These 3 new ways to search and book hotel rooms might change the way you travel

Outside of Expedia and Priceline, there are plenty of smaller players vying for your hotel booking dollars. And once Expedia locks in Orbitz, each of these smaller startups will want to differentiate themselves in the face of industry consolidation, which is a great thing for you, traveler.

We took a look at three hotel-booking services that are relatively new to the scene, each of which takes a different approach to booking a hotel for your next trip. To compare, we took a search for a weekend trip to New York City from February 19 to 23, with the goal of staying in Midtown Manhattan near Grand Central. We've demonstrated the best rate each service discovered for us, as well as explained what makes them worth your time.

TripBAM

BEST DEAL: $138.92 per night at the ONE UN New York Hotel.

TripBAM is perfect for the bargain-hunting business traveler that doesn't have time to monitor travel sites for the lowest rate, as it continually monitors a set "cluster" of hotels for the lowest possible rate. Since hotel rates are usually refundable, you simply book the hotel you want and then cancel if TripBAM finds a better rate within that cluster.

To add to its magic, TripBAM will automatically cancel and rebook the lower rate if you ask it to. This is an exceptional tool for those who want to automate deal finding, and who are not bound to one specific hotel chain's loyalty program.

GoSeek

BEST DEAL: $192 per night at the Towers at the New York Palace (with a custom coupon rate).

GoSeek's strategy is to show you all available discounts for a particular stay, from a time-sensitive coupon to standard discounts such as AAA. So rather than burying these discounts in an impossible-to-find location, they are surfaced right within the search results. This means that you can find new ways to save on hotels that the other sites don't show you.

This can lead to some very real savings for those with AARP, AAA and other discounts, as well as surfacing coupons and deals that may not be visible on other sites.

StayFaster + StayAtHand

BEST DEAL: $161.10 per night at the Lexington NYC.

StayFaster works by aggregating deals directly from hotels, which means that points-minded travelers are able to benefit from a direct booking. All dollars spent on this platform qualify for loyalty points, which is not the case for bookings made via OTAs.

The search interface is more basic and not as slick as the first two mentions; however, the ability to earn points by booking direct is a huge plus. The time savings alone are enormous, as you no longer have to go to individual hotel websites to compare rates across tabs.

StayAtHand is the mobile component of StayFaster. The interface is a tad too colorful and animated for my minimalist taste, but does offer a very clear and unique interface using bubbles as mechanisms to select the hotel criteria. Saved searches are also immensely helpful for recurring business trips and research, and "stay here tonight" facilitates last-minute searches. This app is truly trying to be your one-stop for mobile hotel bookings.

What are your favorite offbeat hotel booking tools?