Has anyone ever tried Lastminute's 'Top Secret' hotels offers?

[kenobi]

The deals are insanely good and they say things like "4/5 star hotel great facilities etc etc" which sounds promising... But it worries the hell out of me that you don't know what hotel they're booking you into, and they keep 100% of your money if you cancel.

Sounds dodgy but has anyone had any experience of them?

You can generally work out which hotel it is if you look at the description. We got into a fab hotel in Cambridge using one of these deals, we narrowed it down to the 2 it could have been and were happy with either.

Same as above. We used it in Cardiff last year, 4 star, city centre with parking on site and found ourselves in Holland House .
Good hotel , lovely room and much cheaper than the rack rate.

Used in London and stayed at the Cumberland Hotel. No complaints.

Copy and paste the description of the hotel into google and you might strike lucky! We booked a park lane hotel for £99 through top secret- if we'd booked direct it would've been £445 so a HUGE saving!

Same as above ~ used them lots of times in London and never had an issue. Copy and paste as fox said.

Go onto the appropriate city discussion forum on Tripadvisor and ask which hotel it is. Somebody can usually narrow it down for you. There is the "w" hotel in Barcelona which goes for £300+ a night on for £100.

Brilliant - thanks so much everyone.

I was worried you'd end up in some half-finished hole but it sounds more like it's expensive hotels who are embarrassed about discounting. Yay!

We got a cheap weekend at the 5 Bath Spa hotel using this - there are only two 5 hotels in Bath and it was easy to work out looking at the distances from various things. At reception there was some muddle with our booking and she asked how much we'd paid - DH says when I told her the man waiting next to us to be checked in went pale because it was about a third what he'd paid!

I have found that in some hotels (actually not the posher ones - more your Marriott/Novotel type) they have what we call "Expedia rooms" - they're cheap but they are crap rooms. Hasn't bothered us in the past because we were booking for somewhere to stay after, say, a wedding reception, when all we did was shower and sleep there, but might be offputting for a nice break. But that's just my experience and it is not every hotel by any means.

We booked a room in London three summers ago on this basis - going for location as much as anything. Ended up in the Hilton just south of Tower Bridge, which was great, and a very good deal indeed at the time.

Funnily enough, it was one I had considered before going for the surprise deal approach!

We did for our 10th wedding anniversary for a 4* hotel in Paris. We were happy with it. Definitely cheaper than booking direct.