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How to find “hidden” hotel discounts

Front desk at the London hotel NYC

Front desk at the London hotel NYC

Frequent travelers know that nearly every hotel chain now guarantees that you’ll find the lowest “published” rate on their own branded websites.

The “best rate guarantees” usually offer to pay the difference (and toss in some other bennies) if you find a lower rate elsewhere.

But the operative word in those guarantees is “published.”

These days, there are all kinds of hidden or unpublished rates available, but who has time to poke around looking for these? Not me!

GoSeek.com is a month-old website that sniffs out and aggregates these bargains and posts them online.

FAA: Keep out of the (filthy) seat back pocket

These unpublished discounts rates are coupons, mobile rates, AAA rates, senior rates, rates that you’d normally only find at paid membership clubs.  Some of the rates are “subscriber rates” which require a free login to view, and are technically not published or publicly available.

GoSeek says that it offers lower rates on more than half the hotels you’d find on a typical metasearch site– with a savings of 20% or more.

We took a quick scan and did find some good deals. Let’s look at Tues April 7 – Thurs April 9 in New York City. The site produced multiple results, but here are two that I really liked– with a savings of $40 and $52 per night at two very nice hotels. And when I checked the individual hotel websites, I could not find these “coupon rates.”

Two of about 40 options presented by GoSeek.com

Two of about 40 options presented by GoSeek.com

Here’s what I found on the Bryant Park Hotel site for April 7-9:
Screen Shot 2015-03-23 at 3.51.27 PM
And the London NYC site:
Screen Shot 2015-03-23 at 3.54.30 PM
In both cases, once I clicked on the “get our best” tab, I was given a discount code to use to complete the booking on CheapTickets.com
GoSeek

Update: Major chain properties are in on this, too. I was even able to find a $70 discount for the popular, brand new Park Hyatt as well as several Best Western, Hilton, Marriott, Starwood and IHG properties.

Park Hyatt

So based on this quick look, GoSeek.com does seem to be able to find lower rates.

But what about getting those cherished loyalty points? We asked GoSeek and here’s what they had to say about that:

This is a complicated answer, and amounts to “sometimes”.  You get hotel loyalty points when booking AAA and Senior rates.  You get OTA loyalty points (e.g., Expedia or Orbitz) when booking a mobile rate.  You get OTA loyalty points sometimes when booking a rate with a coupon.  Two examples:  On Cheaptickets you do.  On Hotels.com you don’t.  And you shouldn’t be getting hotel loyalty points for OTA bookings with coupons, ever.  And you never get points – OTA or Hotel loyalty program – when booking a subscriber rate.

GoSeek is based in the Bay Area and headed up by Clem Bason, who was once president of Hotwire.com.

Would you use a site like this? Please leave your comments below.

–Chris McGinnis

No time to read Saturday and Sunday’s Weekend Edition? No probs! Here ya go:

Uber NYC + Feds watching you + New LAX lounge + Best airport + Airport parking

Biz class discounts + Ryanair reversal + Delta/United Apple watch + Hotel shower fee?

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Comments

  2. I’ve been using Go Seek for about a year now and while it shows this great huge discount…. THE FINAL PRICE IS WAY DIFFERENT!!! The price you see is for the nightly rate NOT the final price! The discount you apply is normally 16% but once they add on the tax & “other” fees your total price climbs. I still use the site only because I like to book quick and hassle free rooms plus I generally still receive about 5 bucks off and that’s 5 bucks I save that adds up. Both Go Seek & Cheap Tickets are a hit or miss on a daily basis since rates change. BTW, when rooms are almost unavailable, cheap tickets literally raise the rates by the minute!! It takes me less than 5 minutes to book online myself yet I’ve had a rep keep me on the line an hour in which the longer it took the higher the rate raised and the manager would not honor the price he guaranteed me 3 different times!! Go Seek also sends you to other sites & Expedia which is non other than cheap tickets. I hope this helps. Best of luck!

  7. does go seek only do hotels, because I need to book a flight w hotel and car rental as well.. any suggestions on who to use?

