I once stayed at some crappy roadside motel in Nowheresville, Georgia. The towels were thin, the toiletries the cheapest you can buy, the carpet worn, the bathroom held together by many tubes of caulk.

The room rate listed on the back of the entrance door? $399 per night.

Of course nobody in the history of that motel has ever paid more than 1/4 of the listed price for that room. It’s a total joke.

Here’s a photo of the price at Element Miami Airport I stayed in a few days ago when I had some meetings nearby. It was a fine hotel I’d gladly stay in again, with a great suite layout and a kitchen. When I search various dates for it online, the rate is usually around $150 or so. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say sometimes they’re able to charge double that amount. But here’s what’s on the door.

The original idea behind this practice was to keep hotel management or front desk clerks from gouging you. Cities or states required the “rack rate” be listed on the door as the maximum. If anyone paid more than what was listed, they could complain and get compensated.

Follow the logic of how hotel owners are going to respond and you know how we got into this silliness. If the hotel must list its maximum rate, the owner/manager is going to pull a ridiculously high number out of thin air and post it as a pipe dream. Nobody ever complains because nobody will ever pay anything close.

When I go on Trivago.com and search Miami hotel deals, I get 168 hotels to choose from in Miami proper (apart from the beach). That’s what keeps prices in check: competition. When people can go on that site and see prices from nearly every booking site out there, do we really need this silly system anymore?

Do you typically go to one or two sites to check hotel prices before booking? Do you change those sites depending on the region?

Even if you do, you’re probably paying too much.

One of the companies I’ve partnered up with over at Perceptive Travel is Trivago. Since I’ve starting using them to search for the best hotel deals, I’ve seen dramatic differences between the various online travel agencies and you can rarely point to one of them as being consistently lower in price than others.

A lot of American travelers haven’t heard of Trivago because they’re based in Europe. The closest thing to it here is Kayak, but I don’t have to look at 3 display ads from outside companies and three blocks of Google Adsense ads on Trivago. And I don’t have to uncheck boxes that will send me to three more booking sites. (If Kayak already gives you the best results, why do they want to send you to Orbitz or Priceline? Because they get a few cents every time you leave the boxes checked and those windows open, that’s why).

So this site delivers multiple results like Kayak, but it loads faster and has a cleaner interface, without a bunch of distracting ads blinking and expanding on the sides of the page.

Trivago pulls from 141 booking sites in all, so if you search for a Budapest hotel deal, you’ll get 1,149 hotels in the results. Whoa, that’s a lot of hotels! When I searched Miami Beach hotels for an upcoming trip, there were 365 of them to choose from. Thankfully you can narrow this down by price, distance, ratings, or popularity on the general side, lots of specific factors (like star category, amenities, and type of hotel) on the left sidebar. If I drilled that Budapest list down to 3-star hotels within a mile and a half of the city center, I got 13 results. All but one were $100 or less.

Here’s why using a metasearch site like this matters though. In those results, the lowest price for various choices came from six different booking sites. Sometimes Agoda was lower, sometimes Booking.com, sometimes Vivastay or EasytoBook. This is why just going to Expedia every time is a bad idea, especially for international locations.

I also like this site because it gives you different room options from various sites. So you may see a difference of $10 for a standard double, but a difference of $50 for a junior suite. Or you may click on a hotel on the same block and find a similar junior suite $60 less than that.

There’s a lot to sift through in some cities and that can be a bit daunting. But if you use the filters to home in on what you want, you can book through Trivago feeling confident that you’ve gotten the best possible deal, whether that deal was from Splendia, Agoda, GetaRoom, Venere, the hotel chain site, or a dozen sites you probably never would have checked otherwise.

If you’re going to potentially save $40 or more on your hotel bill, a few extra minutes spent on research would seem to be a good payoff.

Follow this link to find your cheap hotel deals.

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Consumer Reports checks out the cheap hotel and motel chains most glossy travel mags ignore.

Hampton Inn Downtown Miami

Usually when Consumer Reports magazine gets detailed feedback from its subscribers, it’s concerning physical items like cars, washing machines, and TVs. They do look at service industries as well though, including hospitality, and in a recent issue they took a close look at results on hotels.

What I liked about this one was the depth. They didn’t just focus on the big business and luxury chains like most travel magazines do. They ran through four classes of hotels, down to humble names like Econolodge and Motel 6. After all, in the real world that the 99% inhabit, these chains often have a higher occupancy than the big boys, especially on weekends when the biz travelers have gone home. (Despite the impression you may get from the print  travel press, the average nightly room rate in the United States is generally around $100.)

So who came out on top? I’ll skip the top tier (Ritz-Carlton) and the second tier (Harrah’s and Walt Disney Resorts). In the Moderate category, here’s who got the highest ratings from readers:

1) Wingate by Wyndham
2) Drury Inn & Suites (Slogan: “Where the extras aren’t extra.”)
3) Hampton Inn & Suites

At the bottom were Quality Inn, Clarion, and Ramada.

