TravelPony vs. _______: A Hotel Booking Site Throwdown.

As a surfer I have a quiver of surfboards. Having multiple boards gives me more options for the variety of waves that crash into the California coast. For a while this was my only quiver, then we started a life of travel and I soon found myself with another quiver: hotel booking sites.

While not nearly as sexy as a collection of surfboards, hotel booking engines initially helped save me money and time, but then the playing field changed. To combat the popularity of  big branded booking engines, hotels started offering customers “Best Rate Guarantee” assurances by reserving directly with them. Then, the Wall Street Journal reported that Orbitz was showing more expensive hotel rooms to Mac users. And in between all of this, my quiver shrunk as the deep discounts faded.

So when TravelPony reached out us, I was excited. “Could this be the rebirth of the hotel booking engine?” I thought to myself as I typed www.travelpony.com  into the address bar.  These days there are no shortage of booking sites, most, however, are stagnate from the onset, offering no real innovation or discounts. A few have emerged, though, that have bucked this trend, and I wondered, as a cheerful cartoon pony loaded in front of me, which category TravelPony would fall into.

TravelPony’s premise is simple: let word of mouth create the buzz and reinvest what would normally be your marketing budget to create bigger discounts for your consumers. The Grateful Dead and Phish used a similar organic marketing method to grow their audiences by allowing fans to tape and distribute their shows for free. In TravelPony’s case, they’re asking customers to socially share the deal after its booked; however, this is optional. For those who would rather not share to their social media accounts, they can simply opt-out by checking the “Pony Promise” box to tell their friends offline. It should also be noted that for customers to see the discounts  they have to login. According to the company, this enables TravelPony  to circumvent the price fixing contracts of large travel sites.

The Throwdown!

I picked three U.S. cities that I am familiar with–San Diego, San Francisco and Boston–and set my travel date for Nov. 12-14 (a Tuesday and Wednesday night). TravelPony isn’t a last-minute deal site; instead, its goal is to offer everyday low rates. So the further out you can book the better. In the examples below, I’ve included the booking options page from TravelPony, which I cross-checked with each of the listed competitor sites to ensure that the rates listed on TravelPony were accurate, as well as the official rate from the hotel’s website.

San Diego | Hard Rock Hotel

The Hard Rock is one of the hippest hotels in San Diego’s Historic Gaslamp Quarter. So to be able to get a room for around $250/night is a really great deal. In fact, TravelPony was generous with the market prices it gave to its competitors, which were actually more inline with the price quoted on the Hard Rock’s website.

Verdict: TravelPony

San Francisco | Sir Francis Drake

The Drake, as I like to call it, is a throwback to the Great Gatsby era and is one of most stylish luxury hotels in San Francisco. This Union Square hotel was renovated in 2011 to blend its timeless elegance with the 21st century, and its location among San Francisco’s  can’t be beat. This time around TravelPony’s market rates were slight less than what was quoted by TravelPony; most of the competitors, including the hotel’s website, were priced at $249/night. The only exception was Reserve Travel, which was offering the same room at $176/night.

Verdict: TravelPony

Boston | Revere Hotel Boston Common

Contemporary luxury in the heart of Boston…yes, please! This was the most interesting throwdown of them all, because the room TravelPony is offering isn’t available anywhere else–even the hotel’s website. The room on TravelPony may not be a suite but it is significantly cheaper than anything else, while still being a refundable rate. Additionally, all of the competitors’ market rates that TravelPony quoted were spot on.

Verdict: Travel Pony

Final Thoughts

There you have it. TravelPony went 3 for 3 in this throwdown and has earned a spot in my quiver. In fact, TravelPony is a perfect example of why it is good to have several booking sites in your travel quiver. While some of the bigger travel sites are better for finding budget rooms as well as locating hotels that are close to  landmarks, like train stations and airports, I now know  just how sub-par they are when it comes to deep discounts, despite all of their claims about  having the best rates available.

On the other hand, TravelPony is a quick and easy way to get the best hotel for your hard earned vacation dollars. While I’d love to see them use the hotel’s specific room type on the booking options page and beef up their Europe listings, those things don’t detract from the incredible discounts that TravelPony offers its members. It is without a doubt one of the best hotel booking sites I’ve found for finding extraordinary deals on mid-range and upscale properties in popular U.S. cities.