There’s a new travel website in town, and it’s here to help you find hotel deals. Read all about it in this press release. Entrepreneurs Sam Shank (former CEO of TravelPost.com), David Hehman, and Howard Love just launched DealBase.com with over 10,000 hotel deals, including more than 275 Las Vegas hotel deals and more than 600 New York City deals. Right now, they’re focused on hotels in the U.S., Mexico, and the Caribbean. Results are sorted by what percentage you save off the hotel’s regular rates. (Interestingly, they do include rates that are more expensive, and the percentage reflects this with a minus sign.) When you click on a deal, a Deal Analyzer shows you what the regular room rate is, so you can see how much money you’re actually saving (if any). They also provide filters so you can narrow your choices by hotel star rating, date and price. So to recap: One-stop shopping to compare hotel deals in your favorite destinations using filters for your preferences…sounds like the solution to all your hotel needs, right? Not so fast.
When I checked out the site, the best deal they had for the MGM Grand in Las Vegas was $72/night; but I just got emailed a deal for $59/night. Not because I’m a high roller (that’s laughable), but just for having an MGM player’s club card and signing their guestbook. The best deals for New Orleans hotels they have right now start at $95. But I got the Marriott New Orleans (which doesn’t show up among their choices, by the way) for $89/night using my AAA card. And those are just things I found in my first 5 minutes on the site. They’ve got good deals, but not necessarily all the best deals. Using some creativity, you might be able to find something better.
Here’s what they want to happen, though: They want people like you and me to add deals we find elsewhere to DealBase.com in order to increase their database of offers. So I spend countless hours surfing the ‘Net looking for deals, share them with DealBase.com out of the goodness of my heart for no compensation whatsoever, and they make the profit off my many hours of work. In a few years, the founders will sell this website for millions of dollars and retire to the Bahamas, while I’m still slaving away at my day job. Hmm….Does that sound fair to anyone? Yeah, me neither. The least they could do is offer an incentive for people to contribute information to their site. Yet, according to their blog, “people have posted over 7000 hotel deals” on their site so far. Wow. Go figure.
In summary, if one-stop shopping and a decent price–but maybe not the best price–is all you’re seeking, this site might be the answer to your prayers. But if you want the absolute lowest price available, don’t assume you’ll get it at DealBase.com.
on Nov 19th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Thanks for taking the time to dig deep and check us out. There is an ocean of hotel deals out there that we’ve decided to address, and it looks like you helped us discover some more. “Like sands in the hourglass…” it seems, sometimes.
For the MGM Grand deal, we do not have that email (though we oddly have some others); would you mind forwarding that to us, and we’ll get that up right away to share with others? We will be getting similar emails in the future for Vegas deals.
As for the Marriott New Orleans – another good catch. We have since added that hotel and its related deals here: http://www.dealbase.com/New-Orleans/New-Orleans-Marriott-hotel-deals-3339
You’ll notice that for a few of the deals, we will manually estimate a price within our Deal Analyzer, but also advise you to see the hotel’s website for a more accurate rate.
In cases like this, where the hotel doesn’t overtly list any starting price for a deal, our editors research prices over a few sample dates.
Then we note that these are our estimates, since the rates we found may or may not be easily reproducable by someone else. (It depends on the booking dates, weekends vs weekdays, high- vs low-seasons, etc.)
This is all in an effort to be like a Craigslist of travel deals, where a combination of citizen and commercial input contribute to improving the way the information is currently arranged out there today. It’s not an easy road, for sure, but one we want to travel since we’ve dealt with the frustration ourselves.
As a young site, we have many more stones to uncover; your insight and rational tenacity for answers is definitely appreciated. Thanks solofriendly!
on Nov 18th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Thanks for taking the time to dig deep and check us out. There is an ocean of hotel deals out there that we’ve decided to address, and it looks like you helped us discover some more. “Like sands in the hourglass…” it seems, sometimes.
For the MGM Grand deal, we do not have that email (though we oddly have some others); would you mind forwarding that to us, and we’ll get that up right away to share with others? We will be getting similar emails in the future for Vegas deals.
As for the Marriott New Orleans – another good catch. We have since added that hotel and its related deals here: http://www.dealbase.com/New-Orleans/New-Orleans-Marriott-hotel-deals-3339
You’ll notice that for a few of the deals, we will manually estimate a price within our Deal Analyzer, but also advise you to see the hotel’s website for a more accurate rate.
In cases like this, where the hotel doesn’t overtly list any starting price for a deal, our editors research prices over a few sample dates.
Then we note that these are our estimates, since the rates we found may or may not be easily reproducable by someone else. (It depends on the booking dates, weekends vs weekdays, high- vs low-seasons, etc.)
This is all in an effort to be like a Craigslist of travel deals, where a combination of citizen and commercial input contribute to improving the way the information is currently arranged out there today. It’s not an easy road, for sure, but one we want to travel since we’ve dealt with the frustration ourselves.
As a young site, we have many more stones to uncover; your insight and rational tenacity for answers is definitely appreciated. Thanks solofriendly!
on Nov 19th, 2008 at 2:39 am
What a very gracious response, Liz, especially since I gave you guys a bit of a hard time. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my concerns, I appreciate it. For that, I do owe you one. I’ll forward that MGM email along to you.
I still think you might want to consider some sort of program, though, to reward contributors (of legitimate deals) to your site. I’m sure you might find a few bad apples trying to abuse it, but it would certainly motivate people to help you in your quest to bring every conceivable hotel deal to one site–yours.
Anyway, good luck to you, and I’ll keep an eye on your site.
Gray
on Nov 18th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
What a very gracious response, Liz, especially since I gave you guys a bit of a hard time. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my concerns, I appreciate it. For that, I do owe you one. I’ll forward that MGM email along to you.
I still think you might want to consider some sort of program, though, to reward contributors (of legitimate deals) to your site. I’m sure you might find a few bad apples trying to abuse it, but it would certainly motivate people to help you in your quest to bring every conceivable hotel deal to one site–yours.
Anyway, good luck to you, and I’ll keep an eye on your site.
Gray