Travel Deal of the Day (Nov. 25, 2006)

A hotel booking website will generally sell you a hotel room in one of two ways: 1) the hotel sells you a room at the exact rate offered by the hotel or 2) the website pre-purchases or pre-negotiates room rates from a hotel and sells those rooms to you, usually at lower rates than in the first manner. When operating in this second manner, the website usually makes its money by pre-negotiating a significant discount from the hotel and then passing on some of the savings to you.

The Deal:
Buy rooms from websites that pre-negotiate or pre-purchase rooms and then sell those rooms to you at a discount.

How:
1) Go to a website that pre-purchases/pre-negotiates room rates. One such website you can click on to book travel is:

2) Compare the rates at a site such as Easy Click Travel with the rates available through the hotel directly and through other websites.

The Inside Scoop:
Sometimes websites such as Easy Click Travel (see link above) that pre-purchase/pre-negotiate room rates will obscure the name of the hotel so the hotel will allow that website to offer the hotel at a significant discount. It is easy to figure out which particular hotel is being offered. Do a www.google.com search with the description offered by the website and the location indicated by the website. Ignore that star rating since star ratings are often subjective and differ depending on the rating system.