Does anyone know if you are better off bidding for a hotel at the last minute on Price Line or a month or so in advance? I need accomodations for July 8-15 on the Big Island and I was curious if any one out there has used this service.

Thanks

I went to Hawaii in October. I bid for my hotel towards the end of August using the advice at biddingfortravel.com.

I have seen where folks rec'd same day deals as well as months in advance. All depends on hotel inventory. Being that you are going soon, personally do not think it is too early to start bidding. Remember if you are using only one e-mail address and your bid fails, you have to wait three days.

It took me a few bids to get my hotel.

Good luck and have fun.

We were going to bid on Priceline (for Maui), but we went up to $220/night and still didn't win it (hotel was worth $320 during July).

So we did a ton of research and ended up booking it with Hotwire. You can know more or less which hotel you'll get by cross referencing with the packages. Meaning when you search for packages they tell you the hotel choices, note the amount of stars and details, so that when you only bid on a hotel category, you'll know which hotels you might end up getting.

Anyway, we got it for $239, which is pretty high but at least we got it! And it's for the week of June27-July 4th when it's hard to get deals.

Check out Hotwire, too. We got a great deal for the Hyatt in Maui for August. (200/night, when the Hyatt website was advertising $350-$400 night.)

Hotwire's fees are higher then Priceline's & usually about $15/night cheaper (at least) than Hotwire for Hawaii and Las Vegas. I have a feeling Celine would have been successful on PL at $225/nt. Also, Hotwire's rates can sometimes be higher than the hotel's own website. Very tricky using Hotwire, and way too liberal with hotel star ratings.