Anyone been disappointed in a Priceline Hotel?
 

I used Priceline.com for an overnight stay in London a few months ago. Not only did I get a hotel that was supposed to be 5 star that was more like 3 star, the hotel was not really in the area of London it says it is.

Now I am thinking about giving Priceline another try as I keep reading Biddingfortravel.com and betterbidding.com and see lots of bidders having success gettting the hotel of their choice. Just a random question: How many of you have gotten the hotel of your choice on Priceline? (That is if you had a hotel of choice in mind before bidding). There is only really one hotel I want and just wonder what you think my chances are getting it? Thanks!

I have gotten great rooms on priceline!
Chicago Palmer House
Hilton towers
Hyatt
Hotel Allegro
Monaco

Seattle Grand Hyatt [so far the best]
San Francisco Kensington Post
London Tara Copthorne
Dolphin Square [another favorite]

I have never gotten the "hotel of my choice" on Priceline, because you do not get to "choose" a hotel with Priceline. If you wish to choose your hotel, you need to book in a conventional way.

Can you guess/hope for a certain hotel when you are bidding with Priceline? Of course, and more than once I have been lucky. But before making my Priceline offer, I have always been willing to accept whatever hotel they give me provided it meets the standards they have set. If you are not willing to accept any hotel that meets the standards, don't use Priceline.

BiddingForTravel.com is a great site for learning which hotels people are getting in a particular zone, but even if only one hotel has ever come up on BFT in a particular zone, there is NO GUARANTEE that Priceline won't add a new hotel tomorrow and you could be the first person to get it! This uncertainty is one of the reasons you can get such good hotel rates with Priceline. Sometimes you get the hotel you would wish for, sometimes you don't.

As for hotel quality: I have always been satisfied with the hotels I've gotten with Priceline. Sometimes I get hotels that are average and acceptable, others I get hotels that are excellent at fantastic prices. I expect average and am pleased to get above-average.

If the London hotel you got with Priceline was not in the area where it was supposed to be or it did not have an anmenity that it was guaranteed to have (e.g. a restaurant on site), you have grounds to request a refund as Priceline has violated their part of their agreement with you the customer. It's up to you do persue this, not them.

Andrew

Thanks Andrew. I know I do not get to choose a hotel at Priceline. I was just wondering if many people out there had a hotel they preferred and were lucky enough to win that hotel.

As for my incident in London, I may pursue contacting Priceline. I was attending a seminar that ended very late and needed a place to stay for the night that was in walking distance of my lecture. I ended up needing a taxi anyway. The hotel was not in the area/zone as stated.

Yes, a few times, and have been happy with some of my other stays through Priceline. I think that if PRICE is most important than Priceline is for you. And sometimes Priceline just does not fit the Location that I am looking for. Sometimes it is just better to be EXCACTLY where you want to be and money is less a factor for satidfaction.

Priceline is quite clera about the criteria they use for rating their hotels. But hte hotels do report these features themselves, so I agree with the above recommendation that you contact PL if the hotel was misrepresenting itself to them and (hence) you.

PL provides detailed maps that show its own definitions of the zones. In the cities I travel to, these do not exactly ovelap with the borders that locals or tourists would draw, so you do have to be careful about the geography.

Your chances of getting a specific hotel are completely un-guessable. I suppose if BFT lists it as the only hotel in tha zone/star category, then your chances are good, but since there are no guarantees you should not use PL if you have your heart set on a specific place.

I've only done one Priceline and that was for one night only in NYC on fairly short notice when everything was pretty full, so didn't get a great price despite having to make a couple bids. Still it was a better price than I could get otherwise. Got Times Square Hilton for about $169 as I recall. Meanwhile, we got a horrible room. The desk clerk told us it was because we were there on Priceline ("you have to admit you didn't pay much did you?") and because we were only there for one night and otherwise the hotel was full so they couldn't change us. I also showed my Hilton Honors card and she told me that didn't mean a thing since I had booked through Priceline not through Hilton.
I realize most people say this treatment was unusual, but it happened nevertheless.

I think Priceline's distribution of hotels by area in London is nutty. From limited experience, I generally expect accommodatations to be a star lower than advertised. There are bargains to be found (especially if you use biddingfortravel to strategize) but I tend to keep my expectation down since I'm bottomfeeding for lower cost.

Hotel of choice? Wouldn't bid if I had my heart set on one property. For cities I visit frequently, I have preferred hotels which I know (via BFT) are PL hotels. I know the acceptable bidding range and 4 time out of 5, I'll get the hotel I want. I'd be way less adventurous in an unknown city.

