How does priceline work?
 

Please excuse my ignorance - don't really have Priceline in South Africa

I will be in New York for 10 days in June and would like to stay near Time Square - stayed at Milford Plaza last time - great location but thats about it. Anyway, have seen Priceline mentioned a lot on this forum and I know to select 4* hotels and click Midtown West section right? But how does the price thing work? Do i put my own price and what price should I put - don't want to be silly, but your dollar makes our Rand tremble in its wallet

Thanks so much for any advice

Capetown, it will be nearly impossible to get a 10 day stay in Manhattan in one bid. You'll have to split the bid into two or three bids and take the chance that you may have to move hotels two or three times.

Go to www.BiddingforTravel.com and www.BetterBidding.com and spend a couple of hours reading.

There are NO shortcuts to getting a good deal on priceline. You must put in the time to read but you will end up saving hundreds to thousands of dollars on your stay.

First, go to biddingfortravel.com and look up hotels that come up as 4* Midtown West; then look at recent winning bids to find out what people have been paying for.

Not that there are 12 hotels listed on biddingfortravel.com for MTW 4* as potential winning hotels. Check each one of them and see what their prices are for the nights you want, and also make sure <b>all of them</b> are acceptable hotels to you, by finding out more information on Tripadvisor or elsewhere.

Now, after finding out how much those hotels are asking for, what people have been getting them on Priceline, and deciding on your own budget, you need to set a <b>maximum bid</b> for yourself, and a realistic <b>opening bid</b> that you really hope to get. Also realize the final cost is higher because of tax and fees. Do a mock bidding on Priceline, but don't actually bid, and you'll see what the taxes are.

Okay, say your maximum is $180, and you really hope to get it for $150.

Now, because there are two zones in NYC that don't have 4* - Upper East Side and Upper West Side - you get two &quot;free rebids&quot;, without having to wait 24 hours to place the same bid again. Go place a bid for MTW for $150. If you don't get it, place another bid MTW plus UES for something between $150 and $180 - say $165. If you don't get it, add UWS too - for $180. [What I described is the simple version - you can technically also bid for MTW + UWS, but you need to start the brand new bid to do it.]

Now, if you still can't get it for $180, which is your maximum, you need to wait 24 hours and do it all over again.

GoTravel is absolutely right that it's hard to get a 10-day bid. Break it up.

You guys are the best!

I will see how best to split it up and do the reading. I also noticed that if you type in a close date - say end March you get much cheaper quotes on their hotel list than if you enter mid June - obviously the closer to the travel date the better the bid. However, to get American visas you have to book your hotel well in advance

10pm here now so will log back on in the morning and see what has developed

No, bidding closer to the date doesn't get you a better price. You could get the best deal the day before or 3 months before - it's hard to tell. Priceline gets new hotel inventory all the time, based on the hotels' need to fill rooms.

If you are seeing prices, then you are using Priceline's conventional travel site, not the &quot;Name Your Own Price&quot; service where you can save a lot of money. You aren't going to save anything using Priceline's conventional booking site - no better than Travelocity or Expedia. With &quot;Name Your Own Price&quot; you have to offer a price and then it is either accepted or not - and then you find out the hotel name...

And by the way, hotel prices in Mannhattan in March are likely to be way cheaper than in June - that's probably why you thought it was cheaper to bid now.

In case you don't know this already, Priceline will charge your credit card immediately when they accept your bid - before you know what you get.

There's no refund, no cancellation, and in most cases you can't dispute whether a hotel is in the right star level or not. [That's why you need to check ALL hotels that have been reported; still Priceline can add hotels to their own list, so your hotel may not have been reported on biddingfortravel.com.] If you can't go or don't like the hotel, you won't get anything back.

If I were looking for a 10 day hotel stay on PL, I would <i>give it a try</i> instead of assuming that a 10 day bid wouldn't work. I'm not saying that it <i>will</i> work, but if it doesn't, you don't lose anything.

With PL, I have sometimes been pleasantly surprised with a positive response to what I considered a low bid.

I'm sure we would all be interested to read what happened with your PL experience.((*))

Thanks everyone
I am now going to spend some time reading bidding for travel and taking a note of all your very valuable points.

So the bottom line is I do not need to wait til just before I leave to get the best price, I can get that now.

One last question - if i bid at a higher/ more reasonable price of say $220, will tah tensure I get a &quot;better&quot; 4* hotel or does it not make a difference - how do priceline decide what to give to whom?

Bidding higher than necessary will not get you a better hotel. Just more profit for PL and whichever hotel accepts your bid.

