Hotwire Hotel Ratings

Does Hotwire inflate its hotel ratings?

As the owner of HotelDealsRevealed.com, I have access to a lot of Hotwire data. This data is crowdsourced by visitors to the site who share information about the opaque hotels they received on sites like Hotwire and Priceline. Thanks to travelers who have reported tens of thousands of winning bids, I’ve been able to compile lots of hotel data including the hotel name and star rating.

One of the questions often asked in the Hotwire & Priceline Forum is, “Does Hotwire artificially inflate their hotel ratings?” In other words, is Hotwire maybe a little too generous with the hotel ratings you see on their site. For those who are unaware, hotels you purchase on Hotwire are non-refundable. Therefore it’s imperative to know if the rating is reliable or not. Unlike other sites, you cannot check out hotel ratings and reviews on TripAdvisor before you buy on Hotwire because you don’t know what hotel you’re getting. This makes it all the more important to have confidence in the hotel rating that you see before you buy.

Annecdotally, this seems to be some truth to the rumour that Hotwire is generous with its hotel ratings. I often hear of people griping about the hotel quality not meeting up to expectations of hotel guests. Ratings are usually subjective and therefore its worth comparing Hotwire ratings to those of other sites. Thanks to crowdsourcing, I have access to data for both Hotwire and Priceline.

Back in 2011, I took a look at the data that I had. I compared the star rating of hotels known to be on both Hotwire and Priceline, and then looked to see what the differences are in the rankings. Hotel rankings are not an exact science. What you think is a 3.5 star hotel may be a 4-star hotel according to my standards, observations, experiences and preferences. My point is, there are variations in hotel ratings. But one would think that these variances would balance out over several hundreds of hotels. I wanted to find out:

• How often was there a discrepency in the hotel star rating between Hotwire and Priceline.
• How many hotels did Hotwire give a higher ranking than Priceline (and vice versa), and
• For those hotels that were not ranked the same, how much was the gap (e.g. 1/2 star, a full star)

See my original comparison of hotel ratings on Hotwire versus Priceline. When I did this, several months ago, I found that Hotwire was, in fact, somewhat generous with their hotel ratings when compared to Priceline.

Based on a recent Hotwire hotel stay, I wanted to revisit this topic because I have better data now (over 1,100 hotels rather than only 400 hotels when I first did this comparison) thanks to the crowdsourcing effort of Hotwire and Priceline customers sharing their winning bids. But I also wanted to revisit this because of a recent hotel purchase made on Hotwire where I felt the star rating was inflated.

The hotel was called Marianni’s Inn in Santa Clara, California. This was listed as a 2.5 star hotel. My expectations were low, but I have stayed in other 2.5 star hotels in the past. None were quite like this. I could go on a huge rant about the 25 year old carpets, the motel’s artifical turf pathways that were stained and worn out, the old-style 20” TV that barely worked, tired linen or noisy fridge and air conditioner, but I won’t. (Well, I guess I just did). I really felt that this motel’s rating was inflated, so I ran the data that I have on Hotwire and Priceline and here are the results.

• I had access to over 1,100 hotels and their star rating on both Hotwire and Priceline.
• 62% of the hotels were rated the same on both Hotwire and Priceline.
• 31% of the hotels were rated higher on Hotwire than on Priceline.
• 7% of hotels were rated higher on Priceline than on Hotwire.

What does this all mean?  Well, first off, I need to say that the data may not be entirely accurate.  The data is crowdsourced by Hotwire and Priceline customers sharing their winning bids, then me putting this data into a database.  There are errors throughout the process. However, these errors should balance each other out over the longer term.  In other words, some are Priceline data errors and some are Hotwire data errors

Instead, what appears to be happening is this:  Around 60% of the time, the star rating you see on Hotwire will be the same as the rating on Priceline, and thus likely to be fairly accurate.  However, it appears that about 30% of the time, Hotwire ratings are higher, in most cases by only a half a star rating.  That 4 star hotel you just booked on Hotwire may only be a 3.5 star hotel on Priceline.

I do not see the reverse happening quite as often.  Priceline only rated hotels higher than Hotwire 7 times out of 100 according to my dat.  In other words, you can usually rely more heavily on the ratings of hotels by Priceline than you can on Hotwire.  For me, personally, what this means is as follows:  I simply won’t book a 2.5 star hotel on Hotwire because there’s a chance it could end up with a motel like Marianni’s Inn, a major disappointment.  Anything in the 3.5 to 4 star range, however, I will continue to use Hotwire when appropriate.  Even though the rating might be inflated, its at least above a certain threshold that is tolerable

Want to help keep the Hotwire and Priceline hotel lists up to date?  Join thousands of travelers on the Hotwire and Priceline forum, or share your winning bids.  I use this information to update the hotel lists to help you identify your hotel before bidding.