Connie, the same thing happened to me. I would normally try the hotel direct, but they showed no availability for my dates. Yet quikbook had no problem reserving the room for me, and I was told it was a confirmed reservation.

I worked as a front desk clerk for a mid-level hotel chain in a resort area for a couple of years right after I retired. Fun job! Our rooms were blocked by the reservation system, not by the desk clerk. We could override it if need be, but that was rare.

On the PL subject, there are many threads on many sites about this. I can only relate my personal experience and that was, while the majority of PL customers understood the rules, some either don't understand or try to game the system.

The most egregious example I had was two guys who came in the lobby on PL ressies (2 rooms) and asked for connecting rooms. I had them, so I gave it to them. They then went back to the car and returned with seven, count 'em seven, children under the age of 10. After they went up I called the GM and asked if he wanted me to boot them on a fire code violation, but we agreed that it was a slow night and I didn't really want to put those seven kids back out on the street. Then began the requests for more sheets, towels, soap, etc. Luckily, I was the only one there so they had to come get the stuff themselves.

My point being that examples like this are what lead hotels to reduce PL inventory. It costs the hotel money for those towels, soap and sheets. If we're not getting full price for the room and we're using extra soft goods, we're losing money.

og719, I guess I'm missing some point to your story. Why does the fact that these creeps happened to book via Pricline have anything to do with the results. Couldn't the creeps have just as easily booked their rooms direct and arrived with the kids?

Patrick,

I often fail at explaining points well...

Yes, they could have booked conventionally and done the same thing. The point is their behavior, and the actions of SOME other PL customers, led our GM to almost discontinue offering inventory to PL at all. All PL customers lose in that situation.

Many times I have had PL customers come in and demand a room with 2 beds because they had more than two people in their party. If I could accommodate them I would, but if there is only a king room empty, inventory is what it is. Okay, I'll admit it. If their attitude sucked they might or might not get the two beds. You might find a lot of front desk clerks who actually enjoy toying with Type A's.

Just to let me know my experience last month in the Sheriton Syline Heathrow UK.
I booked a room with parking for 3 people through a travel agent. I also booked a room through Priceline for my mother as this was by far the cheapest way to do it.
When we arrived we were given beautiful rooms next to each. The fact that one room was booked through Priceline didn't seem to have any effect on the rooms we were given. It may just have been a quiet day for the hotel but loking at how full the hotel carpark was it didn't seem quiet!

As a former hotel manager, the bottom line is whomever pays the most, gets the best room and so on.

AA is correct about the vast differences in actual hotel rooms in one hotel. At the last hotel I worked at, we had 22 different 'types' of accommodations and then each accommodation was rated A+ to C-.

I've booked through Priceline and never had a bad experience. On thing to keep in mind... at some hotels, room assignments aren't made until you check in. I've found that if be nice, be polite, treat the staff well, you're much less likely to get a lousy room.

I've also booked a number of trips through LuxuryLink.COM's auction site. We've generally paid between 30 and 40% of the listed prices for the packages. Since these are luxury properties, many people do seem to be paying the 'full' rate.

We've never had an experience where they put us in a 'bad' room because we booked cheaply through a 3rd party. In fact, in a number of cases, our rooms were actually upgraded beyond what was promised.

At one property in South Africa, instead of a standard room that was to include a fresh fruit basket, we got a 4 room suite overlooking the pool and ocean with fruit, a bottle of wine and a huge fresh floral arrangement.

One very big exception to the "you get what you pay for" rule for hotel rooms are resident (kama'aina) rates in Hawaii. Most hotels offer good, sometimes amazing, discount rates for Hawaii residents, and I've always been given fantastic upgrades when I was paying these rates.

I just did read about Hotwire/Priceline when we planned our honeymoon for San Francisco/Napa/Las Vegas last winter. We had set $ 100 per night as limit (we did fly from Finland and had also a wedding to pay so couldn't afford to pay much more),if we had booked directly from hotels or other net booking sites we could have got max 3 star hotels in San Francisco for $ 100 in mid April. We decided to use Hotwire and thought we couldn't get worse room in 4 or 4½ star hotels than in 3 star hotels.

We paid 99 $ for Pan Pacific and got a very nice (standard) room in upper floors, checked prices at Pan Pacific and several other sites and the standard was $ 265 for the same dates. For the three last nights we got Westin San Francis for $ 85 (prices on their pages and anywhere else starting from 250$), the front desk clerk apologized he didn't have available any other than smoking room in our price cathegory (we did arrive at 9 pm), but we could change the next day if we wanted. He was very friendly and helpful. The room was quite small, but pretty with reasonable wiev and didn't smell of sigarettes so we didn't bother to repack and change room the next day.

