Though Express Hotel Reservations only books hotels for New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the Web site is easy to use. It’s refreshingly honest in its neighborhood designations—it doesn’t give you properties in nearby Jersey City or Newark, for example, because it assumes that if you’re looking for a New York hotel, you actually mean Manhattan. And it’s the only site that actually singles out the hip Meatpacking District, even though there’s only one hotel there, the recently opened Hotel Gansevoort.

Another plus: Usually, this site doesn’t require prepayment. It’s also fast, and it found a room at the Southgate Tower Suite Hotel for $169. Since it doesn’t sell San Francisco hotels, we couldn’t compare our experience with booking at the Prescott. Information you might need, such as reviews, does take a bit of legwork to find, but despite its unwieldy design, it works quite well.