Debden

Hi,I've been trying to book a few trips and haven't been able to get anything from Priceline.com.It seem's their inventory might be low right now.Anybody out there been able to get any great deals for Airfares/Hotels from
Priceline recently?!! Just wondering....

nina

Funny you mention this Deb. I got a great deal about a month ago ($75 for the PointeHilton Tapatio Cliffs Phoenix for mid April) and In late December I got the Hyatt Regency Miami for $27 for February 12.

Starting right after my bid for Phoenix, I started bidding for Oak Creek Village trying for the Sedona Hilton for the same week. I've gone up to $115 for a 3/4 star (I say this because wacky things started happening while I've been bidding). First, the Sedona Hilton was rated 3*, and I've seen winning bids for $75. It was also the only 3* hotel in the Oak Creek Village zone. Then, last week I bid in Oak Creek Village and saw there was no longer a 3* hotel, only 4* and resort. I assume Hilton re-rated their hotel as a resort, (it does qualify, technically). I just went to rebid again, and there is no longer an Oak Creek Village zone! They probably lumped it in with Sedona. I now could end up with the Radisson, which is a resort in Sedona, in fact, I probably will end up with the Radisson, and that's not a chance I'm willing to take, since I can get the Radisson through conventional sites for about the same price and I really wanted the Hilton.

It seems like PCL is wising up to sites like biddingfortravel and trying to make it more difficult for us to target hotels. Also, as I said, I'm already bidding way above previous prices for that zone and am coming up empty. Something's definitely up at Priceline and it does seem like the great deals are becoming more elusive.

Betsy

$40/night for the Marriott Courtyard at Charles De Gaulle for friends traveling in April.

Andrew

Debden, can you be more specific? Where/what/when have you been bidding for? I've found Priceline is great in some situations, not in others. Last July I needed a couple of nights at Virginia Beach around July 4th. Duh! No wonder I came up empty - it's one of the biggest weeks of the year there. Can't imagine hotels would be selling a lot of inventory to Priceline.

People on BFT still seem to be getting good deals. Last month I got a 2.5 Star Best Western in Seattle, Seattle Center, for $30/night with *free parking*. This place wasn't nearly as nice as the Seattle Westin I got for $55/night a year earlier (nor did I try for a 4-star this time), but the BW for $30 near downtown is still an amazing deal. They are still out there.

Andrew

Debden

Hi Nina,Betsy,and Andrew,Thank you for your responses.I've put in at least a dozen bids for Albany,NY or Newark,NJ
to Las Vegas and St Thomas,USVI. Each time my bid get's rejected and then they refer me to Lowestfare.com.Which has higher airfares than the Airline Websites.Usually I check the airline websites,take the lowest fare available and take 40% off and that's the bid I put in on Priceline.com. I've put in dates for April,May,and June.No luck.
Maybe I'm bidding too low or too soon?
I've used Priceline lot's of times before for Airline tickets and have never had this many rejections...Any suggestions?

Debden

Oh yeah,I've also used Bradley International too..(Hartford,CT)as an alternate airport.So I'm pretty flexible.

Owen_ONeill

In the past two months I've gotten:

Hotel Vintage Park - boutique hotel in Seattle for $60

Delta Vancouver Suites - upscale suites hotel in dowtown Vancouver BC for $50 US

Sheraton Suites in Oldtown Alexandria VA for $50

Wyndham Hotel in East Syracuse NY for $45


My friend just won bid for Manchester Hyatt Regency in San Diego for $70

I tried repeatedly for two nights in late May in Dublin Ireland and struck out. Turns out there's a Springsteen concert and most hotels are completely sold out even for direct booking.

I scan the bidding results at www.betterbidding.com regulalry and have noticed some good deals in NYC lately - e.g. $95 for the new Westin at 42nd and 8th. I suggest that ytou check there for recent PL and Hotwire and also www.biddingfortravel.com for PL results. The deals are still there for many time periods but tend to be tighter and less available for the most popular travel times. I don't even bother trying to get airfare from those sources as it has never been a good fit with my needs.

judith49

I got the Grand Hyatt in San Francsco for April 3 and 4 for $55 a night. I did this about 3 weeks ago. A friend had gotten the same hotel for the end of February at $60 a night. This is considered to be a 4 star hotel. She had a lovely room with a view and large bathroom.

