For both Hotwire and Priceline, you can pick the area(s) within which the hotel will be located. For major cities the hotel zones are usually fairly small. You won’t know the specific hotel beforehand but you can guarantee the hotel won’t be in Skokie.
Hundreds of successful bids are listed on the web sites http://www.betterbidding.com and http://www.biddingfortravel.com, where you can also find tips on how to get the best deals. For Priceline especially, there are tricks that people in the know can use.
Why do people think this happens? Unless you make an obvious mistake, you pick the areas you find acceptable. If Jersey’s not acceptable, don’t pick it.
As a matter of fact, for Hotwire, it even tells you what area the hotel is in before you select that hotel (it just doesn’t tell you the name). So there’s really no excuse.
You should start the name your own price process on Priceline just to see the area selection. I think you may be misunderstanding how this works for big cities - you won’t just type in “Chicago” hoping not to be stuck out in the suburbs - you will be selecting areas from a map with boundaries you can see. In the case of Chicago they’ll have names like “Millennium Park, Loop & Grant Park Area” and “North Michigan Ave - River North Area”. If the corresponding shaded area on the map includes areas that are deal breakers than just don’t select that area.
Well right, that’s my whole problem. My concern is that I’ve found that vacation sites aren’t always exactly accurate with their location descriptions. In my personal experience, when I go back to LA, I’ll make one of my criteria either downtown, or close to my parents’ house, and I’ll see hotels in the list and go, “Pfft, that’s not downtown.” So I don’t want to select The Loop, then end up at some place that the Priceline guys decided wad close enough. I really want to make sure that they mean what they say with their locations. If they do, I’m well and good with selecting a few areas, and letting them give me whatever matches my price.
See above.
What I’m going to do is what GilaB suggested, and search the regular way to see how they define their areas. If they’re good, I’m good.
Yeah, so, when I selected my hotel, I wanted Boston proper, not some little town off of Boston, so I typed in “Boston” when asked for city. I saw a great deal for 74dollars a night, 3 and a half stars, Harvard area. Yippee!
Booked it. Ended up in Newton. Never heard of Newton, thought it was a part of Boston maybe. But, nope. A whole other town. No problem, though, I loved the hotel and have no trouble at all traveling the 15 minutes to Boston.
No excuse for what? Your last sentence confounds me.
Driver8, I don’t reccommend my method for finding NYC hotels. It is random luck that we pull into town and start calling around looking for rooms and always end up with great deals! (not always. I have found myself in an old motel in Van Cortlandt in the Bronx on a couple occasions). But yeah, I have randomly snagged the Chelsea Gem in Manhattan for under 150,more than once. Just dumb luck.
I Priceline negotiated a $25 hotel just this morning. I have a layover of sorts in Denver at the end of the month (I saved $150 moving my flight from Saturday to Friday night), and just need a place to crash. I decided to just throw out a $25 bid on anything near the airport. I kinda wish I’d have plugged in $10 to see what happened.
I’ve used Priceline twice and I have no complaints. The first was a trip to London last year. I ended up with the Hilton in Islington for $85 a night (plus taxes and fees). Needless to say this was way cheaper than the going rate, which I think was at least $150 US. The hotel was rated a 4 for amenities but wasn’t nicer than a nice 3. I was happy with the room and location although my AC didn’t work. I guess I got the Priceline room. Luckily it wasn’t hot. I also used it in May to book a room in Montreal. I got the Quality Hotel Downtown for $65/night. This was a 2 star but it was clean and there was parking available so I was satisfied. It was also walkable to the Metro and a lot of other destinations. I was definitely in the city and not out in the burbs both times.
Got a great deal in downtown Chicago $ 300 room for $75 a night. 2 nights. It really was quite a nice room. I’ll definitely do it again.
Having said this you really, really, really need to be precise about what areas you are OK with. Get google maps and check the outlined location areas relative to your target area before you bid. People getting rooms far away from where they want to be is not possible unless they did not follow instructions, or just chose the entire city as being acceptable.
Both Priceline and Hotwire allow you to see a map that indicates the boundary of the hotel zone. The map is the defnition of the zone, regardless of the name. You can get a hotel anywhere within the boundary shown on the map. You decide whether that is acceptable or not.
I used it for a ski vacation where I had and expected to use my car, all the places were within a reasonable driving range, and it worked out nicely, got a very nice place at a inn, one that I wouldn’t have though of, and was very happy with it.
I think the nature of the trip gave me that flexibility that made Priceline a good choice, I’m not so sure I’d chose it where I want a particular location, such as a city.
I saw the maps. I clicked on the maps, selected a few areas, and got all the way to the end before I started wondering, “What if these zones are just approximations?” But if by zones they mean exactly, to the block, within the circles they’ve outlined, and will not send me even one inch outside of it, we’re happy campers. I don’t know why I’m so paranoid about it. Even if I selected zone 6 and they sent me two blocks outside of it, I’d be fine with that. But if 6 means 6, no wiggle room at all, even better.
I’ve had pretty good luck with Priceline the several times I used it. For example, I once attended a seminar in Seattle and managed to book for $89 a room at a newly-renovated four-star hotel that was downtown by the waterfront that would’ve normally cost me $299.
Looking at the area shapes in the map of Manhattan I suspect they take all the hotels they offer for a particular area and draw a line around them (or have an algorithm that does it). I’d be very surprised if that line is an approximation such that hotels could be included that were outside it - it seems such a blatant false advertising move that they’d never get away with it.
I understand your general concern however - Real estate agents and Craiglists posters get very creative with neighborhood boundaries in their property postings - I just don’t think it applies to Priceline.
This point does make it hard, especially when looking for hotels in a downtown area. Some have free parking, some have parking that costs $20 a night. Some have free internet, some have $10/day internet. Some have free breakfast, some don’t. This makes it hard to bid. If I knew I was getting free everything and a breakfast to boot, I may be willing to bid $75 a night, but I may end up getting a place where all the extras add up to over $100/night total.
Yep, for our honeymoon. Got a hotel in Manhattan, Central Park South and about 8 blocks from Times Square for $100 a night. Pretty sweet deal. We had to pay for the internet, but most hotels in that area had that extra fee. It was $14 a day, which is pretty nuts, but we were willing to do it. So figure, we had to pay $114 a day… still not a bad deal.
I also want to recommend Betterbidding.com. I’m pretty sure I’ve always correctly figured out what hotel I was bidding on. It’s all free, but they request that you use their links to access Hotwire or Priceline.
We tend to use Hotwire for the simple reason that you can put more than 2 people per room, where Priceline only allows bidding for 2 people max. We have gotten some amazingly sweet deals. We drove to New Orleans and paid more for some Best Western we grabbed on the side of the highway than at a 4* we Hotwired in the French Quarter.
Remember, you will know the general area you’ll be in, you do get to see the amenities, the payment is non-refundable, and even though some places put you in their less desirable rooms (no view, next to machinery, etc), most have given me my choice when the hotel was not full.