Las Vegas Hotels: 4/21/2005 to 4/24/2005 (Searched: 1/18/2005)

before supplemental listings	26	25	25	24	21	20	16	8	30
after supplemental listings	29	29	25	28	21	23	16	8	30
Aladdin
Bally's
Bellagio
Caesar's Palace
Circus Circus
Excalibur				(3)
Flamingo Hilton
Four Seasons	(1)	(2)		(3)
Hard Rock
Harrah's		(2)
Imperial Palace						(4)
Las Vegas Hilton
Luxor				(3)
Mandalay Bay
MGM Grand
Mirage, The	(1)
Monte Carlo				(3)
New York, NY
Palace Station
Palms, The
Paris
Rio
Riviera		(2)
Sahara						(4)
San Remo
Stardust
Stratosphere						(4)
Treasure Island
Tropicana
Venetian, The	(1)	(2)

Legend	Notes
the official site not applicable savings > $5 plus/minus $5 overage > $5	(1) these listings did not appear in the initial search of SideStep, but they came up for specific search of the hotel names.
	(2) these listings did not include pricing for the initial search of Travelocity, only a link to check rates and availability. 1/19/2005 Update - detailed pricing now appears on the initial search for Harrah's and the Venetian, and a price range now appears for the Riviera. Did the system "learn" and update itselft?
Disclaimer	(3) these listings occur below the "red line" in the search of Hotels.com, and do not fit in with the primary listings.
I have tried my best to make sure all comparisons were apples vs. apples, but due to nature and amount of data involved, there are no gurantees.	(4) these listings did not include pricing for the initial search of Orbitz, only a link to check rates and availability.
	(note) Mobissimo's pricing lacked line-item detail necessary for an apples vs. apples comparison.
	(note) FareChase was tested, but of our list of thirty hotels, it only found the Las Vegas Hilton.

A Brief Summary of the Hotel Search Engines

In this test, SideStep was far more comprehensive than newcomers Kayak.com and Mobissimo. The former only included incomplete listings from Orbitz, and the latter included incomplete listings from Lodging.com, plus a few other listings. Granted, Kayak.com is still in beta, and Mobissimo still has a "new" tag by the hotel search, so I'll have to keep tabs on them for future developments.

Most of the established travel aggregators returned enough results to be practically interchangeable. After all, what good is another listing or two if they are not remarkable in some way? What is interesting is how the leading travel sites are so different in the amenities availalable for advanced searching. I have documented these differences on the Hotels page of at Organized Shopping.

Does This Change The Way I Shop For Hotels?

Like I tell people who spend to much time looking at logfiles, avoid analysis unless it is likely to be actionable. Along those lines, I have clarified, and in one case refined, my process for searching hotels, as detailed below:

(1) Planning: Define what I am looking for in a hotel: location, amenities, price range. I prefer to define the goals upfront, then look for the right tool(s) for the job, instead of pre-selecting one tool and letting its limitation define my expectations.

(2) Searching: Go to the Hotels page of Organized Shopping, look at the comparison chart, see which sites allow me to search based on my most-wanted amenities, if applicable. This is new, because the hotel page was only updated while researching this post.

(3) Reviewing: Use these site(s) to arrive at a short list of candidates. Scan a few sites that aggregate hotel reviews to confirm my choice or raise red flags. Further refine my list to one candidate, or a small handful of hotels that are essentially interchangeable.

(4) Pricing: Check the prices at the official hotel site(s), and at least one aggregator, probably SideStep and maybe Expedia or Orbitz. Many hotels offer the best rates on their own sites, but sometimes you will find the best rate at the aggregators. Bottom line, no one site has the best price every time.

Future Travel Search Shootouts and Upgrades

I'm planning to do more types of travel shopping comparisons in the near future, including some commodity-driven searches (i.e. airfare) that could have narrowly-defined objectives and a single winner. I'll also be looking to upgrade the travel-related pages at Organized Shopping in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. As always, if you know of a uniquely useful shopping resource, or in this case a uniquely useful travel resource, please let me know. Thanks!