When Is a Hotel Deal Not a Good Value?

When is a hotel "deal" not a deal? When it's a promotional package that includes a bunch of extras you really don't want or need. In general, hotel promoters would much rather assemble a package with value-added extras, with claimed savings, rather than cut the price on a bare-bones room deal. In today's floundering economy, you can find plenty of both types of promotions, but it's sometimes tough to figure out exactly how good a deal any individual promotion might be.

The comparison process is simple, if tedious. At Consumer Reports Travel Letter, we used to deconstruct hotel promotions all the time. We would compare the promoted, sometimes so-called discount rate against the best rate available through the Internet. For a package deal, we would add the prices of the extras if purchased separately. Then, we'd compare the total promoted price with the real-world buying price. (Editor's Note: You can see current examples of such deconstructed deals on SmarterTravel.com's Weekend Getaways section.) The results fell into three groups:

• Real discounts: promotions that cut what you'd really have to pay to stay in the hotel, without having to buy anything else.
• Phony discounts: percent reductions from artificial rack rates (list prices) that were substantially higher than the rates the hotels were actually charging.
• Problematic packages: total prices for a room plus extra features that amounted to good deals, but only for guests who actually wanted all of the extras.

A new website makes it easy for you to see many such comparisons at least on some hotels. DealBase doesn't just post claimed hotel deals, it compares those deal rates against the best rates it can find on hotels.com, adds in a reasonable estimate of the cost of any extras that might be included, and displays the percentage and dollar savings the deal provides. So far, DealBase provides those calculations for almost 15,000 hotels in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico, with more to come.

A posting for Portland, Oregon, perfectly illustrates the way the system works. A "sweetheart" promotional romantic package at the Portland Regency Hotel, for $159 per night, is listed as $20 less than the cost of the package components if you bought them separately. The base room rate, from hotels.com, is $129 per night; the package extras are a bottle of Champagne and box of chocolates, valued at $50 a night, for a total of $179. Clearly, the package can be a good deal, but only if you'd otherwise pay at least $30 a night for wine and chocolates.

DealBase's listings are refreshingly honest and straightforward. Some of them actually show a negative discount, meaning that the package costs more than what you'd have to pay if you bought everything in the package separately.

This is not to say that all of the DealBase listings are questionable. Many of them are straight dollar reductions from the usual rack rates, with no extra strings attached. And many of the packages represent real value—for example, $159 a night at the Milford Plaza in New York City that includes one $10 MetroCard and one $10 city map per stay for a room that normally goes for $269 a night. Or $103 per night at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago that includes two VIP tickets to the Art Institute per stay for a room that normally goes for $113 per night. All in all, I'd say that a quick check of DealBase is a good idea whenever you're looking for hotel accommodations.

But whether on DealBase or somewhere else, whenever you see a hotel package promotion, it's a good idea to check out the deal to see if you'd really want and use the extras and that the all-up package price is really better than the best deal you can find on hotels.com (or any of the other big online agencies). And also keep in mind that you can often do even better than an advertised promotion by buying through opaque sites such as Hotwire or Priceline.

(Editor's Note: SmarterTravel.com is a member of the TripAdvisor Media Network, an operating company of Expedia, Inc. Expedia, Inc. also owns Hotwire.)