Best unpublished hotel rates for Twitter followers only! Here's how:

Best rate guarantees on hotel websites? Bah, humbug. The best promotions, rates and last-minute deals are not showing up on the OTAs, hotel websites or even Metasearch sites any longer. The best rates and promotions are found on Twitter. Yup, you read that right. I’ve been doing a little poking around on selected hotel sites and found the following:

• The Charles Hotel, Boston: “Another deal for our loyal followers - breakfast for two w/ any reservation booked now for 4/26-4/29.Mention TWI”. 719 followers www.charleshotel.com
• The Iron Horse Hotel, Milwaukee, WI: “Threadless t-shirts! Book by June 20, get 25% off our regular rate & $25 to spend at Threadless.com http://tinyurl.com/c2gvz9 “1,201 followers
• The Westin Bonaventure, LA: “Last chance! First person wins 1 room night + dinner this Fri. or Sat. http://ow.ly/3Bv8 #LAprimetime” (only through Twitter link) 100 retweets and mentions some from industry bloggers with followings of nearly 200,000 people.
• Lancaster Arts Hotel, Lancaster, PA: “Stay this weekend at the ARTS, 3/20 and 21 and get 20% off your stay! Just mention this tweet! See lancasterartshotel.com for details!” www.lancasterartshotel.com 1,151 followers
• Hotel deLuxe, Portland, OR “Yes, a fantastic 25% off for our loyal Twitter followers. DM me if you'd like to book a room.” 733 followers
• Broadway Hotel, NYC: “Hip NYC hotel without the hefty price tag. For your next trip, use discount code "Twitter" to take 10% off a 3 night stay at Broadway!” 455 followers
• Courtyard Marriott, Boston: “Book us online at Marriott.com using promo code "ZS7" and get a "twitter" discount!!” 272 followers

Granted, some of these are promotions – but the best and cleverest are getting retweets in the tens of thousands…and website traffic is considerably up, according to Compete and Hitwise. Upstream traffic is coming from Twitter.

So the next time I hear a travel supplier saying “Bah, humbug” to Twitter…let me remind them of the hotels who “get it”… and are getting additional bookings!