Hotwire booking today for one night in San Francisco from 10/28 to 10/29. Hotwire only lists price, amenities and star rating. You book and then hotwire sends you the hotel information. You can try to guess the hotel based on the amenities and location hints. I checked the hotel listings on http://www.betterbidding.com/ before I booked. Several hotels were listed.
Looked only for 4 star or above (below were the choices):
Union Square West $100 + 22.05 Tax = $122.05 Total (Clift Hotel or Parc 55?)
Union Square East $115+21.97 Tax= $136.97 Total (Westin St. Francis?)
Embarcadero $203+$35.41= $238.41 Total (Hyatt or Omni)
Nob Hill $125+24.4 Tax = $149 Total
I was 99.9% sure that the Nob Hill Hotel was the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins hotel and I was right. I stayed at the Fairmont SF Nob Hill Hotel last year which had spectacular views of the city. The hills are steep from Union Square to Nob Hill, but it was easy taking a taxi cab or cable car.
I chose to use Hotwire rather than Priceline name your own price because priceline's hotel listings were so broad and it was hard to narrow the selection down and figure out what hotel it was. Since there were only a select few Nob Hill Hotels which Hotwire listed separately. Priceline lumped Nob Hill hotels with Union Square West.
You're most likely to get a better price for the same hotel thru priceline. Last year, I booked a USE hotel thru priceline and got the Omni Hotel San Francisco. It was about 7-10 blocks away from Union Square which I wasn't too happy about. List of hotels for previous priceline hotel winners are listed on both http://www.betterbidding.com/ and http://www.bidfortravel.com/. List of hotels for previous hotwire bookings are listed on http://www.bidfortravel.com/.
