Online travel sites are one of the most popular ways to book travel because they are extremely convenient. These sites often provide discounts to users as an incentive for booking online. Hotwire is one of the most popular discount travel sites on the internet, offering discounted airline rates for customers willing to book their trip without knowing their airline or departure and arrival times before purchase.
Hotwire has a zero refund policy with regard to their airline tickets. Once a reservation is booked through their site, you cannot cancel or alter your reservation without paying a fine or losing your purchase amount. Hotwire airline fares are also non-transferable. Once your credit card is charged, your reservation completely fixed and cannot be changed.
To get the best rates on Hotwire, you must be willing to accept limitations on the information that you are given about your airline before your book your flight. You are allowed to choose what days you want to travel and what time of day you prefer to depart and arrive, such as morning or afternoon. These preferences are not confirmed and are not guaranteed when you book your travel. You cannot view your travel itinerary in any part until after your credit card has been charged. Hotwire can assign your itinerary to any of their partner airlines for any time of day or amount of connections on your given travel dates.
Hotwire airlines only allow for round-trip tickets to be purchased on the website. You cannot create multi-city itineraries or book one-way travel. When trying to book a different flight itinerary the Hotwire site will redirect you to a partner site to continue with your travel arrangements. Hotwire will not allow you to travel standby or to alter your flight itinerary if you miss your flight or connection for any reason, even if it is an airline error.
Hotwire allows you a certain amount of time to complete your transaction on the site after you input your preferences and credit card information. The system gives you a quoted price before booking for your selected travel dates. The quoted price is not guaranteed until your credit card is charged. The Hotwire website often times out before the allotted 30 minutes, prompting you to make another search to get another, higher quote. Other times the website will offer you a higher quote once you click to charge your credit card, also forcing you to pay the higher rate or attempt another search. The airfares on Hotwire are likely to change extremely quickly, so when booking try to complete your purchase as quickly as possible to avoid higher rates.
You cannot use frequent flier miles from any airline to book your flight on Hotwire airlines. You also cannot earn frequent flier points or miles on any trips booked through Hotwire. Once you find out what airline your Hotwire travel itinerary is booked through, check with that company to see if they will give you the frequent flier miles for your trip. Most airline companies will not honor the Hotwire tickets for the earning of frequent flier miles though taking the time to check can be beneficial in some circumstances.
