If I understand correctly, the best Priceline deals are available
at short notice-- perhaps a month or a few weeks before travel.
How does one balance this with a
wish to plan ahead? Is there any
way for an advance planner who likes
to have things nailed down at least three months ahead to
effectively use Priceline?
Thanks in advance for insight!

You can try bidding as early as you want. If the hotels know they'll be fairly empty they may offer deals then. But later is often better (companies that have reserved large blocks of rooms often release them 2 or 3 weeks in advance).

You could reserve a hotel that is cancelable until the last day or two - then try to keep bidding on Priceline.

I'm with nytraveler on this one: I book my entire trip months ahead of time using Venere.com, Bookings.com and recommendations from this site. In the meantime I bid on Priceline with ridiculously low offers. If they accept, great. Otherwise I just keep bidding up until a few days before departure.

When I book through the above-mentioned websites I usually consult TripAdvisor and similar sites just to check the opinions of other guests. However, take any opinions you see on the Internet with a grain of salt. I believe that satisfied customers are far less likely to post their thoughts than those that are po'd about something.

There is absolutely no rule about when you can get the best Priceline deals. I've gotten great deals the day of check-in and also four months before arrival. The hotels determine how many rooms they'll sell on Priceline based on number of empty rooms, the season, projections for last-minute bookings, etc. This can change on a dime if there's a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a cancellation of a big convention, etc.

I very much agree with the strategy of booking all your hotels without Priceline ahead of time, then using Priceline as you get closer and hope you get something better and then cancel your other rooms.

I love Priceline but haven't had much need to use them on recent overseas trips. In Italy recently they didn't seem to be useful for anything under 5 stars in the major cities and I was looking for much chepaer rooms than those. In some cities you can get fantastic deals still - in London and Vienna for example - but not everywhere. You have to pick and choose the best places to employ Priceline.

I have bid up to 6 months early on priceline and have gotten it. Of course, you have to be sure you are really going to travel as the hotels bids are non refundable. I kind of follow along with what`s going on with biddingfortravel, and when I see someone has gotten a hotel that sounds good, and for how much, I often bid the same amount and get the same hotel. I have always gotten the Westin at LAX.

Just wanted to say thank you for
these four truly useful replies.
As you know, sometimes on this
forum one can ask "How do I do
A in B", and the advice will be
"Go to X and do Y!"

I recently did a 4-day bid for 11 months in advance. But I've also done day-before bids. The main thing to watch out for when you are bidding far in advance is to not be carried away and overbid.

The other possibility is that you will see someone else later get a cheaper bid (but it could also be a more expensive bid) for the same dates as you got. So just focus on getting a good deal, as there's no way to be sure you have gotten the "best" deal.

As others have said, I don't think there is a "best time" necessarily to bid on Priceline for a good deal.

I got a great 6 night London deal (2 rooms) 8 months in advance. I've also gotten rooms much closer to the actual dates of stay.

Definitely book something else as a back up that you can cancel if Priceline doesn't work out.

Regularly check the winning bid posts at biddingfortravel.com and betterbidding.com and keep an eye out for winning bids in the zones/star range you want. If you see winning bids posted at a good rate at a hotel you like, you might want to try and make your bid to see if you can snag a room too.