It can be tricky to book a hotel room if you've never seen the hotel, and online hotel reviews can be spotty and arguably reliable at best. Simplehoney is a new hotel booking service that promises to take the mystery out of finding a hotel you'll love to stay in. Think of it like Pandora for hotel booking—you tell it what you like, and it only shows you the good stuff.

Simplehoney is in beta, and when it comes out of beta it'll be membership-only, and that means you'll have to drop $100 to get into the club. If you sign up now, you can get in without paying a dime. To sign up, just tell the service the types of hotels you like to stay in and the types of vacations you normally take (or would love to take). Once your account is activated, you'll see a number of destination hotels that Simplehoney thinks are great matches for your preferences.

You can fill out your account with even more information, like when you normally travel, where you go, how much planning goes into your trips, and what you like to do there. All of that information is used to refine your results, and you never give the service anything more specific than your email address. You can even tell the service which cities you plan to visit in the coming months, so they can ping you with hotel deals that fit your preferences before you go. When you see a hotel you like, Simplehoney hands you directly off to the hotel to book your room. Right now, the service only has offers in a few locations (San Francisco and Hawaii), but as it gets closer to a full launch this summer, more locations—and more bargains—will be available. How do you typically research and book hotel rooms? Do you go for bargains or luxury? Share your travel tips in the comments below.

Simplehoney | via Thrillist

Booking a trip is always a bit of a gamble. No matter how carefully you time your purchase or comparison shop, travel prices fluctuate so often and wildly that you can never be sure they won't drop later (meaning, you overpaid). Now the good news: Whether you've booked a flight, made a hotel reservation, or rented a car, most allow you to take advantage of price fluctuations after you buy—as long as you know about them. Here are the free tools you can use to get the lowest travel prices—effortlessly and automatically.

AutoSlash: Automatic Price Reductions on Car Rentals

Book your car rental at AutoSlash and the site will search for and apply any coupon codes it can find for you. Then, up until your pickup date, the free service continues to track multiple vendors' rental rates and discounts several times a day and re-books for you if it finds a better deal. According to a recent NY Times article, the service claims to successfully lower car rental prices 85 percent of the time, with roughly half of those price cuts due to applying discount codes (that you don't have to search for or dig up yourself). The average savings if you book at least a couple of weeks ahead? A not-too-shabby 25 percent. You can cancel your reservation at any time.

Unfortunately, not all car rental companies are keen on this idea. Both the Enterprise, National, and Alamo franchise and the Avis and Budget one refuse to let AutoSlash inventory their car rentals. Hertz and sister companies Dollar and Thrifty used to work with AutoSlash but recently pulled out. That leaves mostly the smaller/budget car rental chains, such as Fox Rent a Car, Payless, and a few others and makes the car rental search results more sparse. But if you don't care which car rental company you patronize and just want the best deal you can get without having to search for it yourself, give AutoSlash a try to see what's available where you're traveling.

Tingo: Automatic Refunds on Hotel Reservations

Hotel booking site Tingo works similarly to AutoSlash. After booking a hotel room at the site, the service continues to monitor the hotel's rates. If the rates drop after you book, Tingo automatically re-books your reservation and automatically refunds your credit card the difference, with no need for you to actually fill in any forms or such. You can set the price drop threshold (e.g., re-book only if the savings are over $10), as well as cancel your reservation at any time.

Not all hotel rooms are eligible for the auto-re-booking and automatic refunds, because some hotels set their room rates as non-refundable (unlike most car rentals, where you can cancel at any time). When you book, you'll need to accept the hotel's own cancellation fees, if there are any.

If you don't want to book on Tingo, you can still use the service to just track hotel prices and be notified when a hotel's price drops. In the last month, according to the service, 476 hotels in Paris had price drops, 273 in London, and 214 in NYC—lots of savings travelers might have missed out on if they weren't tracking price drops.

Yapta: Refund Alerts and Claim Assistance for Airline Tickets

Unlike AutoSlash and Tingo, previously featured airline ticket price tracker Yapta doesn't automatically re-book your flight. That's because once you buy a plane ticket, you typically face cancellation fees and penalties for any changes. Yapta, however, offers a kind of price drop protection that makes sure you get the best deal on your flight even after you purchase it. The service monitors your flight's price and, if it drops, notifies you so you can claim your airline refund and helps you submit your claim.

Alaska Airline and JetBlue offer refunds for any drop in price, while other airlines issue refunds depending on how much the price drops (for Virgin, it's $75 or more; United, American Airlines, Delta, and US Air, $150 or more). About 13 percent of Yapta-tracked fares were eligible for refunds in the first quarter of last year according to this MSN Money article. Since the service launched 5 years ago, average annual savings per Yapta member is $334.16.

(Orbitz offers a lowest price guarantee for flights and hotels with automatic refunds, but it's harder to ever get that, because the refund depends on another Orbitz customer booking the same exact itinerary. Likewise, Travelocity's price guarantee is less than ideal, since it requires you to find the lower competing rates yourself after you book your trip.)

In short, these three services together save you the time and hassle of hunting for the best prices for your next trip and possibly overpaying. Combine this with MySeatFinder's automatic upgrade to a better airline seat, and you've turned the web into a pretty sweet personal travel assistant.

Know of any other cool travel sites or tools for making saving easier? Share them with us in the comments.

Many of us are more productive when working in a "third place", but you don't have to visit a coffee shop to get that productivity boost. If you have a hotel nearby, you can make that your more comfortable, makeshift workspace.

Although not all hotels offer free Wi-Fi (check this HotelChatter report to find which ones do), the Wall Street Journal reports that hotels are starting to welcome mobile workers to their lobbies because when the lobby is buzzing with locals, it improves the atmosphere and makes the hotel seem more popular.

Hotel lobbies tend to have comfy chairs, relative quiet, and sometimes other amenities. Compare that to crowded Starbucks stores with tiny tables.

Not all hotels may be open to Wi-Fi squatters, though, so best to check the vibe at the hotel first.

Why All the Locals Are Lounging in the Hotel Lobby | The Wall Street Journal

Photo by Dirk de Kok

Wi-Fi at the hotel may be as essential as hot running water these days, but unfortunately not all hotel chains offer travelers free or reliable wireless internet. In its annual report, HotelChatter breaks down which hotels serve up free Wi-Fi and which ones charge you for that signal.

The report calls out five best and five worst hotel chains, as well as international chains and advice for where to stay in specific cities in the US (if Wi-Fi access is your main concern). The five best chains listed by HotelChatter are Kimpton, Penninsula, Fairmont, Ace, and Swire. These are all small hotel chains—the largest is Fairmont Hotels, with 64 hotels in all. It seems smaller hotels may be more considerate of guests' needs for amenities (like Wi-Fi). Kimpton Hotels, at the top of the list, is a boutique hotel chain that offers a loyalty program, including free wine-tasting in the afternoons.

The worst hotels are the ones that charge between $9.95 and $14.99 a day for Wi-Fi: Westin, W Hotels, Marriott, Hard Rock, and Hilton. But they're not the only ones that charge for Wi-Fi, as you know.

Check out the full report for more details. This infographic (click to expand) from HotelChatter sums up the somewhat complex scene very well. Your best bet is to book a budget hotel; otherwise, follow the flowchart at the bottom and the loyalty rewards program to see if you can get free internet.

The 2012 HotelChatter Hotel WiFi Report | HotelChatter