Before you invest a lot of time and effort in learning the ropes and researching Priceline, make sure that you have a credit card that works with them; they can be fussy about accepting non-US credit cards.

NO! A higher bid will not get you a better hotel.

Again, this is covered at the two websites I named. You must spend time reading.

Also, do not bid if you need a room for more than two people.

My suggestion is: do NOT bid for ten days at a higher price.

The whole point of bidding on priceline is to get a rock bottom price for a good hotel, so bidding higher defeats that purpose. You might as well shop around and find a discounted price which you can cancel, instead of bidding on priceline and paying in advance for a hotel room that you may not use. Once you win on Priceline, you cannot cancel, your money is spent the moment you win the bid, so spend your money wisely. Make sure that what you are bidding on is exactly what you want.

If you bid on priceline, you are guaranteed a certain star level of hotel, not a particular hotel in that star category. This is where research comes in, because NY MTW shows 12 different hotels at the 4* level. If you bid 4* MTW, you will get one of these hotels, but you won't know which one until you've won your bid.

At the moment, looking at 4* MTW winning bids on biddingfortravel.com, the least expensive is a $150 that won recently. I'd take that as a guideline - you could realistically get a room for $150 a night, 4* MTW. You may not get it on your first bid or even your third bid, but you have lots of time.

Last year, I was bidding 4* MTW and got the Hilton for $110.

On the other hand, 4* MTE (mid town EAST) is showing the Hyatt for a winning bid of $130 at the moment.

Rates vary with availability.

The tendency is to want to &quot;try your hand&quot; at priceline and to start bidding immediately. Everyone on this board has so far advised you: DON'T. Not until you've done a lot of research and know exactly what you are doing and are 100% certain of the dates and the location.

You have a good chance of getting a 4* MTW/MTE for about $150 a night. You'll probably have to divide up your ten days - 3, 3, 4 or even 2, 3, 3, 2.

Good luck! and best of research to you! :)

&lt;&quot;&quot;At the moment, looking at 4* MTW winning bids on biddingfortravel.com, the least expensive is a $150 that won recently. I'd take that as a guideline - you could realistically get a room for $150 a night, 4* MTW. You may not get it on your first bid or even your third bid, but you have lots of time.&quot;&quot;&gt;

easy, the above is not true for a couple of reasons; we don't know capetown's dates in June and we don't know what event may be happening over capetown's dates to drive rates up significantly.

This is why you must do your homework for priceline.

A $150 bid is a waste of time if hotel's rates are $500 per night and a waste of money if hotels are $175 per night.

I suggested above that you should try at first for the whole 10 days. I should add that if you do, you should start at a low bid, and not go higher than the usual successful bid. You will lose nothing by trying, and can see how it works.

I have heard that the most common mistake a PL novice does is bid too high <i>at first</i> in his/her zeal to get a room. ((*))

Rates don;t vary by how close you are to the date - they vary by how busy the city is. March is still fairly low season, while June is more mid season. You will have to expect to pay significantly more in June than you would in Feb/March - though not as much as Nov/Dec (when Priceline often has very little to offer since hotels are full).

Just be VERY sure that you can live with ANY of the hotels that are listed in your area - since once you bid the money is gone - not matter what you may hate about the hotel.

Hi all
8.30pm here and a very hot evening.
Have been home since 3pm and reading your web links pretty much since then!! Finding the bid to travel site a little frustrating as so many things I click on say site not available but if I click refresh they sometimes come up - oh well

I have learnt a lot. Here is my current thinking:
Could be a good idea to bid for a 10 day booking - got nothing to lose.
We are in NY as follows: arrive 16 June - fly to London 26 June

I have spent hours trawling the discount web sites and coming up with very average 3* hotels at $240 incl (Milford Plaza - yuck) to $270 incl (Warwick), so any 4* hotel coming in at even $200 has got to be better than I'm getting now. Maybe I should try booking 10 days at $180 and see what happens - I have checked out all the hotels and they are all fine/ better than the Milford
Good point about the credit card which I also picked up from the bid travel site - they sem to like Am Ex. Also had fun with the address bit on Priceline - I decided that Cape Town is in Florida!!
OK - going to try now and will let you all know

Rejected - can you believe it a nice girl like me!!
went in at $160 for 10 nights MTW - no good. Then included MTE and upped it to $180 - still no good, so left the page with my tail between my legs and ran back to you guys.
By the way, other than MTW where I want to be and MTE a compromise, what else would I have ticked as a third choice?
Think I shall wait a few weeks and try again and also try splitting up the dates
Thanks for all the input - keep the comments coming - this is proving to be an intersting posting

apologies rkkwan - just read your advice againa nd you did give me the excellent tip of bidding UES and EWS as my other 2 bids - thanks a lot - great advice

I did not have any luck with getting Priceline for 7 or for 10 days in D.C. or in NYC. I don't think availability ever becomes that open for that length of time, IMHO. Just my opinion, but you can't hurt to keep trying.