Sorry to hear of your bad experience. Would you report back after your interaction with PL about the London hotel?

Patrick, what did you pay with Priceline vs. what you could have paid on your own? As a rule, I won't bid too high on Priceline - it's not worth being locked into a hotel unless I can save a considerable amount of money. I certainly wouldn't do it for minimum $20/night savings, perhaps more. Depends on the situation I guess. I know for me it's not worth saving only $20 to use Priceline...

Whenever people say "the hotel gave us a crappy room because we used Priceline" I always ask, "To whom should the hotel have given that room?" If they were full, wouldn't you expect them to give the least desirable rooms to the people who paid the least? They won't leave the room vacant just because no one bid on Priceline that night - SOMEONE will get it that room if they fill up. You might argue that the hotel should not rent out what you consider a sub-standard room (near a noisy elevator or something) but that's kind of a different issue.

If the room you got was clean, quiet, and had at least one double bed, you have no right to complain about it, really. That's all Priceline guarantees (plus perhaps certain amenities). Sometimes people who you use Priceline seem unreasonable to me to expect one of the better rooms in the hotel even though they may have paid the least of any guest!

I would be wary of rooms in cities like NYC and Chicago, from what I have read, because the hotels Priceline uses there tend to have small rooms or may be not as well kept up. This is one reason the reviews on BFT are so helpful.

Andrew

I've generally been pleased with Priceline but I've gotten a couple of "almost dogs" (Lenox Suites in Chicago, Westin Galleria in Houston, NY Hilton) that needed renovation as well. A couple were great and none were terrible. I've never been treated as a "Priceline guest" overtly.

The only time I was disppointed was when another priceline bid spoiled me for the next one. I decided to stay an extra night in a city and duplicated the bid that won me the fantastic 4-star room I was in. I got a different hotel that was nice, but nothing like the first one.

Andrew, the cheapest room I could get from Times Square Hilton for that particular night was about $219, so yes the savings were worth it.

And Andrew I agree totally about "who else should have gotten that room", which is one reason I'm a bit leary of doing Priceling. Like it or not if the hotel is full, the customer who got a room at bargain prices from another source IS the most likely to get the worst room. It's only logical and good business for the hotel. Better than giving that room to a person who booked direct at a much higher price.

I only did Priceline that time because it was only for one night and was willing to take a chance. Mostly I wouldn't take a chance, because I generally have very specific ideas of exactly where I want to stay. I had thought about bidding Priceline in Las Vegas this summer for two nights, but when I got a deal of $69 or so direct from Alladin, I decided it wasn't worth it to chance Priceline.

Parisandelle: Did you check biddingfortravel.com before using PL? They give you a comprehensive list of which hotels are in which zones.

In London, a couple of the PL zones are labled a bit different than I would, but all make a ceratin amount of geographic sense.

And, sorry, but to ever use PL when you want a specific hotel, or to be walking distance from a specific venue is just not sensible.

That should read "a certain amount . . ."

Priceline seems to include much less desirable areas of a city in zones with desirable areas and names the zones after the desirable areas. This is, I suspect, to move the empty rooms offered from less desirable areas which otherwise wouldn't get any bids at all. The zones do not follow the accepted boundaries of the areas after which they are named. Airport zones can be the worst, with part of the "Airport" zone being far away from the airport, with no convenient public transportation. A zone named for an area in the touristic center of a city may include areas well outside the central city. Check maps VERY carefully.

Similarly, the hotels will be selling their least desirable rooms at Priceline's distress prices. The rooms may be small, or dark, or needing renovation, or even all three.

So, when bidding on Priceline, expect the worst room in the least desirable area of the zone and set your bid accordingly. You then can only be pleasantly surprised.

If you do your research carefully - on biddingfortravel.com and betterbidding.com, as well as on Priceline.com and tripadvisor.com - you can't be disappointed. If you're disappointed, then either you don't understand what area/hotels you're bidding for, you didn't read about the hotels carefully enough, or you overbid.

I've been fairly lucky with my Priceline bids. You need to carefully review all the recent information on BiddingForTravel.com and place your best bid. The only time I was completely disappointed in my winning bid was when I needed to leave my house on short notice when my tile was being installed. I placed a bid without doing extensive research and felt comfortable with the hotels in the class/location I was bidding on. However, I got a hotel that was rather run down and they charged me extra because they consider themselves a "resort & spa". I fought the charge and got my $12 returned. The hotel met the criteria for a 3* Hotel because it had all the required amenities (i.e., restaurant onsite) but was in dire need of major renovations.

