Have you seen those Priceline commercials starring William Shatner? You might find them obnoxious, but I enjoy their cheesiness and the gusto with which Shatner plays his part. However, I’d never actually tried to get a hotel room through Priceline or similar sites until now.

To finalize the details for our upcoming cruise to the Bahamas, I needed a room in the Fort Lauderdale area for the night before we sail. My normal approach is to check Southwest.com and some of the aggregator sites like Hotels.com or Travelocity. After much comparison of rates, maps, reviews, amenities, and more, I make a choice. Vacations are somewhat rare and special to me, so I like to invest some extra time to help ensure that we’re happy with the accommodations.

I started with that approach for this hotel stay, but then I decided to get a little crazy and try the “secret” hotel approach. Priceline, Hotwire, Travelocity’s Top Secret, and probably other sites let you get unusually good deals on hotels under one condition: they keep the hotel’s identity a secret until after you commit. You can search for a minimum star level and general location, but that’s about it. For a devoted researcher like me, it’s a bit scary to pay for a hotel in advance (nonrefundable, of course) without knowing exactly where I’m going. But it’s also exciting, like unwrapping a present.

I bid at Priceline, envisioning Shatner trying to convince me to bid lower, lower, lower! Apparently, I bid “too low” ($40 for a three-star hotel in Hollywood, FL), because I got rejected. So instead I paid $39 plus tax for a three-star “Top Secret Hotel” on Travelocity. Once I paid, it revealed my hotel – a Ramada that I’d been considering already. Through traditional channels, I would have paid $56 plus tax for the room. By rolling the dice a bit, I saved over $17. Not bad!

Have you ever tried the “secret” route for a hotel, car, airfare, or other travel detail? How did it go?