Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Farecast launches Hotel Search

Yahoo's clever Farecast is a good way to search for airline tickets and today they launched a hotel feature. The site is down as of 11:50 pm PST but I assume it'll be up tomorrow. Farecast offers the user detailed search capabilities and a neat feature that predicts whether rates are going up or down for airline tickets.

In my opinion no single site offers "great" travel search capabilities. The best approach to get the best deals is to use check several sites that use multiple fares. Kayak.com, Orbitz.com, and Farecast are three such sites. If the rate seems "great", take it. If not keep looking until you find a "great" rate or have exausted your search energy.

Note that the best rates for a given property are often at Hotwire or Priceline where you can't pick the hotel. At Priceline you bid and hope to "hit" at a low number, at Hotwire, which I prefer, you get prices but not the name of the hotel. My experiences using Hotwire, mostly in Bay Area, have been exceptional. My average rate on about 10 nights total using Hotwire has been $50 where the hotels I've enjoyed would usually run $100-$175 nightly.