Nice girl at capetown: Brava! Good try! And keep trying. You have plenty of time, don't panic or feel discouraged if you don't get it right away. June is still far away and hotels may not have given any June rooms to Priceline as yet.

Another suggestion: don't wait a few weeks for your next try. The time allowance to wait is 24 hours. Try again after your 24 hour period is over and rebid the same bids - BUT break up the days. Getting a block of 10 days is really trying to stretch your luck.

Think of it from the hotel management point of view. Say, at the beginning of April you look at your reservations for June and you see zero! Heavens! Time to release a few rooms for a few days to Priceline! But, would you release rooms for two/three days, a week, or ten days? You'd probably release for a week at most - thus, when someone tries for a block of 10 days, it's almost impossible for Priceline to fulfil that long a stretch because the hotels just haven't released that many rooms to Priceline, especially in June.

Thus, break it up. e.g. for 8 days last year, I broke it up 3-2-3 because of a weekend (yes, weekend rates can be lower than weekday rates, so if you broke it up for a 3-day Friday-Monday stretch, you could get a better rate for those three days than for midweek).

I just went into Priceline and put in your dates for the regular discount that they offer. The lowest price was $309 for MTW. Another way to realistically gauge what price to bid is to take that lowest &quot;regular&quot; discount price for the dates that you want and then multiple it by 60%. This yields $185, so you are well within the ballpark of what price to bid.

My own rule of thumb, when bidding, is not to go above 60% of the &quot;regular&quot; discount rate.

Keep trying! And let us know how you do! :)

I agree with the suggestion to split up your stay and try separate bids at some point if you don't succeed with all 10 days in one block. It seems rare in my experience to get a block of all 10 days from one hotel with Priceline. I suggest you give yourself a time limit and then split up your Priceline bids. In the meantime, book a backup hotel now that you can cancel later if you succeed with Priceline.

easytraveler,
you said you broke up your bids last year into 3-2-3... did you end up having to switch hotels? And it sounds like 7 nights might be too many to get in one chunk?

capetownfolk - it's fun, isn't it? Wait until you &quot;win&quot; a bid - it's a great feeling know you saved all that money.

Good morning - 8am here and a beautiful day, flat sea, blue sky, cool breeze
My ideas now run like this:
1. Bid for 3 nights - In Sat, out Tues
2. Bid for 3 nights - In Tues, out Fri
3. Bid for 3 nights - In Fri, out Mon
4. Bid for 1 night near JFK for Mon night
My logic with this plan is that I could get the benefit of 2 low weekend rates, and 1 higher mid week rate.
My Tuesday flight to London leaves at 8am, and I think trying to get across town so early in the day might stress me out.
Any suggestions on the easiest most pleasnat hotel at/near JFK for 1 night or must i post a seperate question?
Again, thanks for all the advice

&quot;Good point about the credit card which I also picked up from the bid travel site - they sem to like Am Ex. Also had fun with the address bit on Priceline - I decided that Cape Town is in Florida!!&quot;

I'm not sure you understood the point I was making above. Even though you are pretending that you live in Florida, when you bid if you are using a credit card that was not issued to a US resident, Priceline might not accept it.

Reading the FAQs on the travel bid advice sites, one point is that priceline is open to anyone in the world and several &quot;overseas&quot; bidders advised to use Am Ex as they did for their successful bids - so I am going with that too
Also I spent 5 weeks in Florida this December and my Am Ex card was acepted everywhere - booking car hire, hotels etc both from S Africa and whilst in Florida and not one problem, so hope to be ok in this case too

Gosh, did you pick an expensive time to visit. #-O Okay, you MUST book something cancelable now as a back up (that you may have to use). I've trawled through quikbook.com, kayak.com and www.affinia.com (a group of 7 all suite hotels that are well regarded) and the best things I see are:

&gt;The Washington Square Hotel (in Greenwich Village right at Washington Square park) for $215/night found thru Kayak.com but available at this price on the hotel's own site washingtonsquarehotel.com
The only problem is it's for a room with 2 twin beds. Don't know if that's all they have left or not. If you're interested, email them about it. The hotel is a lovely European style hotel in a great location.
washingtonsquarehotel.com

&gt;The Best Western President-an ok budget hotel in the Times Square area (I think better than the Milford) for $210/night

&gt;Holiday Inn midtown on 57th st. for $230/night. Great location near Central Park, ok hotel with decent sized rooms.