Andrew

Debden, I guess most of us were addressing the hotels, not the airfares. I've never book an airfare on Priceline - I've always managed to get great deals on my own.

Admins on BiddingForTravel posted this week a notice that with all the cuts in capacity due to the war, Priceline's "airline product", which has already not been really popular, may be even less so as airlines don't have as much extra capacity to sell plus their fares are already pretty low in many cases. So it may be that Priceline does not offer airline bidding all that much longer. At least, it won't be the emphasis of their business.

Have you tried Hotwire.com ? How about budget airlines like Southwest?Southwest does not show up on anyone's reservation system anymore so you must go directly to their website to check prices.

How about Jet Blue? They fly out of JFK - you could fly them to California or Utah and perhaps swing a cheap flight from there to Vegas. The nice thing about Jet Blue is you can get good prices even a few days before departure if you need to.

Andrew

mrsbu

As I a am an airfare only bidder on priceline as I really want to know what hoel I am going to stay in brfore I pay for it. That said since PL purchased Lowestfare.com I have not heard of one sucessful airfare bid. They are all refered to lowestfare.com, whihc as I have seen always has the highest fare possible.
Cest la Vie.......I will no longer get the 99 round trip from ny to maine

Debden

Hi Judith and Owen,You both got some great deals on hotels! It looks like Priceline still has great hotel deals.
I bid on Priceline a short time ago for a Chicago hotel.My bid was for $86 with the hope of getting the Le Meridien or Swissotel Chicago and I ended up getting the Hyatt Regency Chicago.Priceline only paid $76...They got the better deal on that one!
Andrew thanks for the heads up on that notice about airline deals.I guess I missed that one.I did go to Hotwire and they only save me about $25 per ticket..
Not enough savings to chance getting bad air times.I did go to Southwest and found a vacation package to Las Vegas for $690.That's a great price! I tried Priclines Vacation Package to Las Vegas and they counter-offered with $667...Again not enough of a difference in price... I did go to Jet Blue website but it's more difficult for me to get to JFK/Laguardia Airports..
MRSBU,I'm afraid your probably right.
Thanks everyone for your helpful suggestions and insight.Maybe I'll try Southwest...I've never flown with them before and they seem to have the lowest
price vacation packages.Debbie

OliveOyl

Debden, Southwest has its detractors, but I�ve had nothing but positive experiences with them. FAs are pleasant; seats are comfortable and roomier than the average cramped plane you find today. We flew SW tampa-vegas-tampa and were even fed. How rare is that?! We started using SW years ago when our daughter was in school in Austin and we lived in Dallas. The $30 flight made it senseless for us to drive her back to school--a 7 hr round trip drive! Have been fans ever since. If you found a great deal there, I wouldn't hesitate to use it.

I don't know if you've gotten into hotel bookings yet, but deals vary tremendously with the season for some areas, and USVI would be one of course. Could that play into your stay in Sedona, Nina? We are running an 84% occupancy this month and project the same for next, even with a couple of groups canceling when the war began. During these periods, PCLN is closed out and if it reopens, it's at a higher tier.

Initially PCLN availability was strictly computerized...so if the computer saw rooms going begging at the end of next month, they'd open them up to PCLN, but even that is changing. Now there is a service that plots conventions coming into a city and rates for every other hotel in the area, which means for us, if a citywide is coming up and it looks as if downtown will be selling out, overflow will come here. Now the computers will no longer see these rooms as going begging, as odds are they will fill with overflow from the citywide so PCLN availability is gone. Anyway...the entire system is becoming more sophisticated as we all learn to use it advantageously, and yield management becomes more sophisticated with a little human input. gt;

I don't know if there was a real connection at one time between BFT and PCLN, Nina. I recall a discussion about some newspaper article which resulted in changes in their relationship, as the premise on which PCLN was sold to hotels, and the basis for their participation, was that bidding would be opaque. I think what's happening now is that hotels, not PCLN, have wised up to BFT...certainly they have if they are smart. It's a game that can be played effectively from both directions.

