Are you loyal???

No. Not asking if you are loyal to your spouse. Just asking if you are loyal to any hotel brands, ie. that you MUST stay only at Hilton hotels. Other hotels are out-of-the-question kind. Well, if you are NOT (like us), then you really must go to the following two sites to book your hotels whenever you travel. (Nope. This is not a sponsored post. Don't worry..NOT trying to sell you stuff!)

1) http://www.hotwire.com/

2) http://www.priceline.com/

I tell you, it's really really cheaper than what you would find "normally" online. The only thing is that you do NOT know the name of the hotel when you book it. They do list their usual partner hotels somewhere on the site, and these are the well-known brands...so don't worry as you will not get some AH KOW Hotel or whatever.

Our experience has been pretty good for our recent trip to the US. We used Hotwire for our New Orleans hotel. Their tag is "4* hotels at 2* prices". We selected the dates and there would be a list of hotels ranging from 2* to 4* with varying prices. There would be guest rating of the hotels, list of facilities, general location of the hotel. The only thing is the NAME of the hotel is NOT given. The name of the hotel is ONLY revealed to you after payment. We picked a 4* hotel which was at $69 + tax. And the hotel we got was Intercontinental New Orleans. For this price, if we were to select KNOWN hotels, I really could only get 2 1/2* hotels. Yes. I checked. Plus the location was really great. I have a friend that had previously used this site for her Rome hotel, so it works for Europe as well. Don't think they cover Asian hotels yet though....

As for Priceline, they have HK and Singapore sites to cover the Asian region. So DO check them out. When I mean check them out, not the "usual" hotel booking. You have to use the "NAME YOUR OWN PRICE" option to get the best discounts. Again, you do NOT know the hotel name. You pick the location, dates and then place a bid. If a hotel accepts your bid, you agree and pay, only then the NAME of the hotel will be revealed. I did this for our Washington DC hotels. I started off with bidding for 4* hotels, but my bid of USD 100 was not accepted at all, so had to downgrade to 3.5*. I didn't want to pay more than a 100. Anyway, we managed to get The Crowne Plaza Hamilton which was like only a few blocks from the White House. It was pretty good. I checked online for the cheapest rate....which was USD 199 + tax, if I were to go straight for this hotel. The only catch is that if you wanna extend your stay, you might not be able to do so.... like in our case. So, I re-bid but couldn't get the same area...but got the Marriot Wardman Park at USD 100 + tax. Cheapest online rate on Orbitz was like USD 225 + tax.
Really, USD 100 + tax will only get 2 - 2.5* hotels if the hotel name is KNOWN when booking.

For our Houston hotel, used this option too....bid USD 60 for a 4* hotel in the Galleria area. Managed to get Hilton Post Oak. Very very nice.

So.... next time when you go on a holiday, and you don't mind which hotel you stay, use these two sites. As I said, don't worry...they won't use AH KOW HOTEL for they have their list of partner hotels....

Oh yeah. For cars... go to www.carrentals.com as they will give you a list of cars from ALL major rental car companies and types of car. So you can pick and choose the cheapest etc. I mean you usually would get the smallest car thinking it is the cheapest, right? How wrong we were. Our huge 4WD car in NYC (this was in October 2008) was waaaaaay cheaper than the usual Economy-classed car.