Regular readers of the Travel section will know that I am in trouble with my wife. An embarrassing episode with a naked French nurse on a virtual beach, which we really don’t need to bring up again now, do we, dear?

Anyway, as any man who is regularly in trouble with his wife will know, there’s one quick and easy way to sneak straight back into the good books: a romantic night at a luxury hotel. Throw in some flowers and chocolates, and even a modern woman, the sort who thinks you’re being sexist if you hold a door open for them, won’t stay sulky for long.

Trouble is, luxury hotels aren’t cheap. For London, five-star (yes, that’s how much trouble), you’re looking at £250 minimum. Plus breakfast. Plus WiFi access. Ouch.

But there could be a solution for cheapskate romantics: Lastminute.com’s “top-secret hotels”. It’s a part of the website where four- and five-star hotels flog off empty rooms at up to 75% off the rack rate. The only problem: you don’t know which hotel you’re booking until you pay.

Or as Lastminute spins it: “Shhhh, these ‘top-secret’ rates are so low that our hotel partners don’t even want to put their names to them. In order for us to bring you these exclusive deals, we are not allowed to tell you the name of the hotel until you’ve completed your booking.”

When I looked, 211 hotels across Europe were offering “top-secret bargains”. And this is big business. Last week alone, 30,000 secret bookings were made across Lastminute’s European sites. A five-star in London managed to sell 1,500 room nights in just one week. So we know that it’s working for the hotels, but what about for us?

You’re not booking completely blind – they all have descriptions (which can be a little vague) and most say how far they are from the main attractions. So, for example, if I were in so much trouble that I had to treat her to a weekend break in Rome, I would do well to book the “elegant four-star hotel beside the Opera House”, with a saving of up to 62%; but I would do very badly indeed if I tried to get away with the “elegant, modern, four-star hotel, 10km from the historic centre”, despite the lure of an 88% saving. So, in spite of all the top-secrecy, you can eliminate some of the risk.

However, splashing out cash blind is never a great idea. No matter how much trouble you’re in. How do you really know you’re getting a bargain? How do you know the bathroom suite isn’t that fuchsia colour the wife’s allergic to? Or that the curtains have gold tassels on them?

To ensure I was booking the right place, I had to turn cyber-detective. Some of the entries have customer reviews attached. Cut and paste a sentence or two from one of those into Google, click the first Lastminute entry that comes up and you go through to a page where the hotel name is revealed. Or work it out by location. Some of the entries actually have a map, so you can deduce the hotel’s address. Type the street name and the word “hotel” into a search engine and it’s pretty straightforward to work out where you’d be staying.

If both of those giveaways aren’t available, you can look for clues in the general information. For example, one hotel in Venice is described as “one minute from Querini Stampalia Museum” and “nestled to the side of a picturesque canal”. Type “Querini Stampalia Museum” and “canal” into Google and – gotcha! It’s a place called Ca’ dei Conti. Not very top-secret hotel.

Cheating like this, you suddenly have a much better idea of where the bargains really are. After all, “up to 75%” could also mean 15%, which would be annoying. And the bargains aren’t quite as extensive as they sound. Take that Venice one. Booking Top Secret, a two-nighter from June 16 would cost me £401. Booking the hotel normally on Lastminute.com would cost £447. On the hotel’s own website, despite its promise that I’d be getting “the best rate published on the web”, I was quoted £493. So a 22% saving. Conclusion, unless it’s a wet Tuesday in November and you love staying in the wrong part of town, you’re not going to save 75% very often. But for a little bit of Sherlocking, you can save a nice bit of cash.

Which brings me back to my angry wife. And the final test: what sort of room do you get when you book?

Using the “cut and paste a customer review into Google” trick, I established that the “unbelievable offer at a hotel in Piccadilly – five-star – London, up to 59% off ” applied to The Park Lane Hotel, a Sheraton overlooking Green Park, with a super-comfy Sweet Sleeper Bed. No need to mention that this hotel was on Alexander Litvinenko’s polonium tour of London in November. After all, it was decontaminated ages ago. Rooms were going for £119, compared with £209 on Sheraton’s own website, but on the night we had free (last Monday), it was £159. Still, a tidy 24% saving on Starwood’s “Best Rate, Guaranteed”. So I booked. A few seconds later, I got an e-mail confirming my classic double at, surprise surprise, The Park Lane Hotel.

“Darling, pack your posh dress, we’re going somewhere swanky.”

I should have just stopped and thought things through a bit. Saving money while apologising: it’s a dangerous combination. And here’s why.

We arrived at 5pm and were assigned room 143. Up we went, a whole floor, and there it was – a shoebox. A shoebox that smelt of old shoes. The walls and carpets were stained, the furniture knocked about, the bathroom dated, the taps leaking, the shower curtain orange. Our view was of a big, white wall about 3ft from the window. All visions of sudden forgiveness followed by naked, passionate gratitude evaporated.

I called reception, asked them how they thought they could call this five-star and offered to pay anything for an upgrade. But the hotel was full. In the end, because my wife is so eminently reasonable and because the room was so awful you had to laugh, I was forgiven anyway. And we went out for a nice dinner; and we got breakfast free, because that’s what they promise if they take longer than 30 minutes to deliver it. Hah! But you have to wonder whether some hotel booking systems come up with a big red warning screen when a top-secreter checks in: DANGER – SKINFLINT. BUNG IN CUPBOARD.

I asked Sheraton what they think they’re doing pretending tatty shoeboxes are five-star and they said: “The Sheraton Park Lane is a listed, 80-year-old building, with a subsequent wide variety of room types and sizes. The hotel does not market itself as a five-star hotel, but was apparently listed as such on the Lastminute.com website.” They thanked me for bringing this to their attention, said they were sorry I didn’t like the room and that it was a very busy night.

I asked if I had got the worst room in the whole hotel because I’d booked a top-secret deal. They said, “the ‘opaque’ pricing option offered by Lastminute.com, where the hotel is revealed only after booking, is very popular with those customers looking for the lastminute deal. It is, however, a price-led offer and, as such, tends to only offer our standard room-type”.

So I asked Lastminute.com what they think they’re doing making me stay in a not-at-all-five-star shoebox. After apologising and sending me an e-mail full of feedback from other top-secreters who’d clearly done much better than I had, they said: “As part of our agreement with participating hotels, we make sure that our customers are allocated good rooms and we have since been in touch with the hotel to reiterate the fact that Lastminute.com customers should not be allocated the lower standard rooms.”

My conclusion? You get what you pay for. And the next time I’m in trouble, I’m going to have to pay a lot more.

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