In the Budget category, there were seven entries. Here are the top three:

1) Microtel (also owned by Wyndham)
2) Red Roof Inn
3) Super 8 (also owned by Wyndham)

In order, the others were Day’s Inn, Motel 6, Econolodge, and America’s Best Value (which apparently isn’t).

The ones that ranked the highest usually got a top score in the “comfort” category and “check-in” was a big factor as well.

Keep this list in mind if you’re booking online or perusing a coupon book you pick up at a rest stop—something I strongly advise on road trips where you want to stay flexible. Remember though that the individual hotels are usually franchises or independently owned in some other fashion. There’s a business arrangement there, but the brand you see on the sign doesn’t mean the Super 8 in Long Beach is the same as the Super 8 in Topeka. For budget motels, newer is generally better, all else being equal. These are not places built to still look good 200 years from now. Or even 25.

Don’t forget about the opaque booking sites.

Interestingly though, Consumer Reports basically said you should throw all this out the window if you want a great deal instead of just a good one: their advice was to book through Hotwire or Priceline whenever your plans are secure. They tried their best to top the deal they got through Hotwire through every means possible—including calling the front desk to request a discount—but couldn’t come close. They paid $133 for a high-end Chicago hotel in the location they wanted. The best price they could get on the same hotel, same night booking it any other way? $230.

As I’ve said before, if you’re not using sites like this, you’re paying far more than you need to—and far more than that cheerful couple in the room next door if that gets your competitive juices flowing. You don’t have to go in blind either. Use message board sites like BetterBidding, BiddingForTravel, and BidLessTravel to figure out what you’ll probably get in each star category. See links to these and more on hotel deal sites here.

Some of the best hotel or guesthouse deals I found when I first started traveling were from personal recommendations from other backpackers met on the road and from pure legwork: walking into places and asking the price. I often spend a bit more than that now, but I’ll often still arrive with no reservations at all.

Fast forward to now and it appears to be so much easier to find a good deal and book a hotel where you’re going. You can just pull up Expedia, Travelocity, or Hotels.com—or on the cheaper end of the scale, Hostelbookers or Hostelworld. Here’s a fact that few travelers seem to grasp though: there are thousands of hotels not listed on any of these sites.

You can see a few reasons for this in this Gadling article from one of the guys who runs EuroCheapo: The Best Offline Budget Hotels in Paris. He’s talking about how to find a decent place to sleep for less than 75 euros a night ($105) in the most popular city in the world for tourists, but you can apply that some logic to almost anywhere. The owners of these businesses don’t think it’s worth it to pay the hefty commissions. You can’t book them on any website period except maybe their own ugly one built in 1998 and barely updated since. Don’t judge the independent inn by its virtual facade.

A while back I poked around for a half hour before booking a hotel in San Cristobal de Chiapas in Mexico for an adventure travel summit I’m attending. I looked at what was on the big booking sites and wasn’t seeing any good deals at a nice looking place in the center. I looked at prices on the convention organizer’s recommendations on their booking site and thought, “I can do better.”

After tracking down some independent listings of hotels in the city on some Mexico-focused websites, I ended up with a 5-night reservation at a little hotel a few blocks from where I spent most of my time, walking distance to the center, free internet and breakfast, for 680 pesos a night double—taxes included. Thanks to a strengthening dollar and weakening peso, that currently comes out to less than $50. Similar hotels on the big booking sites were running $75 to $80 and were further from the center.

I reserved online directly through their site after looking at the various room options. Other times I’ve reserved and booked by e-mail or phone. When I’m traveling alone, or occasionally with the family, I’ll just show up and look around, old-school. Culturally this works in some places better than others and you can negotiate more with a small family-owned property than you can in a big corporate chain hotel with a part-time night clerk used to dealing with pre-booked package tourists. It’s often worth a shot though wherever.

In this case I didn’t have much luck with my guidebook: I only had a Lonely Planet Mexico one and I’ve found most hotels in there tend to get overpriced because they get so much business without trying. One focused on a specific city/region—especially if it’s by another publisher—will usually be more helpful. I’ve personally had really good luck with recommendations in the Moon Handbook series. Moon tends to use more experienced authors who have been covering the same country for a decade or more and it shows.

Be advised this works better internationally than it does in the U.S. For better or worse, we’re a country dominated by chain hotels. Unless you’re booking a B&B, vacation home rental, or park cabin, most of the inventory is listed somewhere as it’s hard to get noticed here otherwise.

In the end, this hotel wasn’t perfect, but it was a great value. The hot water cranked, the bed was comfy, the included breakfast was decent, and the Wi-fi was fast and free.

What have been your experiences in finding hidden gems that aren’t on the big hotel booking sites?

