Travelers are probably aware of Travelocity’s service called Top Secret Hotels, but lets compare Travelocity Top Secred Hotels hotels versus Priceline.
Travelocity officially launched its opaque-hotel offering, Top Secret Hotels, which had been in beta, in an effort to become a player in that space alongside Priceline and Expedia’s Hotwire. Like Hotwire’s model and unlike Priceline’s, there’s no bidding involved with Travelocity’s Top Secret Hotels.
With Hotwire and Travelocity’s Top Secret Hotels, the consumer knows the price up-front, but not the hotel’s identity. Both Hotwire and Travelocity also provide a consumer rating of the property based on travelers’ reviews. When you click on Travelers’ Reviews, Travelocity states: “Sorry, but we can’t show you the reviews for the hotel as they may give away the Top Secret location.” Interesting and very clever.
But, Travelocity does provide a user rating based on 10 of the property’s aspects, such as service and room quality.
In its announcement, Travelocity differentiates Top Secret Hotels with the statement that “it is the first major online travel site to offer unpublished (or “opaque) hotel deals and regular hotel rates all in one search window, without the hassle of bidding.”
I agree that its nice to not have to worry about bidding sometimes. In fact, I wrote an article on when to avoid Priceline. If you do not want the hassle of bidding or you need to know what hotel amenities you will be getting, I recommend not bidding for travel and trying other non-bidding opaque travel sites such as: Expedia Unpublished Rates, Hotwire, Priceline Express Deals, and Travelocity Top Secret.
By far, Travelocity is the least popular of the opaque hotel booking engines. In the Hotwire and Priceline forum, we get very few people saying good things about Travelocity Top Secret Hotels. To be honest, Travelocity put out an inferior product and it simply cannot compete when you compare Travelocity Top Secret Hotel Vs. Priceline.
Still want to give Travelocity a try? My biggest recommendation is to compare Travelocity with Hotwire. You’re getting essentially the same thing, so why not try them both, compare prices, and go with the cheapest? Another tip: Use the Hotwire hotel lists to help identify your hotel. The lists are made up of hotels known to be on Hotwire, and if they are on Hotwire, there is a good chance they will be on Travelocity too.