How price history proves a discount
A discount is a comparison: this price against the normal price. Almost every travel discount you see skips the second half — the “58% off” is measured against a rack rate the hotel set itself, often a number nobody has ever paid. The only way to check a discount is a record of what the room actually cost, night after night, before today. That record is price history.
Why do rack-rate percentages mislead?
Because the seller controls the denominator. If a hotel lists a room at $400 and sells it at $170 every night of the year, “58% off” is technically true and completely uninformative — $170 is simply the price. The percentage looks like evidence, but nothing in it can be checked, and a number that can’t be checked isn’t evidence.
What does price history change?
It moves the denominator out of the seller’s hands. Amazon shoppers learned this years ago from CamelCamelCamel: a tracker records a product’s price every day, and a “deal” is checked against that recorded curve rather than the list price. The same “30% off” claim either survives the chart or it doesn’t. We do for hotel rates what those trackers did for Amazon prices — the chart is published next to every claim, so you never have to take the percentage on faith.
Why is hotel price history harder than product price history?
A product has one price at a time. A hotel room’s price depends on the night you arrive, how long you stay, how far ahead you book, and whether the rate is refundable — change any of those and you are pricing a different thing. A history built from mixed questions is noise: comparing tonight’s non-refundable rate with last month’s refundable one manufactures a discount that never existed. Honest hotel price history has to hold the whole question fixed and vary only the date it was asked.
How do we measure ours?
We ask a fixed set of standardised questions — the same room, the same stay length, the same lead time, the same rate class, two adults — every night, for 545 properties across 12 cities. Each answer is stored and never edited. When today’s price lands well below what that room’s own record says is normal, and below comparable rooms in the same city on the same night, it qualifies as a deal. The full methodology covers both comparisons and what we refuse to claim.
What should you look for in any deal claim?
Three things. The denominator: off what, and who recorded it? The sample: how many nights of history back the “normal” — a median of five nights is a guess wearing a number’s clothing, which is why we print the count beside every percentage. And the chart itself: a seller who won’t show the history is asking you to trust the one number they control.