I always recommend Hotwire.com when I talk with people about planning a trip. I never go to a travel agency when I travel abroad, I book everything myself..from the transportation to the hotel. It is a big part of the fun for me to research the transportation, the hotels and the restaurants where I will eat. One of those sites who can help you save money on hotels is Hotwire.

How does Hotwire work? It is an opaque site where you book your hotel without knowing the name of the hotel in advance. It is divided in stars so you know if you are booking a 2,3 or 4 star hotel. Hotwire does not usually deal with hotels who have very bad reputations. They usually are hotels from big chains or well established hotels.

I will take a concrete example to explain how Hotwire works. Let's say you want to go to New York city. You enter your dates you want to travel and then you get the following answers: Midtown west 3 stars for 159$ with fitness center and hi-speed internet..Central park area 4 stars 189$ with suites, complimentary breakfast and fitness center..and so forth. People are usually not willing to pay, because you pay in advance for Hotwire not when you check out of the hotel and it is not refundable, for a hotel they don't even know the name. However, there is a little trick called Betterbidding.com. It is a website where they give you the names of the hotels that usually come up and you associate the amenities listed with the hotel. Hotwire is therefore a service you use not long before going on vacation because it is non-refundable if you end up not going on your vacation because of a last minute problem.

I used Hotwire myself last year when I went to New York city with my parents. We booked 2 rooms through Hotwire and I knew that with the amenities listed that we would be getting the Millenium Hilton in the financial district right by Ground zero. We each paid 150$ per room. When I checked on the Hilton website, the same rooms were going for 250$ per night! We stayed 4 nights so we each saved 400$, money we spent in restaurants and in shops...haha..

People will think that you book through Hotwire and that you will not be greeted warmly by the hotel staff but it is not my experience. The man who greeted us at the front desk even upgraded us to a superior room and checked us in a couple of hours before official check-in time. My father had left my brother's cell phone number on the form he had filled in on the internet and they called my brother the day after we checked in. They wanted to know if everything was going well and wanted to know if they had checked in easily at the hotel. We were impressed with the after sales service from an internet site.

Be smart about doing it though. Check other websites, like travelzoo.com and quikbook.com, to see if there are not better specials around. Keep Hotwire for when you leave at the last minute.

Learn more about this author, Cristy Hebert.
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