Right...this is a bit left field so I'll leave it to you to ponder whether its your sort of thing.
If you go to
www.lastminute.com they do this thing called Secret Hotel. Basically you punch in your general requirements and they find a hotel for you but they don't tell you what it is or the specific location. Many hotels will discount but don't want to be seen to be lowering the brand or affecting pricing from their own website by publicly offering discounts. Hence 'Secret Hotel'.
I used this once a few years back and it worked out pretty well and we ended up here
http://www.london.churchill.hyatt.com which was a really nice 5* hotel yet at a discounted rate. What I did at the time was when the general description of the hotel came up, I copy and pasted the blurb into Google and voila! one of the Google results linked to the name of the hotel thus allowing me to know the specific hotel and the specific location before I booked it. Not sure whether that still works, but its worth a go particularly if you're trying to keep the Mrs
and the wallet happy.