Back in the early days of websites and the Internet it was commonplace whenever you were making reservations online with either hotels, cars or flights, etc. to go to the main site of your hotel chain or airline of choice to do the transaction.
However, in recent years almost everything online has transitioned to marketplaces. One of those marketplaces are travel sites and deal sites such as Hotwire.
The benefit of teaming up with these sites for the airlines and hotels are that they have a much higher chance of selling out all of their rooms or seats, and the benefit for the customer is that they get the same product for a lot less than going directly to the vendor.
I know this because I used to work in a hotel and if a person walked through the door to get a room or make a reservation it was always much higher than if they walked over to the computers we had in our business center and made a quick reservation on a site like Hotwire and came back over to check in…because the big hotel brands and airlines have negotiated rates that individuals just can’t get access to on their own.
It’s not like the old days where you could walk into a hotel or motel and negotiate on the price of the room. It doesn’t work like that anymore.
So, if you’re making travel plans online it’s best to go with these popular marketplaces. And if you travel a lot either for personal or business, then you may consider applying for a hotel or airline related credit card to double up and rake in some extra points or free hotel stays. One of  my favorite cards is the one from Hotels.com.