Hotwire markets itself as a hotel booking site where you get steep discounts only by learning the hotel's name after you book. In Reality, every single Hot Rate Hotel can be easily named before you put in your credit card info. Here are all of the methods you need to reveal the real name of Hotwire hotels.
1. Use an existing Hotel Revealing Service
Why do the work when someone else already did it?
Make a post on Betterbididng.com or look at the lists on hoteldealsrevealed.com. Don't look for a miracle, there’s many hotels those guys don’t have a clue about, but it can be a good start.
2. Book soon! The last person got the...
This is where Hotwire is almost telling you outright the name of the hotel. But not quite.
The hotel identified here is the name of the last hotel booked with the same star rating and area that you are looking at. If there is only one Hotwire hotel with that star rating in the area, then this will tell you the true hotel's name. I find it's usually correct 80% of the time so it gives you a good starting point. Verify if it is the correct hotel using the additional revealing methods.
3. Your Hot Rate hotel is guaranteed to be 1 of these 4
This is another way Hotwire is making it easy to guess the names of their hotels. All you have to do is eliminate the hotels that don't fit by comparing the TripAdvisor rating and hotel location.
Here's an example where we're trying to identify a 5-star Hot Rate Hotel in the Center Strip - T-Mobile Arena area with a 4.5 TripAdvisor Rating.
We have to eliminate three of the four hotels to identify this. First off, we can eliminate SKYLOFTS at MGM Grand because it has a 5 Tripadvisor Rating instead of 4.5. Now there are 3 hotels left. To further whittle the results down we have to look at a map. Google Maps is a useful tool here, or sometimes there is enough information on the Hotwire map itself. You want to find where each remaining hotel is located and determine if it is within the boundaries of the area you selected on Hotwire.
I've manually labeled the hotels on the map. the Vdara, Bellagio, and MGM Grand (which is already eliminated) are all situated outside of the Center Strip - T-Mobile Arena area. The only possible hotel this Hotwire Hot Rate could be is the Waldorf Astoria.
Helpful-Tip: Browse hotwire.com on a PC or anything with a large display. The Hotwire app doesn't always show all the information mentioned in this guide and it can be cumbersome to use the app when you're trying to narrow down from several possible hotels4. Compare the Hotel Ratings
Each Hot Rate hotel has rating information listed next to it. This information will match up 1:1 for “retail” hotels, or hotels that are sold at market rate and give their name up front. Since Hotwire lists retail hotels along with the Hot Rate hotels it's easy to scroll through the listings looking for matches. To make it easy you can do some filtering.
We want to Identify this hotel. To start we will select the area on the map where this hotel is located: Center Strip - Forum Shops.
You can also select the area from the drop down filter menu if you're having trouble finding it on the map.
Select the star rating of the mystery hotel in the drop down Hotel class menu. 4 Stars.
If you still have too many results, narrow down by amenities. This unknown hotel has Free parking and Bed choice. Ignore the Bed choice amenity since it doesn't match to retail hotels.
When I narrow down to just the hotels with Free parking I get the name of the hotel.
Notice that the Tripadvisor rating(4/5), Number of reviews(15923), and Expedia rating(4.2/5) are exactly the same. You can safely assume that this Hot Rate hotel is the Treasure Island, and you can get it for $16 cheaper a night.
Sometimes some of this information will be missing for the Hot Rate Hotel. There might be a TripAdvisor rating but not the number of reviews. If this happens you'll just have to make do with what you have.
5. Compare the Resort Fees
Unfortunately, many hotels these days are using resort fees to nickel and dime more money out of you. Fortunately, these fees need to be listed on Hotwire and can help you identify your hotel as they are often a unique number.
Just compare the dollar amount between what's listed on the Hot Rate page and any retail hotels you suspect might be a match. The resort fee listed on the Hotwire page is often rounded to the nearest dollar. As long as they're close, it's a good sign you have a match.
