Lastminute.com - Top Secret Hotels REVEALED (London ONLY)

markomarkovic

Fantastic Rates in Stylish Kensington
is:
Holiday Inn London Kensington Forum
97 Cromwell Road, London SW7 4DN

Modern 4-star hotel near Fulham Broadway Station
is:
Millennium & Copthorne Hotels at Chelsea Football Club
Fulham Rd | Stamford Bridge, London

...use my method above to find any hotel in seconds. Both of the above are not good hotels, and the discounts offered pitiful.

Marko

BigEus

Hi all,


I don't seem to be having much joy on Google with identifying the below - can anyone help please:


Contemporary 4-star hotel within walking distance of Kings Road
Found just off the Kings Road, famous for its fashionable shopping, this 4-star hotel is right in the heart of exclusive Chelsea, and has excellent transport links to central London’s sights. Contemporary design and attractive dark wood finishes run throughout the hotel, and each room has a flat-screen TV and free wifi access.


Thanks in advance


Euan

Ralmazar

Hi,

I've just booked this hotel, and it is the below hotel. I did use the methods of searching on Trip advisor mentioned here, and it did work. Not as obvious, but still managed to narrow it down. Enjoy!

BRANDED - DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel London - Chelsea

PointsMeanPrizes

REVEALED

Jumeirah Carlton Tower - Cadogan Place London SW1X 9PY

5* - Opulence at the finest hotel in Knightsbridge

Five star hotel in Knightsbridge, modern rooms and excellent facilties, the hotel also offers free entrance to the gym and pool. Only 5-10 minutes ride to the West End by taxi.

Paid £229

dphones

I got this to work yesterday but it looks like Lastminute have removed the number of reviews on top secret hotels. Is anyone seeing this too?

dphones

I got this to work yesterday but it looks like Lastminute have removed the number of reviews on top secret hotels. Is anyone seeing this too?

markomarkovic wrote: »

Hello all,

I posted a while ago about I method I found to easily unmask the hotels. I'm not sure it's the wisest thing to post it here in the open, but in any case I got a lot of messages about it so it's easier to put it here then reply to everyone. If Lastminute update there system c'est la vie, I'll find another way.... In any case, though sometimes the discounts are actually great (I saw like a 150 pound a night difference between the secret method and booking), many of them are really small discounts, or even more expensive. I think it's really underhanded of Lastminute to do this, but whatever...

It exploits a feed that the lastminute page pulls in from Tripadvisor - specifically, the number of reviews that that hotel has had on Tripadvisor (NB: ignore the rating itself: specifically, we are interested in the _number of reviews_). Every secret hotel is given a number of reviews, and with that number, we can link it to the real hotel on Tripadvisor.

Let's begin. We'll use London as our test city naturally. Open two tabs - one being the Lastminute page with the secret hotels, and set a date in the distant future to ensure that you'll get the max number of results. Click search and you'll be shown the familiar list of secret hotels.

...just click 'Top Secret hotels only' on the left to get only secret results.

The second tab needs to be the Tripadvisor site. Open tripadvisor.co.uk and search for hotels in London on the same dates.

...now, click the link next to the main title 'London Hotels' on tripadvisor that says 'map view'. A pop-up map will overlay itself on the page, with all the hotels in London.

...now we're ready to start. Let's go by rote through the list of secret hotels. Let's take the very first result:

Chic 5-star hotel, close to trendy Shoreditch

...click the result. We're interested in only two things: the star rating, and the number of tripadvisor reviews. In this case, it's a five star hotel, with 223 reviews.

...now, switch the Tripadvisor tab. Click the 'Filters' button, 'hotel class', and select 5 stars. This will only show 5 star hotels, so we don't get bogged down with loads of results. Click the 'List of Hotels' button at the top of the menu. Zoom into the rough area where you know the hotel is - in this case, Shoreditch. Somewhere, within these few results, is our hotel. You might be able to guess that you could find the hotel by hovering over each result (in the region that you know where it is) and matching. However, this won't do.

Simply press CTRL + F (on macs: Command + F) to search on the page. Let's search for the number of reviews: 223. No results! What do we do now? Well, the number may have changed, so we try one more: 224. Bingo, there's the hotel highlighted on the left in the dropdown:

M by Montcalm Shoreditch London Tech City
151-157 City Road | Shoreditch

...conveniently, I can click on the link to Booking to see the hotel, and I find out the price is just 14 pounds cheaper through Lastminute. Barely worth it...

...I hope you see the logic now. The set up takes 2 minutes, and the results take seconds. You need to be creative sometimes, as reviews get deleted/added before Lastminute has a chance to update, but mostly it's very straight forward.

NB: sometimes (v rarely), and for a reason I do not know, Lastminute does _not_ port the number of reviews through. Out of the 33 current secret hotels, only 2 do not have numbers. Very hard to find these... though I may find a way.

NBB: when searching for 4-digit reviews, be sure to include the comma ie 1,379

NBBB: if you have trouble finding the hotel, move the map around a bit in the area. Sometime you need to refresh the results for your hotel to come through.

As a leaving gift, here are some reveals.

Boutique Hotel in Leicester Square
=
Dorset Square Hotel
39-40 Dorset Square |


Affordable 3-star hotel near Brick Lane
=
City Hotel
12-20 Osborn St, London E1


Boutique 4-star hotel near Hyde Park
=
Arbor Hyde Park Hotel
36-37 Lancaster Gate, Lond


Stunning Design Hotel minutes from the London Eye
=
H10 London Waterloo
284 to 302 Waterloo Road, L



Boutique hotel close to London’s top attractions
=
Crowne Plaza London Kensington
100 Cromwell Road | Kensin


...any questions/comments/suggestions, I'm here to help.


Marko

cocacolakid

I just booked and the number of reviews were still on lastminute.com

cocacolakid

Contemporary 4-star hotel in the heart of Stratford

= Holiday Inn Stratford City

confirmed and booked

Travelsmarter

I've done my own research and have started collating the Top Secret Hotels I've revealed into one guide on our Travel Smarter blog to save people searching all through the forums and on Google. You can find us on Facebook as travelsmarteruk or just google "travel smarter top secret hotels"

We're just a bunch of travel bloggers and not a faceless company. We're here to help. If there's a hotel you can't find, just let us know using the form on the blog and I'll do my best to find it for you.

79hisack

Hi did you ever find out which hotel this was