If you travel then you probably stay in hotels. Sometimes we have no choice in where we stay because it's been mandated by the company we work for or it's just simply more convenient to stay at the location where the event is taking place. So in those cases you just go with the flow.
When you're spending your own money
When it comes to travel for leisure or when you do have a choice then chances are you want the best deal you can find in the area. When I travel to a new location I may not even know what hotels are in the area let alone which ones have the best prices or deals. This is where HotelPal comes in. In one tap HotelPal can show you all of the hotels in a given area and then quickly sort them by rate based on the dates you want to stay. It's actually pretty amazing the way this thing works and the speed at which it works. Once you find a location that looks interesting you can drill down for more details and even book it right within the app.
You can sort by Price, Distance or visually by the Map
This is great for when you want to balance the rates against the physical location. HotelPal will either search your current location (great when you have an unexpected delay/flight cancellation) or you can search a specific area.
I found the information on each property to be very detailed. The only thing you might want to look out for is that many of the "deals" require you to pre-pay for the room. So that's fine as long as you know you're going or carefully review the cancellation policy.
The Bottom Line
This app is great! It's FREE and made by the good folks who also brought us FlightTrack Pro. Just get it!
HotelPal
HotelPal lets you find available hotel rooms for a specific area on the dates that you want to stay and then lists them by price.
- Mobiata LLC
- Get on App Store
- Free
All info was collected on 18th January, 2010 when the app was reviewed.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
In a totally different style, you can also check the app called "Hotel !" which use a simple cover flow interface to browse hotels.
To see a demo of this app, check : http://www.zzz-app.com