Travelocity Introduces 'Top Secret' Hotel Reservations
Author: Randy Greencorn
Hotwire and Priceline are the North American industry standard for 'opaque' or 'masked' hotel reservations. For those not familiar with opaque sites, it works like this: Prior to purchasing, you know some information about a hotel such as the general area, hotel star rating, and in some cases the hotel amenities. If you like the price, you can purchase a reservation AND THEN find out the hotel brand and exact location. It's not for everyone, but those who use 'masked' travel sites love them, and for good reason, they save a lot of money.
Travelocity is the latest to enter the 'masked' hotel reservation business with their offering, called Top Secret Hotels. I wanted to find out first hand whether or not Travelocity was as good (or maybe even better) than the companies I've been using for years. For my comparison, I decided to look for a hotel for my upcoming trip to San Francisco from Oct 12 to Oct 14. I would use the same search criteria on Travelocity (both masked and regular reservations), as well as Hotwire and Priceline. My results were disappointing to say the least:
- Selection: Can you believe that Top Secret Hotels only has 14 cities to choose from? Ten from the US and 4 from Canada. Fortunately, San Francisco made the list. When I performed my search, there were only 2 (two) Top Secret Hotels available in the entire city of San Francisco. Compare this to the 25 hotels on Hotwire, 158 on Priceline, and 286 on Travelocity's regular reservation system.
- Price: Let's face it. Anyone who reserves a hotel without knowing the name or location of the hotel will expect to be compensated by saving money. The 2 Top Secret Hotels averaged $240/night. All the other sites had 3, and even 4 star hotels for 50 percent or less of Travelocity's Top Secret Prices.
- Area: Although you don't know the exact location of a masked hotel before you purchase, you are given an area within the city that the hotel is located. In densly populated areas like downtown San Francisco, these areas are pretty small, so while you don't know the exact location, you are within an area usually no bigger than 1 square mile. For example, Priceline and Hotwire divide downtown San Francisco into 7 and 8 areas respectively. Travelocity - A single area that stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to Redwood City. In other words, book a hotel in 'San Francisco' and you could find yourself 25 or more miles outside of town.
- Hotel Information: There was very little information about the 2 Top Secret Hotels available during my test search. Other than the fact that they were 3 star hotels somewhere in Greater San Francisco, there were no hotel amenities listed (one hotel indicated it was non-smoking). Compare this to Hotwire, where every hotel amenity is listed. With Hotwire, it's actually easy to identify your hotel before you make your reservation by comparing the Hotwire information to HotelDealsRevealed.com's Hotel Inventory.
You can probably see where this review is going by now. Top Secret Hotels by Travelocity needs a lot of work. To give Travelocity credit, they have publically stated that they are going to grow and expand their offering. I truly hope so. In the meantime, I'll stick with the other guys.