PCLN is cooperative about gerrymandering districts if requested. That may be what happened in Nina�s case. Someone didn't want to be the only 4* or resort in a zone, and it was redrawn. Although we stand alone in a zone too, and one that can�t be redrawn as there is water on 3 sides of us, this can be to our advantage in PCLN pricing we found. Because people are bidding a known entity as pointed out on BFT, and want that entity, the rate can be higher. While following BFT bidding on DH's hotel, I realized what was happening, then bent his ear at the dinner table each night. It's still a great bargain, but a little less of a giveaway and perhaps no longer one of those laughing face icons that rolls across the page, bargains as before. gt; I'd love to sell my services, LOL! There�s another FL hotel in our chain that, no doubt at all, could easily double their PCLN rate without losing any business if they paid attention to what was being said on BFT! The whole pricing procedure fascinates me...wish I could put this fascination to good use!

Anyway, although some of the discounts aren't as deep perhaps as during initial stages of the game, it's still a deal for potential guests yet advantageous for hotels as well.

nina

Olive, I know the week I'm looking at is a busy one (April vacation week before Easter), so I imagine that's why I can't get Sedona through PCL, but strangely enough there are lots of people (myself included) who got great deals in Phoenix and Scottsdale that same week. Maybe it's just because there's so much more inventory in that area?

Do you know if hotels give inventory to PCL at the last minute if they have empty rooms? I know for a fact that the Sedona Hilton has empty rooms, I'm wondering if there's any hope that they'll give them over to Priceline rahter than let tham stand empty. I have a backup reservation at Orchards Inn at L'Auberge, but they have a 7 day cancellation policy, so I only have until the end of this week to rebid.

Owen_ONeill

Olive - you made some great points. Contrary to some opinions, I've always believed that PL represents a value for customer AND for hotels. It's inevitable and totally realistic from a business standpoint that the more savvy hotel chains will figure out how to tweak availability and rates to maximize what they earn on PL business. It may result in slimmer pickins' for those of us who use PL regularly but there will always be some bargains to be had - hotel beds are an evaporating inventory and the secondary market will always exist to some extent.

I think it would be very cool if some of the hotel chains (hint hint... perhaps you could plant a seed) offered their own bidding system. I really like Hyatts but can rarely afford to stay in them for personal travel and can't cost justify it for business travel (I work for a small company and $$ is tight). If Hyatt (for example) had a bidding system of their own in which I KNEW I'd be getting a Hyatt.... I'd be willing to do some late bidding in hopes of getting a room there even if it was $20 higher than PL.

OliveOyl

Nina, I learned Easter week is traditionally a slow week for hotels when our son was planning his honeymoon this year for Maui. He was using Expedia vacations and found it would cost him about $1,000 less than any of the weeks surrounding Easter, if he went then. Mentioned this to DH who confirmed that was why. Evidently many people want to be home with family at that time, spring break or no.

They can turn rooms over at the last minute, depending of course on how close they are to being full. Sometimes it makes sense to hold them, knowing the odds are they'll sell out with walk-ins or come close enough at a regular rate to negate the need to discount--and it amazes me how many people do just plan to walk in, even during busy season. No way I'd take that chance, but either they don't know the situation or don't care about struggling at the last minute to find someone, anyone, who has a little place where they can lay their heads! Actually, I laugh at my last sentence, because DH and I did just that with our honeymoon eons ago in January in the Keys! In our case we were 25 yr olds with no hotel experience under our belts. Also, fortunately we weren't terribly demanding at that point as we ended up in Jerry's Sunset Inn in Islamorada...where we were when we got tired of driving that day. gt; It was fine with us...then..LOL.

Have you been to Sedona before? It is so beautiful, but see it now...it is growing like gangbusters. There was a noticeable change last November when we went through, from the two years prior when we'd stayed there. I may have mentioned to you before I gave our daughter and s-i-l our hiking book for the area as they live in Phoenix, and trying to do one of the recommended hikes recently, they followed directions to get to the trailhead and ended up in a brand new subdivision. lt; Too bad.

indytravel

Interesting that you would mention Hyatt, Owen. I was bidding downtown Louisville for 3/15 a few weeks ago. I bid up to $50 before I hit the Hyatt. On the Hyatt website they had a prepay, no-cancel rate of $66 for the night. I've not seen a Hyatt rate that low before. Maybe Hyatt is testing the waters to see if people would pay a little more for a particular hotel.