6. Look at How Far the Hotel is from Points of Interest
How far a hotel is from a point of interest helps narrow down where your hotel is located inside the designated Hotwire area. Find whatever Point of Interest is closest to your Hotel and look around it using Google Maps. Once you know what landmark your hotel is near it's easy to find matching hotels in that radius. I suppose you could pull out your compass and protractor and really triangulate the hotel, but usually this isn’t necessary.
Now you've found your hotel
If you followed this guide correctly then you surely know the name of your hotel already. Great job!
Even after you know your Hotwire hotel's name, proceed with caution. You can't call up Hotwire or any other booking agent and tell them how you identified a mystery hotel. They won't believe you. Price-matching is out of the question. Keep in mind Hotwire's cancellation policy is not very good. Don't book on Hotwire unless you're sure you can get there. Identifying Hotwire Hotels is great for when you want to stay somewhere at the last minute as you can almost always get cheaper than retail rates even when booking on the same day as your stay.
Remember that even though Hotwire has cheaper rates, you might still be able to get even cheaper long term rates through hotel rewards programs. If you're staying at a casino and intend to gamble, there's a good chance your room rate will be comped if you put down enough money at the tables. Credit cards can also have great rewards programs for hotels that can surpass Hotwire's discounts.
Did you see that message on Hotwire: "book soon the last person got the ..."? Well, it's often incorrect. If you want accurate Hotwire Hotel Identifications use the Hotwire identification tool to easily find the real name of that Hotwire hotel. Or if you want to take the long way and manually figure out the hotel's name, keep reading.
First collect the following data from the unknown hotel:
Find the area the hotel is in.
Check if there is a resort fee.
Get the star rating and price.
List the amenities.
You can get the full list of amenities by clicking "Book Now" and clicking on the "see more" link on the right column of the screen. A credit card is not required to look at the amenities.
Look at the age restriction. And TripAdvisor information
The Tripadvisor information is the key, the majority of hotels can be accurately identified with only the hotel's area and Tripadvisor's rating & range of reviews. You'll want to compare every potential hotel with this Tripadvisor rating and the range of reviews. The age restriction is not as useful as it was in the previous Hotwire website version. You may still use it to help verify a correct hotel, but if the age doesn't align then it doesn't mean much since I see different areas have different age restrictions for the same hotel. 
Compare information with potential hotels
In the following steps, you will narrow down a list of comparable hotels to reveal the secret identity of the hotel you are interested in. Use the "Standard Rate Hotels" tab at the top of the page.
Select the Star rating for the hotel. The website doesn't recognize 1/2 star ratings. If you want to find a 3 1/2 star hotel, you will need to pick 3 stars, and manually filter the results. 
Select all the amenities you can match from the earlier amenities list. You should match them like this: 
Not all of the amenities will match, but hopefully you will have enough to narrow down the list substantially. Next, you will want to see where each of the filtered hotels are on the map. Click on the map view: 
Click on the hotels on the map that are in the same area that the secret hotel is in. You want to open up each hotel page in a different tab. After this, you should have a series of tabs with potential hotels. If there is only one hotel, then you are done! Otherwise, you need to keep filtering. Compare the price, star rating, resort fee, and age restriction for each of the possible hotels. Also remember to compare the Tripadvisor ratings and number of reviews, in many cases you can ignore the amenities entirely and only focus on the Tripadvisor information. If following the above method still didn't help you find the correct identification, you can use a couple more tricks to help you out:
- The correct hotel is usually the one that is closest to the secret hotel rate. For example, if the secret hotel is $50 and you have two potential hotels that are each $80 and $200, then it is much more likely that the $80 hotel is the secret identity of the $50 one.
- At times the secret hotel page will have a line that says, "Book soon! The last person got the XXYY Hotel". This does not always mean the secret hotel is the XXYY hotel, but it is correct more often than not.
- If you end up with zero results after filtering, it could mean you've found a discrepancy between the two hotel databases. The standard rate database might not know all the amenities listed for the same hotel on the secret page. You might have to fudge the amenities a bit to find something that's close to a match.
- Even after all the effort, some hotels are simply not able to be identified. It's time to either move on or take a risk with an unknown hotel.