I've booked "top secret hotels" twice. Both times I thought I had figured out the hotel before I booked. Both times, my guess was correct. Look at the descriptions and list of amenities of non-secret hotels in the general area and you will probably see something with a very similar description to the top-secret hotel that you are looking at. My top secret hotel bookings were a lot cheaper than if I had booked the same hotel knowing the name. I definitely thought it was a good deal.

I've heard of some people punching the hotel's details into google and coming up with the hotel name - its not difficult apparently:-)

Once, and managed to work out the hotel from the description and picture before going :-)

It was a good deal.

Same here, got the 5* Intercontinental Mayfair for some ridiculously low price. They used to have a map with the hotel description, but they seem to have got rid of that because it made it far too easy to work out which hotel it was.

Again got a great deal this way and knew the hotel before i agreed the booking. All i did was google the hotel description. It's also worth checking the reviews on lastminute, even with the top secret hotels you get the odd customer review saying "I enjoyed my stay at..........."

"got the 5* Intercontinental Mayfair"

Is that the one at the bottom of Park Lane , because thats the one we got.

The Lastminute website allows you to organise hotels in distance from a given point.

This means you can start with a Secret Hotel that is so far from point "A" then go to the list of normal hotels and find hotels that are also the same distance from point "A".

Then it's just a case of comparing descriptions to find one that is a VERY close match. Normally the difference in description is minor and involves removing the name of restaurants and other names

BUT..... has anyone almost booked a deal with Lastminute.com and then checked with the hotel what rate they will get?

Often, hotels will match any internet deal if you phone up and ask them. That way, they don't have to pay lastminute.

I'm a bit suspicious of lastminute since Ryanair announced that they (lastminute, expedia, etc) were regularly adding £10 to the fares which you can book at Ryanair's site. I stopped using them for flights when I found several cheaper flights by myself, despite their claims of "guaranteed lowest fares".

I have done it 2 times with the last one only being last Friday. We stayed at The Thistle hotel by Tower Bridge. It had excellent views of the river & bridge and for 2 of us it was only £79 including breakfast.

I not sure if it is cheaper to book through the hotel, but the room we had was advertised on the hotelwebsite as £250 without breakfast.

If Im happy with the price that lastminute sells it at I am happy to book throught them to save my time trawling through various other sites.

As said above posters mentioned you can generally work out which hotel it is, but I just look at what facilities it has & its location - I quite like the surprise elemant.