I am looking at a beach trip and I was wondering if I can get a good deal by naming a price on priceline. Does it work well everywhere? I am looking at the Outer Banks of NC if that matters.
I had no success with them at all. I’ve tried them twice.
From what I understand of trying to use it, you aren’t guaranteed anything. You name a price, then input all your information (including credit card…) and IF a hotel wants to rent a room at that price, you’ll get an email. I don’t know if they charge your card right away, or if you have to confirm, but it’s sort of the hotel equivalent of flying on standby.
And for the record, in researching my upcoming trip to Vegas, 99% of the time the best deals on hotels are found at the hotel’s website themselves (if they have one.) So I use Expedia, Travelocity, et al to get an idea of which hotels are in my price range, and then contact the hotels themselves and it’s almost always cheaper, even if it’s a “package deal” with a flight.
Never pay rack price anyway. As in the quoted initial price is always negotiable.
We saved 50% on airline tickets from Houston to Las Vegas. However, we will never use them again, as you have no say in airline choice or scheduling. They routed us Houston-Denver-Vegas and we got snowed in in the Denver airport and missed the first part of our seminar.
I used Priceline extensively when they had name your own price for groceries and gas, but I am too picky when it comes to hotels and flight schedules to use them now since that’s all they do. You have to enter your price, the neighborhood, the star rating you want, and all your CC info. If your price is accepted by a hotel, then your card will be charged immediately. You do not get the opportunity to OK the pick. That’s the one you get. If you don’t care a bit about where you stay, then it might be for you.
I got a hotel in San Francisco for about $100 a night, normally about $150.
They charge your CC for the whole stay or just 1 night?
I’ve had extraordinarily great experiences with them, both in the early days and more recently. The early days has some insane pricing, but that’s not really germane to the OP.
As for hotels, not every trip is going to have a great deal, but more often than not we end up with an absurdly low price for a great room. The routine: find out where we’re going, go through the basic steps of pricing at Priceline, Hotels, Orbitz, Expedia, etc. in order to get a general idea of what to expect. Then go Priceline’s choose-your-own-price route, and start with the highest star rating (we’ve never disagreed with their star ratings) at sixty to seventy percent off the average rates we saw earlier. It’s not infrequent that our first bid gets accepted, but if not, just repeat the process in smallish increments until it is. There are occasions where the price gets too high and we’re better off selecting a specific hotel (though Priceline’s sectional maps are pretty good), but no one said it was perfect. But there have been many times where after booking we’ll hit the hotel’s (and competing Web sites’) pages and verify the price break.
So, IMHO, it’s definitely worth the extra fifteen or twenty minutes to give it a try.
The whole stay. When you make your bid, you are agreeing that whatever room they can get you, within the limitations you’ve chosen, at the price you offer, you will take. They charge your credit card for the full amount (X nights at $X a night + taxes and fees) and send you a “congratulations, you’re staying at the [insert hotel name]” e-mail or, if no one will accept your price, send you a “sorry, make changes to your requirements and try again” e-mail and charge you nothing.
I had a lot of success with Priceline up until 2003 when for the same dollar figure bid on the same trip, I got a really lovely hotel in Houston, near IAH, lovely amenities, recently remodeled, nice restaurant, breakfast buffet and evening hors d’oeuvres buffet, definitely upscale, and with the exact same requirements (and allegedly the same “star” level) I stayed in the dingiest, nastiest hotel in Austin I’ve ever seen that didn’t rent rooms by the hour. That hotel had to move me several times because of ants in the room. None of the staff wore uniforms or nametags and none spoke English. (Or Spanish, which was weird, for Texas.) The pool was a green gelatinous blob of algae that was growing out beyond the walls of the structure. The “breakfast buffet” was cold, plain bagels, no toaster, no butter, no nothing, and orange drink. (Not juice, drink.) I called and e-mailed Priceline to try to get a refund so that I could go elsewhere (my travel budget was very limited) but it was a weekend, so no one was authorized to help me, and I was stuck.