Other than this experience, I have always been pleased with the hotels I've received through Priceline.

I would never place a bid expecting to receive a certain hotel... you never know which one will accept your price.

At the Wyndam Grand Bay in Coconut
Grove I would have been dissapointed
if I had paid the going rate-the lobby is nice, but the rooms not worth
200+. Got it on PL for $60 and for 1 night on the way to the Keys,it was fine (and really nice to be off that plane!)The staff was pretty snooty,
and I don't care if your staying for free-that is a hospitality no-no.

We have had very nice mini-escapes at the Lodge at Sonoma, a Marriot Renaissance property. They are happy
to take note our stay with Marriot Rewards. Everyone there is quite
delightful! PL helpds the travel budget
do "extra" duty, and I would use them again.

R5
Have paid

As a post-script to my previous post, I'd like to comment on hotels looking down on Priceline patrons. I've never had a hotel take that attitude with me. Maybe it's because I take the attitude that if they didn't want my business, they shouldn't have accepted my bid. If any hotel personnel ever treated me poorly during my stay, because I'm using Priceline or for some other reason, I'd take it up with a manager.

Actually, I wonder if the check-in personnel think I'm rather savvy for using Priceline and respect me for not paying "full price" for the room.

Heartburn, I'm trying to figure out what it is you're trying to say. Most of the examples above including mine refer to the response given when we complain about receiving a poor room. I don't see anyone talking about a clerk being rude to a Priceline buyer for no reason. If you've never been the victim of getting a poor room to begin with, then there's no reason you would have complained and no reason they would have "spoken down" to you, so obviously you wouldn't have experienced this.

Or are you suggesting that the hotels really wouldn't think of giving the Priceline buyers the worst rooms? If so, I want you to type these words and read them carefully before posting them with a straight face:
"I firmly believe that if a hotel is completely sold out and all rooms are full that they will give the worst rooms to the guests who booked direct at full price and give the better rooms to people who bought by Priceline."

Can you honestly say that?

Remember we're not talking about a hotel which has a lot of rooms available giving out the bad rooms to Pricline buyers as a matter of policy. Instead we're saying if there is no choice but to give someone the bad room, who do you think it is more likely to be?

Patrick:
Some hotels, some of the time-
I don't think it's an "always" sort of thing. Management practices and staff
attitude vary widely, IME.
R5

I have used Priceline many times over past six years. Yes, there have been a few disappointments - a Days Inn in Mount Pleasant SC was moldy and dirty, a Quality Inn airport in Portland, OR and the Radisson in Worthington OH were the worst of the lot, all were not clean and just plain cruddy. But for the most part we have gotten wonderful deals and I have never been treated poorly because I was a Priceline customer. Some of the most outstanding bargains were hotels in Washington DC and Alexandria, Chicago and Seattle. I always research biddingfortravel before making a bid. I also almost always ask for a 3*. Only got burned on one of those.

The only real issue I have with Priceline now is the fact that they no longer reveal their booking fee - in the past I knew it was $5.00 (or whatever it was) Now they blend it into the taxes and fees. Recent taxes and fees on a bid of $42 were about $15.

Pam

Yes, Pam, and Priceline's booking fee went up a few months ago. It makes single night hotel bids less attractive now.

Andrew

I've used priceline a few times, mostly for single night stays and have only run into 1 major problem, the hotel quality was clearly not what priceline rated it...3* was really no more than a 2, I took pictures of the room and wrote a detailed letter to Priceline with my complaints and was given a full refund. I still use priceline and with the help of BFT and betterbidding have gotten hotels I was hoping for..or at worst, was prepared to end up with. On average, have saved $50 or more than lowest rates anywhere else.

Having had to sleep in a lot of hotel rooms while on business travel, my jaded attitude was "a hotel room is a hotel room is a hotel room" (with apologies to Gertrude Stein). The hotels that my companies paid for were usually the top-end chain hotels: Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, etc.

Now that I'm retired and having to pay for my own rooms, I discovered Priceline less than a year ago and find it a wonderful bonus.

I do extensive research on biddingfortravel and on tripadvisor before placing a bid. If, say, BFT lists a particular hotel, say a Hilton in Portland, as the three star hotel that has been receiving the last five or six bids on 3* hotels in Portland, well, duh (I says to myself) - if I bid on a 3* in Portland, chances will be close to 100% that I'll get the Hilton.

