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So I wanted to go to a convention in Minneapolis in two weeks, and I almost gave up because it appeared to be way too expensive for just myself. But on the second thought, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to do a search to see if I can get a cheap last minute air-and-hotel deal. So I’ve tried this: 4-day three nights trip for just me (1 adult), i don’t care what airline (one stop seems to be standard for BOS to MSP RT), or what time the flight (prefer to stay as late as I can on Saturday), I don’t care about the rating or name (Brand) of the hotel, but it just needs to be walking distance to the convention, within downtown Minneapolis.

I’m trying following websites: Orbits, Expedia, Hotwire, Priceline, Travelocity and Hotels.com. They all offer “Hotel and Air” combo, and search-able, and list hotels by price.

Travelocity seems to give you many hotel choices with good prices, Orbits have perhaps the most choice but they are more expensive than other sites (even with same airline and hotel combo, by $60 or more), and priceline does not give you the exact time and airline of your flight (its optional *). I noticed that hotels.com and expedia uses the same back end (at least for package deals), come to find out that they are both owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp. HotWire is also owned by the same company as it turns out, but their engine is different…

I narrowed it down to three hotels: Holiday Inn Express (4 blocks away, 2 stars), Best Western (8 blocks away, 2 and half stars) and Millennium Hotel (across from the convention, 3 and half stars). Following are the result for round trip and three nights as quoted by the websites. Holiday Inn: $551-Travelocity. Best Western: $515-Expedia/Hotels, $578-Travelocity, $590-Orbitz. Millennium: $533-Priceline(*), $596-Hotwire, $621-Expedia/Hotels.

Millennium from Priceline seemed like the best value, but I ended up with Best Western from expedia, mostly because i didn’t like the fact that I wouldn’t know what time I get in there and leave till after the purchase was a bit scary. I didn’t feel like gambling it. So here I come, Minneapolis!

…. on the other hand, I have decided to wait a few days and monitor if there will be any change in the price… Maybe I am making a mistake…?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005 at 08/02/2005 @ 2:42 pm and is filed under Tech, Gadget, and Computer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.