This, and Priceline’s apparently great love for the Microtel at Baltimore-Washington International, a hotel where the hallways perpetually smelled of tuna fish mixed with cheap hair conditioner, soured me on Priceline. I’ve since stuck with discounts via the Entertainment book and specials on various travel websites.
If you need to cancel the trip will priceline give you your money back?
I’ve actually used Hotwire.com for most of my hotel reservations recently. You tell them what city or area of a city (if it’s a large city) you want to stay in, and the dates you want to stay. They’ll display a list of a bunch of possibles with descriptions, amenities, rates, and number of stars. The only thing they don’t display is the hotel name. You choose which one you want and pay. You’ll know the name of the hotel immediately after you pay.
Back when the UK Pound was over $2 US dollars, we got a 4-star London hotel for 4 nights at about $150 / night (very near Blackfriars Bridge over the Thames). I’ve also used them for rooms in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Sedona, AZ with generally good experiences.
J.
I worked as a revenue (reservations) manager in hotels. How it works is each hotel decides on how many rooms it’s willing to let Priceline sell for them and how much. For instance, at the Westin on Mich Ave in Chicago (I was not the rev mgr there but I knew the prices), we sold the room to Priceline for $59.00. That means each room cost Priceline 59.00. They were the cheapest. The next cheapest was Hotwire at $79.00 (you get a choice, somewhat, with Hotwire).
Now Priceline may have 50 hotels in Chicago and it rates them. Note the star ratings that Hotwire, Priceline and the like give hotels ARE NOT, repeat ARE NOT, the same ratings as Mobil and AAA give. Priceline has their own inspectors come and view the hotel.
So a Priceline or Hotwire Four Star won’t necessarily be the same as a Mobil Four Star (the one most people think of when they hear Four Star)
So let’s say you go to Priceline and bid $69.00. Priceline first looks at all the hotel rooms that cost it LESS $69.00. Then it has an algorithm to select which hotel it’ll give you. They obviously choose things like profit and such. For instance, if the Westin costs them $59.00 and a Holiday Inn costs them $49.00, and you bid $69.00 they’ll probably give you the Holiday Inn to make more money.
Does Priceline sell for cost. No, BUT they DO sell for $1.00 over cost. So if you bid $60.00 and the Westin charged $59.00, if there were no other options Priceline would sell you that room for $60.00.
I didn’t believe this and when we were upgrading the computer revenue system, I talked to the people at Priceline and told them I didn’t believe them and the invited me in to see and inspect their system. And while they’d rather make MORE, as long as the price will make them a $1.00 or more, they’ll sell the room.
Hotels should make good use of Priceline but often don’t. For instance my policy was, when I was a Revenue Manager (not the Westin), to give the least desireable rooms to Priceline. Such as those with bad views or next to the elevator. It makes no sense to give a room next to an elevator to a guest paying $199/night when a Priceline room is fetching $59/night.
As long as you REALLY understand how Priceline works you can get a good deal. But you have to remember, when you get a deal, there’s a catch. Finally if you HAVE, I mean absoutely HAVE to have something, don’t use them.
Finally you can’t change anything with Priceline because they have “insurance,” you can purchase in case something goes wrong, “you get sick,” “your plane’s delayed” etc.
As I said you CAN get good rates through Priceline, I’ve seen many people get a $60.00 at a hotel on the Mag Mile in Chicago. But the person next to you might have paid $199 for that same room on Priceline.
’
deleted by Marxxx
I tried the name-your-own-price feature a few times recently for hotels. It worked out great. Trying this was a big step for me, as I am typically quite set in my ways and hate unknowns - I am not really a compatible personality for not knowing the exact hotel before I have committed.
