TV is full of hotels.com/priceline.com/etc commercials for websites that seem to give good hotel rates if you’re willing to pay without knowing the name of the hotel ahead of time. You usually get to pick the neighborhood and the star rating. I’m a naturally skeptical person and have been afraid to pull the trigger and use one.
What have your experiences been? TIA.
Go to BetterBidding.com. They’re pretty good at helping you figure out the hotel ahead of time. I’ve used those sites a few times and always knew what place I was getting.
Check the neighborhood maps very carefully, and assume that you’re going to be stuck at the end of that narrow 3-mile long projection that somehow counts as “downtown”. That happened to me once, when I was staying overnight in a city between taking a train and a plane, and it was pretty obvious that the neighborhood map was gerrymandered to include one specific hotel that wasn’t in a convenient location. The round-trip cab fare more than cancelled out any savings.
I’m confused. I just tried both hotels.com and priceline.com and both of them told me what hotel I’d be staying at if I booked. What website doesn’t tell you the hotel name?
I believe they only do the “We’ll tell you the name of the hotel after you pay” thing if you use the “Name your own price” option.
Priceline (Name Your Price) and Hotwire are the two big ones.
Sounds like, “if the price is more important than the location, here you go…” Caveat emptor.
No personal experience, but from reading the travel troubleshooter column, one source of problem is the star rating. I remember people writing in who said they requested, for example, a five-star hotel but ended up in something that seemed terrible.
I’ve used hotwire a dozen times. Mainly for hotels in DC, but also a trip to Europe in Brussels and Belgium. Only once did we get the gerrymandered fringe hotel in Washington dc. It was 10 minutes walk to the Whitehouse or a subway stop, which isn’t terrible, but if you are right on the mall you stroll more. With that hotel he got lazy and basically camped out in the hotel for the weekend.
It’s almost always in my arsenal when deciding hotels to book. Just pay attention to fringe areas and metro stops in the zone.
Sorry, I should have been clearer in the OP. This is that to which I was referring.
I’ve done the Priceline Name Your Price thing several times now, for a bunch of situations, and I’ve pretty much always been happy with it. With a bit of research (BetterBidding.com!) and sufficient time to re-bid, it’s pretty easy to narrow things down within reasonable parameters, and the savings are really significant. My favorite was when I was going to a wedding at a hotel that was the only hotel within its neighborhood that was a certain star rating, and I paid something like half of the “special wedding rate” with five minutes of work. I’ve never been disappointed by quality, but I’ve also researched all of the “likely” hotels beforehand so I know what I’m getting into. Many/most hotels won’t give you credit in their rewards programs if you book via Priceline.
It does seem like I’ve had a bit more trouble getting really steep discounts within the last year or two, but at this point they’re still worth the effort. I also enjoy deal-hunting in general, so YMMV.
I only did it once, for Salt Lake City, where the 3+ star hotels in the downtown area are all about the same. Got a good deal, had a good experience.
I would not do it for NYC, on the other hand, because some of the older 4-star hotels can have some pretty shitty rooms, and I’m willing to be that if you booked through this kind of service any complaints would be useless.
I’ve used it once, but I was in a location that only had 1 hotel that meet my criteria. I knew which hotel it had to be.
That being said, once we got the room, it was pretty obvious that we got the “slightly subpar weirdly shaped/placed room” that I’m guessing usually goes to whomever signs in first with a Priceline reservation. It was one of those rooms that ends up tucked behind the elevator, or right off other pool changing rooms. A little louder, a little smaller, the farthest from the elevator kind of thing.
I use Priceline every time I travel and that’s probably been close to 100 times in the last decade or so. Never had a problem. Pick the neighborhood and the star level and bid low (40 or even 50% lower than the listed price) and you’ll get something nice.
Never had a problem with the rooms either - sometimes you get the room across from the ice machine when you purchase direct from the hotel, too.
I understand the reticence to use one of these services - I was too the first couple of times. After a short while I never looked back and I’ve saved over $10,000 since then. You’re really crazy to pay $50 - $100 more a night than you have to. Add a gourmet meal to your itinerary instead for the same price.
Question: I’ve used those sites but I’ve never used the “Name your own price” thing. How do you know what to bid? Will a too-low bid just get ignored?
I’ve used both Priceline and Hotwire with success. Definitely check out Betterbidding to try and figure out the hotels and you’ll also get an idea of the range of prices and winning bids. There is also a trick with PL where you can get a “free bid” by purposely including a star rating that isn’t available in your zone, or something like that…I can’t remember exactly how it works.
We’ve used Hotwire a few times to book hotels in San Francisco and have never been disappointed. We’ve gotten some very good deals. I know SF pretty well and on more than once occasion could guess the hotel before they told me the name based on description and and location on the map they show.
I had one sort of bad experience with this with priceline. I bid on and got a hotel at price X. But, then there was an added mandatory resort fee of Y. So, instead of paying X, I had to pay X+Y which was well above what I had been willing to pay in the first place. This seems ridiculous considering it is a binding agreement.
So, you can bid and get acceptance for a bid of 100 bucks a night only to find out that it is actually 150 bucks a night and you only find that out after you’ve submitted your binding bid of 100 bucks a night.
Two helpful links for priceline bidding:
This one describes how to get around the 1 bid per day rule:
This one gives you advice on what to bid in given regions:
I used the mystery hotel option once when meeting a friend in Orlando. I just needed a room by the airport for one night. I ended up at a hotel that was in the process of transitioning between brands - I can’t remember what it was - but it was great. The restaurant had the best vegetarian omelette I’ve ever had in my life. The bonus part is that my friend used the same mystery option website and ended up at the same place! She had housekeeping drop a note under my door - “Hey guess what - I’m on the third floor! See you in the morning.”