This formula worked out to a complete lack of deals. The best I found for our stay (September 24-27, Thursday Night through Saturday Night) was $173.32 a night at Mandalay Bay (ALMOST a WHOLE penny cheaper per night than it was at Priceline or Expedia, but even that small difference tells me that one shouldn’t always assume that the third party sites have the best deal).

Defeated here, I turned to Hotwire, and saw that there were some highly rated hotels at better prices. The problem is that these Hotwire deal hotels were listed without a name – you only knew where you were staying AFTER you completed your booking.

Thanks to a few minutes of thinking about this, I Googled ‘Identify Hot Wire Hotels’ and soon found myself at www.betterbidding.com. If you haven’t been, this site takes booking information users voluntarily leave and then is able to give you a very good idea about which hotel is which on the Hotwire Deals page. For example, the Hotwire page will state that a certain hotel has a certain set up amenities. These amenities will differ from hotel to hotel. I was quickly able to determine that the 4-star rated hotel in the Central Strip of Las Vegas was the Planet Hollywood, one that wasn’t on my radar before. The rate? $139 a night. I went ahead and booked it, but my deal hunting didn’t stop.

Hotwire also has what is called a “Double your Difference” policy. If, within 48 hours, you find a lower advertised rate available to the public, you can submit this rate to the Hotwire team and they will refund you twice the difference. Google searches weren’t finding anything lower, so I decided I should check the standard social networking sites – I struck gold at Twitter.

Planet Hollywood (like many Vegas Casinos) has a Twitter account. And a quick search of posts from the Planet Hollywood account showed that they had send out a link via Twitter (a Twitter deal, if you will) that posted room rates for less – including rates of $130 a night for the three nights we are going to be in Vegas.

I sent the link to Hotwire, and received a response very quickly (Kudos to Hotwire for that, I was expecting them to ignore the request or wait weeks before responding) that they would honor that price and “Double the Difference” My $139/night hotel stay was now $121 a night. Not dirt cheap by any means, but I think I would up with a great deal at a nice hotel for just a little bit of legwork. Once I return, I’ll post a review of the hotel and the Vegas stay in general.

Until then, I have only one more deal to attempt upon check-in: will slipping the desk clerk a $20 get us upgraded for our stay? I’ll let you know how it goes.

I'd stay in a Caesar's Villa if I could afford it

So my hunt for a Las Vegas deal continues, and so far, the best option seems to still be Priceline or Hotwire. Only problem there is that you’re pretty unsure which hotel you might be staying it. Well, thanks to betterbidding.com a lot of guesswork has been taken out. You can see recent deals that people got for certain dates as well as telling information that helps to identify which hotel you might be bidding on by using clues the sites themselves give you.

Over on eBay, there’s Las Vegas Hookups which has lots of passes you can get for the different clubs in Vegas. I went ahead and purchased a set from this eBay store – I’ll let you know how well the passes work or if they’re worth the spend, but they’re supposed to get you into a “better” line and make it so you don’t have to pay cover at most of these places (some spots will give the lady free cover but make the guy pay).