  8. I love go seek. I have booked at least 20 hotels through them, and have not ran into one problem. they always have the best rates!

  9. In my attempts to shop with goseek, what I have found is that the discounts are largely (though not entirely) illusory. A sample itinerary I just viewed shows a significant portion of the discount reflected in the “discounted” rate is added back at checkout. The “Tax Recovery Charges and Service Fees” amount was nearly double the tax itself, and that particular hotel has no additional charges over what travel sites quote (like a resort fee). So that additional $74 charge appears to effectively be an agency fee, which to my knowledge no major travel sites charge as an additional item not included in the quoted price. Net price was a savings over other sites, but less than half of what that savings would be based on a comparison of the “our best/their best” prices shown, and that difference was shown in the booking detail only as an unidentified amount that is part of a group of charges. Make of that what you will. I chose to keep shopping.

  10. I want to use goseek.com but the only way to sign up is through use of a Facebook account or Google+ account. That’s not acceptable. So I’ll use a bogus Google account. Is that what you want?

  12. I was about to check on some future trips. Sadly when I go to the site, there is no place to put in my city or a date. It does show some INSANE rates for my local town. I tried to use this service, but it failed. Sad that Chris took time to promote this without testing it.

  13. Oh yes CarribeanClipper lets spend other people’s money frivolously, cause its not your money right?

  14. Cost of distress rates are: 1.) non-refundable, no changes, no early check out. 2) run of the house (a.k.least desire able rooms). 3.) no walk policy. If oversold, go cry to your 3rd party booking source. 4.) no loyalty points. If all this sounds like a good investment of your corporate travel dollars (a.k.a. not your money) then go knock yourselves out

  16. The most prevalent discount types for major chains are AAA and Senior rates. Before we started goSeek, I had this idea that these discounts were always pretty low. In my head, I had 5-15% off the best available rate, at best. But we’re finding that AAA and Senior discounts can be really substantial on occasion. I’ve seen up to 30% off. I’ll admit that I’m not really sure why this is the case, but the moral of the story is that it is always worth a quick check.

    Also, I’d add that there are a bunch of chains out there that have discounts of up to 20% off (plus other goodies) if you book directly with them and use a specific rate/promo code when booking. These discounts aren’t often well publicized. We’ll be adding these to the site over the course of the year.

  17. I thought I’d add a little more about this. Most “best rate guarantees” offered by branded hotels have language that states that the rate you’d like them to match must be publicly available and accessible. So in theory rates that require a membership or are behind a login would not be eligible for best rate guarantee. I haven’t tested this theory myself with any frequency, but I know that others have … with mixed results.

  21. Chris just because a brand is available doesn’t mean they’re “in on it”. Given that most brands have a price guarantee, and yet you can’t find the rate on the brand site, you can assume the discount site is probably playing fast and loose with the rules. They may be using wholesale rates intended to be bundled with air/etc by tour operators. Most brands will probably try to shut this down as that’s not part of their agreement with the wholesaler. Or the site is giving up part of its margin to provide the discount, which also violates distribution agreements.

    Either way, don’t expect this to continue.

  22. The real test of any site or offer like this is what happens when something goes wrong, or plans change. What happens if the trip cancels? Or the guest wants to leave a day early? Or you show up to check in at 10:30 and there aren’t any “run of the house” rooms left–do you get the “free upgrade” or do you get walked? Or turned out into the street?

  23. Good question and the likely answer is no. Most big hotel chains don’t offer program points for bookings from third party discount sites. –chris

  24. But…do these rates qualify for frequent stayer credit in the big hotel chain programs? For paid business stays, no points = no deal. My company is picking up my paid stays and the points earned from those are what pay for my leisure stays- and free totally trumps $50 off. Gotta be careful there.

  25. Major chain properties are in on this, too. I was even able to find a $70 discount for the popular, brand new Park Hyatt as well has several Best Western, Hilton, Marriott, Starwood and IHG properties.– chris

  28. I have already booked 2 different stays through GoSeek. Saved me several hundred dollars between both bookings.

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