Via Upgrade: Travel Better, Hotwire now lets you select your bed type at some hotel properties.

The status quo on opaque sites has been:

[Y]ou can’t choose your bed type up front. You’re typically left asking for your preferred room type at check-in. (I sometimes remember to call the hotel in advance and ask for my preferred room type.)

But that doesn’t always work, especially if you’re sharing a room with someone you don’t want to share a bad with. In those cases, an opaque site may be out (although bear in mind that most hotel chains don’t guarantee bed preference except to their elites, even on regular paid bookings through their own websites).

This is a real improvement, Mark notes it was introduced in November but somehow I didn’t notice it either and yes I’ve used Hotwire on several occasions since then. Perhaps this isn’t all that widespread yet across cities and properties. But it’s a good trend.

And don’t forget that when booking through Priceline, Hotwire, or really any other site that you may have cashback or mileage-earning options. Once upon a time when the eBay Anything Points program existed, you could earn 1500 points for a 4-star Priceline win and those points converted better than 1:1 into Cathay Pacific miles via points.com — a business class roundtrip award ticket from the US to Europe could be had for about 35 successful priceline wins.

Now the rewards aren’t so lucrative, but according to evreward you can get 2% cash back…