Fedup

..for resorts! I think Priceline is doing a real disservice to their customers by not rating the quality of their resorts. For instance, a hotel with the quality of a Holiday Inn, but with all the amenities of a resort, is lumped in the same catagory as a resort like the Boulders in Phoenix! Just because each property might have room service and a spa, does NOT mean they should be rated the same quality level!

I found this out by researching on bidding for travel for Phoenix hotels. Apparently if you select resort in Scottsdale, you could end up with anything from a Radisson to the Hyatt Gainey Ranch. What a huge difference in quality. If you paid $120 for the radisson, you'd be overpaying, but $120 for the Hyatt would be quite a bargain.

Because of this completely unreliable rating system, BEWARE, there are some locations that you just can't bid on a resort, as the quality level is too risky.

Get a clue Priceline, all resorts are not created equal, and should be rated the same way as you rate hotels, as 2*, 3*, 4* or 5*.

EvenWorse

You can also bid a "4*" hotel and find yourself upgraded to a "resort" that would be a 2 or 3* if it were in the hotel division and a fraction the quality of the 4* hotel you HOPED for! The entire grading system sux. Take a gander at the complaints in the "Hotel Misratings and Quality Issues" section of BiddingForTravel. Caveat emptor.

xxx

Someone the other day on another post mentioned that the hotels themselves get to select their star category with Priceline based on which facilities they have, rather than the quality of those facilities. That explains a lot, including another reason I'll never use Priceline.

xxx

Ya think? If you even remotely picky about where you stay, don't use priceline.

If you have more than 2 people in a room, don't use priceline.

If your dates are iffy, don't use priceline.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Fedup

It looks like Priceline could use some competition. The premise is a good one, too bad they don't do a good job of it. Anybody with a lot of ambition out there? All you'd have to do is the same thing Priceline does, but with accurate ratings and customer service. I smell a huge opportunity.

Jill

The Priceline system is patented. No other company can use their exact system.

Intellectual

We wouldn't want the exact system, it stinks. We want a website that allows you to bid on hotel rooms, but gives reasonable and accurate ratings to the hotels. They can patent their system, but not the concept.

OO

Intellectual property....and therein lies the rub.

Either you buy a piece of AAA or Mobil, or you obtain, train and send your own cadre of inspectors into the field (picking up expenses of course) to rate your hotels, and there go the profits, "poof", right before your eyes! This is why Priceline can't rate, relying instead on hotels to rate themselves fairly. Some will; some won't.

Also, as the economy picks up, available inventory shrinks and prices rise, then the smaller pool of available rooms diminishes the appeal of the system, making it likely that most of the players in this game are going to sink, not swim.

Andrew

Does Priceline need "competition"? I'd argue that they are going to have enough trouble making a reasonable profit in the coming years that few would want to compete with them. I think a modest profit is a likelihood - I sure hope so, so I can continue to get great hotel deals!

To all those people who worry about this or that with using Priceline for hotels: all you have to do is look at BiddingForTravel.com to see the kinds of hotels people are getting. People are getting fantastic deals for hotels that are at least decent if not great. Unless you foolishly overbid, you are at least going to get good deals you could not get elsewhere.

I've been satisfied, sometimes thrilled, with the hotels I've gotten with Priceline in the last year. Never had a hotel that was crappy (2.5, 3, 4 star places), though I had a 2.5-star Holiday Inn that seemed better than that rating. I did get a 3-star Hilton in Raleigh that was nothing to write home about, but because I paid a whopping $30/night for it, I had no complaints at all.

If you're so paranoid that Priceline is going to screw you, by all means don't use them - no one is forcing you to. Go ahead and pay rack rates or settle for a AAA discount. But if you've never used Priceline, your complaints about them are pretty hollow.

Andrew

Fedup

Andrew, for your information, I have used priceline - a lot for city hotels, and I have researched BiddingforTravel, again, a lot. If you had researched the specific area I am referring to - Scottsdale, you would know that many people are indeed getting screwed for resorts. They are overbidding in the hopes of getting a great resort like the Hyatt Gainey Ranch, only to end up at the Radisson or worse, sometimes paying more than the Radisson's Rack rate.

Are you so blinded by loyalty (we don't know why), that you can't see that all resorts are not the same quality and should be rated as such?

Pull your head out of the sand Andrew. I like Priceline for hotels, but I can admit that they need improvement when it comes to rating their resorts. There is no rating for quality of the resorts. A Holiday Inn Sunspree gets the same rating (resort) as The Boulders (resort). One has a regular rate of $80 and the other starts at $500. This seems right to you? What if you bid $300 hoping for the Boulders and ended up in some budget resort? If that's OK with you, you're a moron.

EvenWorse

It's not paranoia, Andrew the Voice of BiddingForTravel, it is two bad experiences. No one needs to tell me a third time. One was with a mis-rated hotel which only in its wildest dreams was a 4* and the second with the room we got in a 3*, which had to have been the worst in the house from the standpoint of location (in the back overlooking a parking lot "no sir, that is all that's available") and upkeep. But in fairness to them, we paid nothing and got almost that in return.