OliveOyl

It is a value for both Owen, you're right, and it is being fine tuned constantly. That aspect of the industry is still evolving, and I agree, to one degree or another, there will always be some secondary market but as (if, lt;) the economy improves, no telling now what shape it will take.

I read your post to my DH...interesting concept he says. There are other avenues than PCLN now, but not as a bidding site. Hyatt has partnered with Hilton, Marriott and Starwood, among others, for something called travelweb.com, but outside of blind bidding, the best rates you'll find with hyatt are at hyatt.com. I just looked at that for an April weekend in our hotel, and it's nothing like the rates that indytravel found (more than double, but this is an entirely different level hotel than Louisville too), nor was it $20 over a PCLN rate (but PCLN is closed out anyway so not an option) but still darned good, and lower than travelweb.

Hotels understand the pinch, especially in today's economy, but I'm glad the consumer is capable of seeing it from our point of view as well. There is a point at which it no longer makes sense, and that rate you quoted for Miami, Nina, is at that point I would think. You are not just concerned about meeting day to day operating costs, but there is wear and tear on that room that will have to be remedied right around every corner. By the way, a point you made an excellent point in another post, Nina. A guest should never, ever, experience treatment that is any different as a PCLN customer than they would as a full rate guest. The Owens of the consumer world who love the chain but can't quite swing it now whenever they want, but can get it on PCLN, are customers down the road too when times are better for us all, and continued good will is vital.

Owen_ONeill

Your points.... again.... very well taken, Olive. For example, Labor Day weekend of '02 I stayed for four nights at the Elliot Grand Hyatt in Seattle. I scored that room for $40 per night, absurdly low for a hotel of that quality, even by PL standards. That hotel has apparently managed to begin ecahieving better occupancy rates and hasn't been appearing much, if at all, in posted winning bids from PL. My experience with that hotel was so uniformly positive that I would stay there again on a direct booking price (and probably will in the future) if I got it for $120 per night or less. It's a marvelous property and so nicely situated.

As for Travelweb.... I've used them a few times but found their prices to be about the same as Travelocity or Expedia - sometimes good and sometimes higher than Internet special direct booking prices on the hotels' websites.

Bo

OliveOyl,

It would be so much easier if everyone in business (not just the hotel business) understood their industry as well as you understand yours!

Too often people can only see their own side of a situation, and you obviously are objective enough to keep an open mind. I applaud you and wish that more followed by your lead.

nina

Olive, I've never been to Arizona so I'm really looking forward to our trip, less than 2 weeks! I wouldn't have dreamed of bidding so low for the Miami Hyatt had I not seen it come up that low often on Priceline. On the other hand, there are many hotels that I would bid relatively high - say over $200 for the Hyatt Gainey Ranch - but I would never get the chance since a less desirable resort would accept the price before Hyatt.

I agree with Owen, there might be something to a bidding site where you knew which hotel you were bidding on. On SkyAuction they have the Arizona Biltmore which regularly goes for about $200 a night. It's the only really nice hotel in the US that I see come up on there. Not a cheap room but still a great bargain. The other site like that is luxurylink, but there are so many restrictions with minimum number of nights and dates that it's rarely practical.

I can't see the downside if hotels did this on a last minute basis without dirt cheap prices but still a deal off the rack rate.

I would love to be staying at Enchantment, but $375 a night is just over my limit. I would pay $250 though, but instead I think they would rather let the room go empty than discount it that much. I can't imagine that there are that many people who aren't on an expense account who are willing to pay that much per night, especially in this economy. Even my husband, who has carte blanche for business travel, just doesn't feel right about splurging like that nowadays. He has me find better rates for him (never with Priceling though, he needs to be able to cancel). Maybe I can start a business, high end hotels for less for the business traveler? There's an idea, his travel agency always has him pay rack rate and then I find him a better hotel for the same price or the same hotel for less.