So, I read everything I can about that Hilton on BFT and on tripadvisor. If people have been having good experiences and the place is CLEAN, I make my bid as close to the prices of the winning bids as I can. This way, there's a 90% chance of getting that Hilton at that price. Very little surprise and works about 70% of the time for me.

The rest of the time there simply isn't enough information - reviews - and so it becomes a lot of guesswork.

The only time this system hasn't worked for me was the Courtyard in Omaha. Glowing reviews and yet it turned out to be just about one of the lousiest hotels I've ever stayed in. Makes me wonder if the those glowing reviews weren't written by someone working for the hotel - lo!

Doing your homework and getting it wrong 1% of the time seems like a pretty good risk factor to me.

Generally I've gotten wonderful rooms, wonderful service, and wonderful prices. The whole Priceline system floors me with wonder. :) Outstanding have been the Homewood Suites in Salt Lake City; Courtyard in Markham (Toronto), Canada; The HIlton Garden Inn in Beaverton, Oregon; the Doubletree in Sonoma County, California; and the Marriott in Vancouver, Canada.

I'd had nothing but good experiences (no bad rooms or staff attitudes) with PL, but I guess that's just partly luck. I would like to add a couple of insights:

I always call the hotel a couple of days after winning, to specify my preference for bed type and a nonsmoking room. I don't know much about hotels, but perhaps this gets me in line for a better room.

The zones in PL are not only somewhat arbitrary, they are also fluid. PL changes the boundaries periodically; the skeptic in me agrees with the above suspicions that they're including less-desirable places or stretching desirable areas. But in NYC they spilt up parts of downtown as it became more popular and had more hotels.

Another caution is a reminder that biddingfortravel, while tremendously helpful, has no formal ties to PL and therefore no special insights into its offerings -- they rely entirely on reports from members and thus if PL adds a new hotel, the first they hear about it is after somebody wins it.

Likewise, BFT has no way at all of knowing that a hotel is no longer working with PL; they drop hotels from their lists only if they close! New hotels are added at the bottom of the zone/star listing, so if there's a long list, the ones at the bottom are more likely wins that the ones at the top.

As mentioned above PL requires hotels to have an on-premises restaurant (and room service, IIRC) in order to be rated 3 stars; in NYC and elsewhere, there are thus some great deals to be had in the 2.5* group.

Whenever I'm about to bid on a new city or one I haven't visited in a while, I print out BFT's list of hotels and then go to their "win" messages an annotate the list with the winning bid amounts for the past few weeks. This tells me which hotels and zones are most active, and gives me clues on which hotels to research and how much to bid. Takes about 10 minutes, which is time well spent.

parisandelle - Please tell us which hotel you got, in which area did PL say it was, and which area did you think it was in.

Reading all above, and having used Priceline maybe 12 times in about 7 cities / states- I can say that I have never been disappointed in the sense that this first poster was. But then I have never used Priceline outside of the USA. Maybe specific market area/ rating can also be a factor. If you think the hotel location designation was in error, I would follow up.

I have had numerous excellent results in the Chicago market. Maybe because I know the area locations so well and also maybe because I don't think I have ever bid for anything under 4 or 5 star level? Don't know. Also had great luck in NYC, Ft.Lauderdale, San Diego, and especially terrific luck in St.Louis. This was so fabulous for such little money that it no Priceline stay will ever probably top it. I got the Westin Couples Station with 20 foot windows and 3 rooms with marble spa bath looking into Cards' stadium. But I do not expect this to happen next time.

I have never been given a "worse" room yet. The only time I was given what I did consider a problem room and almost the exact opposite of what I requested (but kept it as it was such a hassel changing again in a full house) was when I was paying absolute top dollar at the Animal Kingdom Lodge in WDW. Sometimes, I do think it is just fates also, not Priceline. A full house is a full house. If I wanted to be in an exact certain environment and/or location I would not use Priceline or Hotwire for that reserve.

One time in Sarasota I got the hotel I absolutely wanted the most on Hotwire when it was "fully" booked and I could not reserve it direct. It's a computer world now.

If you're thinking of using PL for your upcoming trip to NYC, I'm not sure it's a good idea. I think you're someone who cares a lot about your hotel and there are good mixed with bad. You might also wind up with a small(er) room than you'd like and you might have to pay an extra fee if you need a crib etc. for the baby. I do think the hotel areas are better defined for NYC than they are in London though. (I also think it's silly to use PL if you need to be in a specific location).


You should look at the hotel list on biddingfortravel.com I would not recommend bidding 4* midtown east b/c it includes the W New York which has tiny rooms and the Waldorf which is getting dreadful reviews. Unfortunately, the Omni Bershire, the Intercontintal Barclay and the Grand Hyatt are also in that area/star level and are good hotels.