In Napa we didn't get much difference in price (around 15 $/night) at River Terrace Inn, but got a nice standard room facing the parking lot (like all of their standard rooms).

For Las Vegas we bought a package from America West, the Bally's front desk clerk was friendly and gave us room with a great wiev as we requested. She told it wasn't remodeled, but room was clean, big and all we needed.


America West clerk had terrible, very unpolite passenegers before us, we chatted friedly with her and said we jokingly that we are much nicer passsengers. She seemed to be rlieved to have friendly passengers and placed the only empty seat in the tourist class between us so we got more leg room.

My point is that we have got good treatment anywhere despite low rates we have paid, haven't got the very best rooms anywhere byt nothing really bad either. Anyway, as we are traveling from Europe and have not any experience of these hotels or not even hotels of the same hotel groups there would not have been any guarantee of excellent service and good rooms no matter which hotel we booked and where we did book it from. We vere really happy that our budget did buy us rooms in nicer hotels that we would have got booking the "traditional way". Anyway we spend minimal time in in the hotel awake, so good bed, clean bathroom wth good shower and good location are the most impostant things for us. For example in Las Vegas you can enjoy most of amenities (playing, restaurants, bars, shopping, spas etc.) of all casinos no matter where you have booked the room.

i also have always wondered how hotels booked rooms.Can anyone tell me if booking thru American Express Platinum Preferred Hotel Program really gets you a room upgrade(if avaiable) or is it a slight improvement over the standard room.How do hotel managers view these bookings since they give other perks in room rate?

We've used Priceline a couple dozen times over the past few years and not once have we felt that we were getting shoddier service because of it; nor have we ever had any real complaints about our room/location.

Very interesting post.But As the saying goes "you get what you pay for"

Frankly, there are plenty of times I'm not so sure I'm even getting what I paid for.

I've found that sometimes the best rate for a specific hotel is calling directly.Yet I'm not sure about the best way to secure an upgrade.Sometimes after viewing the hotel room after you've arrived and calling the front desk and telling them that your dissapointed gets you an upgrade.Any comments or suggestions.

I've generally not had bad experiences with Priceline hotels. Quite the contrary, some exceptional and some quite good service.

Mostly, I politely request a quiet room indicating that I need some rest (having drive xxx miles/flown xxx distance). The rooms have usually been very acceptable and no different than the rooms I would have received as a regular guest. BTW, I've logged a lot of hotel room "mileage" as a business traveler, both here and abroad, so this is not an empty comparison.

In fact, I got worse treatment as a regular paying business traveler than as a leisure traveler bidding on Priceline. Some of the most atrocious and arrogant behavior came from stays in some very big name hotels across this country, but mainly in Los Angeles and Washington DC. Maybe these were managed by people coming from the same management school as the "anonymous" hotel manager now posted to the NW? LOL!

As for being upgraded: besides being upgraded to a suite - which would rarely happen unless the hotel is truly out of vacant rooms in your category - the only significant upgrade would be to the concierge level, where you can get freebies mainly during happy hour and/or breakfast. OH, yes,there might be a separate "lounge" area where one can sit and believe oneself "superior" to all those other ninnies who can't enjoy such "privileges".

Considering that a Priceline hotel is generally 40-60% of the "regular" price (whatever THAT means), I personally can forego those freebies. In the same spirit, I generally carry into the room my own bottle of water instead of having to fork over $3.95 for their bottle.

As for Priceline, I started my first bids with a cloud of "guilt" hanging over me - like I didn't deserve to behave like this and it was something wrong. I now, happily, have gotten over the Priceline Guilt Syndrome. Think of it this way: it's a win-win situation for both parties - the hotel gets its rooms occupied and I get a savings in price. Better for the hotel to make 40-60% of its regular rate than nothing at all.

What an interesting thread.

As a business owner myself, I can say that the people who take us up on our specials often are impressed with our services, and they turn around and recommend us time and time again to their family and friends. It creates great word of mouth.

I'm not a hotel owner, but I'm sure it can't be dissimilar in the hospitality industry.

In my experience, when an employee (NOT an owner) does something contradictory to good customer service, it is due to resentment toward the owner (corp., sole proprietor, etc.) and their lack of decent pay. It rarely is due to the customer.

The desk clerks get paid the same regardless of how much you booked the room for. They are not on commission.

Management is going to have an agenda based on promoting sales, and they are going to watch expensese as much as possible...but if a major chain hotel is on such a tight budget that they only have *so many crackers* to go around, then that business is struggling due to larger issues than discounting.

My gut is that the spree of lousy customer service is not related to the booking venue. It's related to people providing lousy customer service, because people don't get promoted for doing good jobs anymore. They get promoted for brown-nosing the boss, and that's a different message board altogether so I will now shut up. ;)