or account sign-ups are required on this hotel reservation service. Simply type in your personal information, including billing address, credit card number, that kind of thing you’ve grown accustomed to with online shopping. Their booking process is very reminiscent of the Hotels.com reservation process, fairly straightforward and quick. If you run into any problems, you can opt out of online booking and give them a ring, which we appreciate.
Price Comparison:
Standard Room Feb. 23-25, 2009 Total Booking Price
|
Hotel Name |
Hotels.com |
All-Hotels.com |
GTA-Hotels.com |
Hotel Discounts |
|
Wynn Las Vegas |
$541.58 |
$549.00 |
n/a |
$460.95 |
|
Milford Plaza |
$237.70 |
$398.00 |
$296.00 |
$227.88 |
|
Loews Miami |
$902.46 |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a
|
Customer Support:
We thought their customer support was pretty good. Under the ‘Customer Care’ tab, you can choose to email Hotel Discounts via an online form. We tested this and received a quick confirmation email, but did not receive a response for two days. Although thorough in their response, Star Reviews feels it should have been a bit quicker.
Hotel Discounts’ Customer Care section also provides a comprehensive FAQs area dedicated to lodging, airlines, car rentals and property managers. They offer a toll-free number for booking reservations, but you can still expect a friendly and informative response if you have general questions.
Upside:
Ever-changing specials and limited time offers. Good hotel listings. Excellent hotel booking deals.
Downside:
No travel or booking features for their customers. Slow email response time. No photo galleries or virtual tours.
Summary:
Offering travelers a no-fuss, basic hotel reservation service, Hotel Discounts proves it can withstand most anything their competitors throw at them. They consistently offered some of the lowest rates we encountered, with room rates at Wynn Las Vegas running you about half the price of what you’d pay on other sites. This is a definite plus! If you don’t mind a lack of fun, community features, room images, tours, and reviews, then this site is for you. Customer support is good, overall, and the site was a breeze to navigate. We think they’re a good choice for booking your next getaway through!