I just don't think PL is for you. BTW, I think easyclicktravel is either owned by the biddingfortravel people or PL. It should be Ok.

I've never ever had a problem with priceline because I know I'm only bidding for an area and quality level not a particular hotel.

I've used priceline at least 50 times all over the US and never once been disappointed.

I've only had 1 bad stay with Priceline and that was at the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento. It was more of a timing issue though than a Priceline issue. The hotel was perfectly fine. We just happened to stay the same weekend as some large group of high school kids who were on a field trip visiting the capitol. They were not well supervised and were all over the hotel, making noise well into the night. Both nights I had to call the front desk a couple times to have them make the kids on our floor quiet down. It was also difficult getting around the hotel because the kids were everywhere - in the elevators, in the halls, in the lobby, etc and there were tons of them.

I have used priceline many times and for the most part have been pleased. My last stay however I really got the snooty treatment from the check-in staff. I had called the hotel directly to make certain that I had a non smoking room so at check in I asked-Is that nonsmoking? only to receive a lecture that basically said: beggars can't be choosers. Ironically at the end of the diatribe the staff person said: Here's your nonsmoking/king room. It was a great room, maybe he felt he'd extracted his pound of flesh. So I don't think in that instance the staff were overly impressed w/ my shopping savy. Although I did pay 50 dollars for a 195 room :)Now hopefully my 235 dollar room in Boston that I just got for 85 is a pleasant surprise as well.

It surely makes no sense for hotel staff to have an atittude about what you paid. Hotels choose to release rooms to PL, usually because they expect that otherwise the rooms would be unsold. So even if you pay only $50 or $75 for your room, that's money that the hotel has agreed to accept, that it would't have gotten anyway. If I were treated badly, I would report this to the hotel management.

I've used priceline in Washington, DC; Arlington, VA; Alexandria, VA; Glasgow; Manchester; and Liverpool, and have never been disappointed.

Put simply,

DO NOT waste your time playing with Priceline.com IF YOU HAVE only ONE "hotel of choice" (possible exception being "The Venetian" in Las Vegas, as they're the only 5-star hotel, and you can telegraph your interest to one hotel and one only).

THAT said, Priceline has been little short of AWESOME in my lengthy experience as a customer. I've found great rates from Spokane to Halifax to San Diego and many spots in between.

On rare occasion I have found myself not as excited as I liked at the NAME of the hotel I'd be staying at, but even those evolved to be acceptable and comfortable locations, always at a great rate.

But again, specific to YOUR post here, DON'T use priceline given the case you mapped out.

Save Priceline for when your exact hotel doesn't matter, and when you'll feel best about getting a great rate!

In terms of the poster's original remark, about a London hotel....We will be in London later this summer, so I recently was looking over the reviews at BFT. In the 3* category (I forget which area, maybe Kensington), there were at least two hotels with really poor reviews, so I immediately made a note to myself that we would not take a chance on bidding that area (or star level). So careful reading of all reviews posted is a good starting point.

In the US, we've used Priceline extensively (and typically bid at the 2.5* level). The only really unpleasant experience we had was when I couldn't land anything in southern Virginia and so went down to a 2*. That put us in a Ramada that, overall, was quite shabby and I resolved never to bid 2* again.

In Chicago (for instance), at 2.5* we've had everything from a new, high-rise Residence Inn just off Michigan Avenue (for $45) to the somewhat tired Tremont (for, I think, the same price). I've just taken a look at BFT and the only other 2.5* listing for No. Michigan Avenue right now is the Seneca...so you have the possibility of landing one of two much older properties or the gem - the Residence Inn. I've never wanted to bid 4* for NoMichiganAve because the Hyatt Regency comes up so much and I've no desire to stay in such a huge place - also, its location, along with the Swissotel, is not all that great from my POV. But careful reading of what reviews are available at BFT are certainly the first step towards a positive PL experience.

B/t/w....what is the new booking fee at PL? I wasn't aware of a change...

I've had great luck with priceline hotels, the most notable being several stays below $100 for the Millineum Hilton in NYC. The key is to join the frequent guest program of whichever hotel you are visiting and the front desk help will be accomodating if they weren't in the first instance. Bidding For Travel is a brilliant site and provides you with all of the necessary tools to make a decent bid. All that being said, I will never use Priceline again for air travel as my one experience resulted in a cancelled flight for which the airline refused to rebook me, stating "you bought your ticket on priceline, sir."

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