Still, I’ve stayed at the Holiday Inn San Jose for $40 and the Homewood Suites By Hilton in Brisbane for $40 when I needed to stay overnight near SFO. Both very nice hotels for the price, although the Brisbane hotel was not that convenient to SFO. Not a problem for me as I had my car and was just picking someone up and wanting to hang out in San Francisco for the weekend around it, but I’m not sure I’d trust Priceline if I didn’t have my own transportation and had a tight schedule.
I’d definitely try them again for pleasure travel where we just need somewhere to crash in the general vicinity. I’m not sure I’d use them if I was relying on public transit or had a tight schedule (although the public transport factor would probably be less of a factor if I was staying in a highly dense area like San Francisco proper or New York City).
I love Priceline for hotels and use it whenever possible. The deals used to be better. For instance, about 5 or so years ago I repeatedly booked rooms at the Sheraton and Marriott in Nashville (which were over $200 on Travelocity at the time) for $35-$40. Things aren’t quite that good now, but the deals are still much better than anywhere else I’ve found. Within the last few years, I’ve paid $45-$65 many times for the Hilton/Intercontinental/Doubletree in North Dallas, all of which run over $180 through the hotels’ own websites/Travelocity.
Some general observations:
-The final price you pay is your bid + $6 per night booking fee + taxes.
-Prices are going to fluctuate with season and day of the week, just like normal. For big holidays in a tourist destination, you might not get a deal at all. On the other hand, hotels that cater to business travellers are often nearly empty and attractively priced on weekends.
-All rooms are double occupancy, but you have no say in whether your room is 1 bed or 2. Similarly, you can’t specify your floor, view, or smoking/non-smoking. The vast majority of the time, I have gotten what I wanted by just asking politely either over the phone shortly after making the reservation, or at check in.
-As mentioned earlier, Priceline’s rating system is their own and is more ‘generous’ than say, Michelin. That said, I’ve never found anything objectionable about their 3-4 star rated hotels. Some of the lower-rated ones can be nasty, some are perfectly nice.
-Unless you are dead set on getting the lowest price possible, you are generally better off paying $50-$100 for a 3-4 star, than taking a chance with $25 for a 1-2 star.
If you want to try Priceline, you should check out biddingfortravel.yuku.com , a board dedicated to getting the most out of it. They have lists of which hotels fall into each star level and region within a city, and people post what the results they got for a given bid. They also explain the ‘free re-bid’. Very useful.
Why do I recommend spending an extra $30 on a ‘better’ hotel, that is, in all likelyhood not all that different from the Comfort Inn except maybe nicer furniture? Many semi-high end hotel chains are completely non-smoking now, eliminating one of Priceline’s drawbacks. Being generally larger, unless the place is booked up, the bed and smoking combination you want is more likely to be available. Also, most regions seem to have at least one 2 star or below hotel that gets consistently bad reviews, hidden among the perfectly nice ones. Bidding low in one of these regions is too much like gambling for me.
I’ve had pretty good luck with Priceline but prefer Hotwire. Similar to the site mentioned by Furious_Marmot is www.betterbidding.com. Both sites help you make an educated guess on what hotel you’ll end up getting based on the star rating, zone, and amenities. Members report back on what hotel they end up with so you can narrow down the choices.
Can you specify handicapped accessable on priceline and hotwire? being a gimp sort of makes it a requirement nowdays =)
I use Priceline a lot for hotels. I actually do save anywhere from 40%-50%. I have done very well in New York, LA and San Francisco.
There are things I won’t use it for.
Las Vegas is one. I am very picky about my location and their divisions don’t suit me. I also find their star levels to be a bit questionable. There is no way the Excalibur or Imperial Palace are three-star properties.
The other is a city that I know absolutely nothing about. When I go to New York, LA, San Francisco or Miami, I know the neighborhoods well enough that I have a reasonable expectation of where I could end up. But if I was bidding in Vancouver, for example, I would be a bit wary. I just don’t know enough about the city to say I want to be downtown or uptown or whatever.
Both websites mentioned provide a wealth of insight into what you can get.