Farecast, the airfare prediction site, has expanded its predictive abilities to hotel rates. Sort of.
Instead of offering a prediction about the direction of room rates, as they do for airfare, the site offers an analysis of how relatively good or bad the rate is. They offer a star rating (1 to 5) for how good the rate is, historically.
That’s helpful, but not a forecast. Essentially, Farecast is now a hotel rate aggregator, comparable to Kayak or Sidestep.
The historical ratings are interesting, but are they really helpful? Depending when you’re trying to book, and depending on occupancy rates, you might not do well to hold out for a five-star rate at the hotel you’re looking at.
A rate prediction might be on the horizon, but I wouldn’t count on it any time soon. The reason may be the variation in rooms. As I wrote in a review of hotel rate aggregators nearly a year and a half ago:
Hotel searches are trickier than airfares, for the most part, because not all rooms are created equal, and hotel location is less standardized than air travel routes. Finding a low rate isn’t helpful if you have strong preferences for two queen beds vs. one king bed, or smoking vs nonsmoking, or if you need to be within walking distance of a particular location.
Add to that the large blocks of rooms that can be taken up by conventioneers, wedding parties, or any other large group.
Knowing that rates are good or bad may make you feel better or worse about your reservations, but will they stop you from making the booking? After all, most hotels will let you cancel and re-book if a new, lower rate appears.
RSS (FeedBurner)
Read with Amazon Kindle
Subscribe by E-mail
September 12th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
So really all that’s needed now is a mashup between this and PointMaven to get the full picture. I do like this, and have been a fan of Farecast for quite a while.