New website lets hotels bid for your business
— -- A new hotel-booking site, BackBid, turns hotel shopping on its head: As a potential guest, you become the pursued rather than the pursuer.
Taking a lot of the hassle out of online searching and comparing of hotel rates, Montreal-based BackBid lets you post an existing hotel reservation made on another hotel or online travel agency website, then sit back as competing hotels bid for your business.
Unlike "opaque" discounting sites such as Priceline and Hotwire, with BackBid you know the identities of the hotels upfront.
BackBid, which operates in 16 U.S. markets, launched in beta in November. Here's how it works: You create a free profile and can include your rewards programs and AAA membership, as well as your preferred amenities, such as valet parking, Wi-Fi and hotel spa.
You then enter information about a hotel reservation you've made elsewhere, including check-in and checkout dates, your confirmation number and where you booked the property. Finally, you e-mail the reservation to post@backbid.com.
I did this one evening for upcoming stays at the Holiday Inn Chicago-Midway Airport, Hotel Vintage Park in Seattle and the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan.
By dawn the next morning, I'd received e-mail notifications from BackBid indicating there were seven bids from Chicago hotels, ranging from the Hyatt Regency Chicago to the Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown to the Dana Hotel & Spa.
Among the seven hotels trying to woo me: the Holiday Inn Chicago-Midway Airport, the original hotel that I had reserved on HolidayInn.com. The hotel was offering me a $120 rate instead of the $159 I had reserved.
Plus, the Hyatt Regency Chicago has a four-star rating compared with the Holiday Inn's three stars. BackBid told me that the $99 rate offered by the Hyatt Regency Chicago was a $60 savings over my Holiday Inn reservation, although actually it would be about a $70 savings with taxes and fees.
One of BackBid's strengths is its transparency and relative ease of use. BackBid identifies the hotels making competing bids and details their proposed rates, star ratings, amenities and cancellation policies. The site provides photos and maps, and even lets you compare three hotel bids in terms of star ratings, rates, when the offers expire, check-in and checkout times, hotel amenities and the numbers of rooms and floors.
If you decide to accept one of the hotel offers, you merely click "Book Now," enter your personal and credit card information, and await your reservation confirmation. (Most of the hotels require prepayment at the time of booking.)
Thus, BackBid enables you to secure hotel discounts and take advantage of amenity and star-rating upgrades — all without extensive searching and the gamble of not knowing the hotel identity in advance as on opaque sites.
You can also invite hotel bids without an existing reservation by entering your travel intentions. But BackBid recommends having a reservation to get the best deals, as the hotels will know you are serious about traveling.
Still, BackBid has some shortcomings.
•For now, BackBid is limited to the USA. And it doesn't guarantee you'll get bids. Two days after posting my existing hotel reservations in Chicago, Seattle and Manhattan, I'd received no competing bids for the latter two.
