Brad,

As we are fund raising, thus our budget is very tight. We have been uniformly disappointed in Hotwire (likely cause we are shopping at the low end of the scale). Hotwire could never deliver a non-smoking room. Hotwire could never delivire a room with 2 beds. We have sworn off Hotwire and always start the hotel search with Kayak. Competitive prices and so far good non-smoking rooms with no need for someone to sleep on the floor...

If you are going for 4 stars or better you almost always get a good hotel at a great price. 3-3.5 is usually good too although there are some bad 3 star ones, but I wouldn't take a chance with them on the 1-2.5 stars. Depending on the city you can sometimes guess what hotel the hotwire price relates to by comparing amenities, location and what hotwire says is the normal price with one of expedia/travelocity/orbitz.

try sidestep.com - they invariably have great deals and cover *all* major airlines (expedia leaves out some of the discount airlines). They have a widget that will automatically compare what prices it finds to any of the main search apps - expedia, orbitz, travelocity, etc...

worth a shot!

lastly, if you are a WSJ.com subscriber, they recently had an article about cheap travel sites, as well as one about getting really cheap 1st class upgrades.