This site won’t win any design awards, but if you’re looking for serious insider help getting the best hotel rates, you won’t care what the site looks like. My hubby and I are planning a trip to NYC for our anniversary and I was coming up short with my usual research; the room rates in NY right now are sky high. Googling away, I found this site called BetterBidding.com. If you like to use Hotwire (and I do), they have all kinds of cheat sheets to help you figure out which hotels match up with your Hotwire search results. You can then go check those hotels out on TripAdvisor or another review engine and see if it’s a decent place. And if you still can’t figure it out, post a request for help on the boards and you’ll get very useful tips, rates, and links. It’s like having a travel agent who really knows how to “game the system.” Be sure and use the links they provide you; this guy makes his money through the referrals.