I just got back from a few weeks of being an active travel writer, which is in contrast to being an active traveler. For one thing, I stayed in some very swanky hotels in the line of work, while staying at some not-so-swanky ones at other times. In contrast, I have to admit that the swanky ones were very comfortable. Reliable hot water, toilets that flush properly, and comfy beds are just a start. The top-end places also seduced us with twice-a-day cleaning, very nice sheets, and grounds or views meant for lingering. What’s not to like?

Well, a few things actually. Although I can stay at these kinds of places almost at will while on assignment, my wife is only willing to put up with so many nights of this. Don’t get me wrong–she is quick to ask for a facial, massage, or some other pampering when it’s time for a birthday or anniversary–but she is also very social. Ironically, luxury hotels are some of the loneliest places in the world, no matter where you are. As Rob Sangster, author of Travelers’ Tool Kit said in the latest edition of Transitions Abroad, “These places appeal to English-speaking guests who, oddly, don’t tend to talk much with one another.” While most guesthouses around the world that cost $2 to $40 feature a central meeting and talking area, most luxury hotels are built around the idea of seclusion and privacy.

Plus in many cases, they just don’t have all that much character. There are exceptions. I just stayed at the amazing and awe-inspiring Hotel Monasterio in Cusco, which deserves every flattering thing ever said about it. But I have also stayed in so many boring, cookie-cutter chain hotels that I have lost count.

The Luxury Tax
I’ve had a fabulous time in lots of luxury hotels, and there’s no denying that the best ones are experts at meeting and even anticipating your every need. If you can afford the best service and are willing to pay for it, by all means sign up for weeks of stays with someone like Four Seasons, Oberoi, Aman Resorts, or Orient-Express.

If you don’t have more money than you know what to do with, however, there is a price to pay. If you have even a hint of frugality in your bones, here’s what to look out for. All of these contribute to “the luxury tax.”

1) You’ve lost bargaining power.
If you are at one of the most expensive hotels in town, you are rich. Forget trying to convince any taxi driver, guide, or shopkeeper in the hotel otherwise. You will pay more, end of story.

2) Only deluxe taxis wait at your hotel.
In New York, you may pay a few extra dollars if you have to take a car service instead of a yellow taxi. Internationally, however, you will pay several times the local price. In Lima, Peru, when I stayed at a hostel a ride across town cost me $3. When I took a ride on almost the same itinerary from the nearby luxury hotel, it was $18. OK, the car was nicer, but a $15 difference? I’ve seen this over and over again, from Amman to Anguilla.

3) You will not get advice on local transportation.
If you are staying in a luxury hotel, here’s a little game for you. No matter what city you are staying in, it will probably work. Ask the question, “How do I take the subway/bus/tram to (fill in the blank)?” About 99 times out of 100, even if there is a subway stop outside the hotel, the answer you will hear will be, “You should take a taxi.” Ask the same question at a budget hotel and they’ll talk for five minutes and then hand you a schedule.

4) Any money you spend in the hotel will correspond to the price level of the hotel.
It is common practice in the hotel industry to base prices of all goods on the class of the hotel. So whether you are buying a beer in the bar, a driver for the day, or a chocolate bar in the gift shop, the price will coincide with the average room rate. (If you don’t believe me, walk from the 5-star to the 2-star in any town, buy a few items in each, and then send me a report.)

5) The cheaper the hotel, the more you get for free.
Yes, this seems counter-intuitive, but the cheaper hotels often throw in far more goodies than the most expensive ones. This is especially true with high-speed Internet access, which is often free and wireless at many hotels, even cheap ones, while the luxury ones charge a fee for every few minutes. “Our guests can afford the extra fees,” commented one hotel exec in a recent Wall Street Journal article. You won’t get the nice body scrubs and lotions however. Spend a few bucks on your own if this is important to you.

6) You’re paying for the public areas.
Most hotel managers don’t want to admit it, but the money you spend on your room each night mostly goes into the costs of maintaining the whole property. You are paying for the lobby, the fancy bar, and the celebrity chef in the restauarant, whether you eat there or not.

7) You may not be treated equally.
In an inexpensive hotel, they’re glad to have you as a customer. In a luxury hotel, they’re only glad to have some of you as a customer. If you are a frequent guest or belong to their loyalty program, they will be very happy to see you. If you booked through Priceline, Hotwire, or some promotional deal, you are likely to find yourself being a second-class citizen. “You looked for a discount? Bad form!” In several US travel magazines, luxury hotel managers have bragged about giving discounted customers the worst rooms in the hotel or scaling back amenities. Do they deserve your hard-earned money?

In the end, it’s your money and your value decision. I have a 10-year wedding anniversary coming up next year and something tells me I’ll be blowing a lot of money on a fancy hotel. But I will certainly be be doing my homework ahead of time, finding out who is taking care of the customer and who is letting their average room rate go to their head. Do you homework and make sure your money is getting you the experience you are paying for.