Since my Number One Internet Fanboy and I are going to spend the weekend at the coast (his delayed birthday present from me), I’ve been checking out the online hotel booking options. Usually, I just look to see if one of the inexpensive motel chains where I usually stay have any specials, but I figured that since there are constant TV commercials about various travel booking websites, I’d check out a few of them to see if they lived up to their advertising. Wow, do I have a few things to say….

Of course, I thought of the obnoxious lawn gnome commercial: Travelocity. Their options for anything under a C-note a night (in the city I want to book a hotel room) were non-existent, and that’s incredibly un-helpful. I would recommend them only to people who have money to burn and/or really like lawn gnomes.

Priceline was similarly unhelpful, with similarly expensive rates — and appallingly few options, to boot. Again, I would recommend them only to people who like to pay more than they’d have to if they’re just willing to look around a bit more for a better deal.

Then I thought of the other obnoxious TV commercial for travel sites online: Hotwire. They have quite the racket going, I must say. Get this — they make you book a reservation before they’ll tell you what hotel you’ll be staying at! I would recommend them only to people who like to gamble, or who are incredibly trusting in total strangers.

So I Googled for “budget hotels” and got a link to — what else but Budget Hotels! And I found their site name to be not terribly truthful… of the 4 hotels returned for the city I was searching, only 1 offered rates under a C-note per night. I would recommend them only to people who really like the color combination of orange & blue, their website colors.

I tried Orbitz — same deal as Travelocity, except slightly cheaper rates but still nothing under $90 a night. Ditto for CheapTickets (I swear, they all use the same exact search programs, just in different colors!). Expedia gave a great range of prices, including an “economy” motel where I eventually booked rooms, but I didn’t go through Expedia on that because they require that your credit card be charged for the full payment upon reservation. No way am I going to let anyplace bill me before I’ve seen the room!

The site with the best options was also the one with the easiest name to remember: Hotels.com. If I was going to be booking hotel reservations online, I would definitely use them, as they provided the best range of prices and excellent descriptions of all the hotel options & amenities. So why didn’t I actually use Hotels.com?

Because I had the presence of mind to Google the name of the place I wanted to make a reservation with, and found out they have a website with specials, which none of the reservation booking sites told me about! Yup, for the extremely minor inconvenience of phoning the hotel for a reservation instead of making one online, and printing out a coupon & remembering to take it with me, I saved almost 40% on the room rate! To me, that’s a serious chunk of change.

Moral of the story: Before using any online hotel reservation site, check to see if the place you’d like to stay has their own website, and phone them to find out about any specials that might not be advertised online!

(As for car rentals, I always go with Enterprise. Not because they pick you up — although that’s nice too! — but because they usually have killer deals like the one I got for the weekend, of 50% off for a Friday-Monday rental with unlimited mileage as long as I stay in Oregon & Washington. Sweet!)