HipAway - a new secret hotels website
Saturday, February 9, 2013
HipAway is a German based distributor of discounted rooms of "secret hotels" (being hotels for which you find out the name of the hotel after purchase - like lastminute.com's TopSecret Hotels, or Priceline's Express Deals).
The details HipAway provides before making the purchase are the approximate map location of the hotel, some photos, the amenities of the hotel, and the overall guest rating on TripAdvisor.
With these elements, one can make a pretty good guess about the actual hotel.
Even better, for bookings until 14 February, they have a 14€ discount with the coupon code VALENTIN14.
Follow the text code or the banner below to see how it works.
The website is in German only (for the moment), but the search process is fairly simple (select the city, the dates and search) - see print-screen below:
Once you push the search button, you get a listing of hotels ordered in ascending order of their nightly rates. Slide over your preferred hotel with the mouse and you will see the area in which it is located on the map on the right side of the screen:
Zoom in on this area to get a better look at the street names and landmarks.
In a separate tab open booking.com and go to the same city (Lisbon in our example). Click on the "Show map" button on the top right side of the screen and then zoom in on the same area HipAway pointed to.
Then, compare the two maps to see which hotels form the booking.com map could correspond to the HipAway hotel (remember that HipAway shows you the star-rating of the hotel, as well as some photos and amenities of the hotel).
Using the method above, we identified that the Lisbon hotel from the print-screen above is Altis Park Hotel**** - see http://www.booking.com/hotel/pt/altisparklisboa for details about the hotel.
Once based on the booking.com description you decide that you want to buy the hotel, push the "Zur Buchung" button on the HipAway page. You will be taken to the payment window, where you also input the discount code from above. See print-screen on how it's done:
Thus, on Hipaway, for 2 nights over the week-end 15-17 February 2013 one double room costs 94€ (a 40% discount on cost of 140€ charged by booking.com).
The details HipAway provides before making the purchase are the approximate map location of the hotel, some photos, the amenities of the hotel, and the overall guest rating on TripAdvisor.
With these elements, one can make a pretty good guess about the actual hotel.
Even better, for bookings until 14 February, they have a 14€ discount with the coupon code VALENTIN14.
Follow the text code or the banner below to see how it works.
The website is in German only (for the moment), but the search process is fairly simple (select the city, the dates and search) - see print-screen below:
Once you push the search button, you get a listing of hotels ordered in ascending order of their nightly rates. Slide over your preferred hotel with the mouse and you will see the area in which it is located on the map on the right side of the screen:
Zoom in on this area to get a better look at the street names and landmarks.
In a separate tab open booking.com and go to the same city (Lisbon in our example). Click on the "Show map" button on the top right side of the screen and then zoom in on the same area HipAway pointed to.
Then, compare the two maps to see which hotels form the booking.com map could correspond to the HipAway hotel (remember that HipAway shows you the star-rating of the hotel, as well as some photos and amenities of the hotel).
Using the method above, we identified that the Lisbon hotel from the print-screen above is Altis Park Hotel**** - see http://www.booking.com/hotel/pt/altisparklisboa for details about the hotel.
Once based on the booking.com description you decide that you want to buy the hotel, push the "Zur Buchung" button on the HipAway page. You will be taken to the payment window, where you also input the discount code from above. See print-screen on how it's done:
Thus, on Hipaway, for 2 nights over the week-end 15-17 February 2013 one double room costs 94€ (a 40% discount on cost of 140€ charged by booking.com).
