Whether you're planning the next family reunion, making the most of a reduced business travel budget, or looking for last minute hotel deals, Dealbase.com can make the process easier. This site compares hundreds of hotel deals, such as room plus activities, buy one-get one deals, romantic getaway specials, cheap vacations with kids, and more.
Sam Shank is the CEO of Dealbase.com. He was the founder of TravelPost.com and has spearheaded comparison shopping alternatives on other websites for a number of years. LoveToKnow Save talked with Shank about how to use Dealbase.com to find the best hotel deals, save hundreds of dollars on travel options, and what to expect from the site in the future.
Last Minute Hotel Deals: Dealbase.com Interview
There are many websites that compare hotels. How does Dealbase.com simplify the process?
Dealbase.com is a next-generation site for finding hotel deals. For the traveler, we make finding bargains simple - just go to our site and enter the name of a location or your favorite hotel. We'll show you all the deals and offers available, the price per night, and the savings off of regular prices. Then, you can link directly to the source of the deal to make a booking. It's unbiased information and a totally free service to travelers.
How does the site get information on special packages and discounts?
Dealbase.com has developed a number of proprietary systems that are always looking across 3,500 different sites for great deals. When we find a new deal, it's added to the site in a matter of minutes.
We also have direct relationships with many hotels and booking sites that send us deals directly. The number of these partners is growing all the time as more hotels find value in having their deals listed on our site.
Finally, our team of deal experts are truly in the know about where the best deals can be found. I'm continually amazed at the savings and offers they uncover each day!
Finding Hotel Specials is Easier
I tried out Dealbase.com for an upcoming vacation to Seattle. On the site, I found a great hotel offering a "buy one night, get one night free" discount. However, when I visited the hotel's website without linking to the deal from Dealbase.com, I had to really search the hotel's site for its promotional offers. So going to Dealbase.com makes it easier to find specials?
Exactly - we help travelers find great savings and offers that previously have been extremely hard to find.
There's a literal treasure trove of great bargains that hotels offer on their own websites or to their top customers and people "in the know." We're the first and only site to aggregate all these great offers together in a single place that makes it easy for a traveler to find the deals that are right for them.
So a traveler simply enters a destination such as "Seattle" on Dealbase.com, and the latest specials will pop up. For major cities, this may mean as many as 100 offers at top hotels. As an example, on this page for Seattle, you'll find everything from hotel rooms which include $200 dinner credits to a two-for-one tourism package with a hotel stay.
What if I want to jet off to Cancun next weekend. Can I use Dealbase.com for last minute hotel deals?
Start by going to our page of Cancun hotel deals. You'll see a lot of deals, ordered by DealRank, which is our unbiased way of listing deals by high savings and low nightly rates. To see deals that are last minute, re-sort the list by "Expiring Soon" to see the last minute offers.
You can also see our list of last minute hotel deals across all the hotels and destinations on Dealbase.com.
Hotel Deals for Family Outings, Activities, and Romantic Getaways
There seem to be a number of hotel package deals that many people wouldn't know about, such as free breakfast, amenities for kids, and spa services. How can someone use Dealbase.com to find those bargains?
A great feature on Dealbase.com is the ability to filter deals by various criteria to find the deals that are right for you. This is particularly helpful in areas like New York City, with upwards of 500 hotel deals.
We recently expanded our filters to include a "tag" filtering option, which lets users find deals that match various deal categories. For example, within New York City, you can narrow the results down to over 50 romance-themed hotel deals or nearly 20 packages that include a massage. This ability to filter is key to the Dealbase.com deal-finding approach, as we believe that the best deal for one traveler isn't necessarily the best deal for another traveler.
Thus, empowering travelers with tools to search, filter, refine and sort deals to uncover great deals that match their personal criteria is very important to providing a great shopping experience.
Can someone look for a particular hotel deal, such as an activities package with a hotel stay?
One of the really useful aspects of Dealbase.com is that each deal is expressed at the individual hotel level. So, to see all the deals for your favorite hotel, just search for the name of the hotel or resort.
For example, a traveler could search for MGM Grand to get to our page of MGM Grand hotel deals, a fantastic resource page that lists all the MGM offers, including several activities-oriented packages.
Additional Information about Dealbase.com
One problem many people have with comparative sites is the discounts don't always have reliable expiration dates. How does Dealbase.com confirm and monitor deals?
Our team of deal experts and editors reviews and approves each deal that is added to Dealbase.com to ensure accuracy and authenticity. We also have in-house systems which monitor deals for potential changes or expiration.
Finally, unlike other travel deal sites, we encourage users to leave feedback about a deal in the form of a comment, which we monitor closely to look for potentially problematic offers that need addressing. That said, we have very few such issues, and the vast majority of travelers visiting our site are very pleased with the quality and bookability of the deals on Dealbase.com.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Travelers should visit Dealbase.com frequently, as we add over 100 new deals every day, on average, and every week we add new functionality to help users find great deals.
Some of the exciting plans we have for this summer include international deals, such as London, Paris and Barcelona. And later this year, we'll broaden our offering from hotels to other categories of travel deals, including vacation packages. We also have a few surprises we can't discuss at this time.
Finally, 2009 will go down in history as one of the best years ever to find great travel deals, and we're excited to be the largest, most consumer-friendly, and impartial resource for finding an incredible hotel bargain.
