I have no idea, I haven’t heard of anything.
Actually, you’d think with Fleet Week being cancelled due to sequestration things would be wide open and cheap, as I know the hotels and restaurants stand to lose a lot of money.
Fleet week isn’t until the end of may, and thus would have no effect on hotel availability right now (I beleive the OP is in NYC already). Nor would it have any effect on the OPs bargain hunting system of “bid half the night before I leave”.
Also the FD is really changing with respect to being a tourist destination. They’re building a 40-story Holiday Inn on Rector St, that’s not intended to attract business travelers.
You guys: OP said the prices now are** three to four times** that. She/he is NOT saying those are the expensive prices…
So that trip’s water under the bridge, but I just wanted to chime in on Priceline’s prices and why what seemed ludicrously low is fairly common (just to clarify, I was using fleet week as an example of a city-wide event that jacks prices up, not wondering if it was that week).
We’re heading back in for fun this weekend, catching Beats Antique at the Brooklyn Bowl. Taking a train in, we want to stay close to Grand Central. We just got into the Renaissance 57, a pretty nice Marriott a few blocks north of the station. Our name-your-own-price: $120. If you go to Orbitz and Travelocity and put in the same dates, you’ll find the same hotel selling for $250—we got it for over half off simply by buying through their Web site, just like they advertise. Once in a while you find something that really is that simple and that good.
(On preview: I know that there’s a vast difference between a Sunday-to-Monday stay and a mid-week stay. The point wasn’t that all hotels should always go for $120, it’s that we usually find P’lines bid system to cut 40-60 percent off rack rates–that wasn’t happening and I wondered if there was a specific cause rather than just an expected occasional statistical spike.)