&gt;the Beekman Towers (Affinia hotel) a studio suite-their cheapest price (avg $236/night is non-cancelable but there's a higher rate that is) Nice older hotel in midtown east near the UN.

For a 10 night stay, why wouldn't you consider an apartment or an apartment/hotel? More space, a small kitchen. The Beekman Towers is one. But maybe you should contact the London based Agency www.apartments2book.com and see what they have to offer you and at what price. YOu could be pleasantly surprised. They're reputable and have contracts with many of the apt/hotels.

Now turning to your Priceline bidding, why don't you get the moderators on the bidding websites to help you construct a bid? They do it every day.

Your assumption about cheap weekend rates may not be accurate. Cheap weekend rates tend to occur in business areas (ie the financial district downtown) rather than midtown hotels.

You should consider any of the areas with the word &quot;midtown&quot; in the name which would add upper midtown/Central Park South and midtown South. But I prefer to make separate bids for different areas since some are pricier than others. Midtown west is more expensive area (not b/c it's better, imo, but b/c everyone wants to stay there) than MTE. If you bid MTW and MTE together, you could wind up overpaying for a MTE win. If you look at the prices people are &quot;winning&quot; I think upper midtown/CPS is most expensive (Parker Meridien is most likely win), then MTW (Hiltons, Sofitel(!), MTE (usually the Hyatt), MTS (rarely won but the Morgan or 70 Park are both good).

1- I second mclaurie's suggestion to put your situation on PL topics under NYC. <b>FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS</b> if you don't want to be yelled at.

2- For a hotel near JFK - Go to..... ;;)PRICELINE;;)

Jed, Sheryl hasn't been seen for months on BFT so I wouldn't worry too much these days about getting yelled at there. In fact, BFT isn't well supported anymore. I'd consider BetterBidding.com now as an alternative just because there is a moderator there actively supporting all the groups. BFT is now supported mostly by the other users.

Recommend playing with your dates on Hotwire and referring to Betterbidding.com to determine hotels offered. You'll get rates for all ten nights at a variety of places, but you might get even better rates if you split up your dates. Or, you could economize part of the trip and move to a nicer place for the rest.

I agree that you should book the best room you can find (and cancel) forthwith.

Check Quikbook.

I'm an avid Priceline user, but deals for NYC are not what they used to be and there is nearly no participation on BiddingForTravel these days.

Still, you never know, and once you've booked something you can cancel, you can try Priceline off and on.

The only way to answer some of your questions is to actually play around with the dates and prices.

Here's what I did on priceline:

1) 6/16/07-6/18/07 (Sat-Mon) and got the Sheraton for $259 at the &quot;regular&quot; Priceline discount. 60% of that comes to $155.

2) 6/16/07 - 6/19/07 (Sat-Tues) and got the Hotel Mela for $309. 60% comes to $185.

So, if you are willing to do the Friday - Monday weekend rate, you will get a room for about $155. But if you must add on Tuesday, then you will be able to get a room for a bid of $185/night.

3)For the rest of the week 06/18/07 to 06/22/07, the best rate was $309 for the Hotel Mela. Which again comes to about $185 a night.

4)For the second weekend 06/22/07 to 06/25/07 came up with a discount rate of $245. 60% is $147 for the Grant Hyatt, MTE.

5)For the last night 06/25-06/26, I found $199 for the Doubletree at JFK. 60% of that comes to $119.

If you were to bid right now, I'd guess that you will have to move three or four times. Sheraton - Hotel Mela - Grand Hyatt-Doubletree. You could get the Hotel Mela for one or both weekends as well, which will reduce the number of times you will have to move.

Check out the Hotel Mela on tripadvisor.com. It appears that the location is ideal, but the rooms are miniscule. It seems to be a new hotel, so is clean.

Renting an apartment is a good idea, but I don't know anything about apartments in New York, e.g., how would you check on the quality of the apartment you will be getting. Last year there was a thread on this board about one person's horrible experiences with an apartment in New York that he had booked through Expedia.

Well, good luck and hope this helps! :)

I think it would be a mistake to assume &quot;regular&quot; Priceline rates have anything to do with bidding availability.

I've often gotten rooms bidding for 5-10 nights when availability did not show up with regular rates or the packages (and I often shop the packages to determine what hotels may be available bidding with Priceline for my dates).

The better bet is probably to check availability for all your dates at hotels that regularly come up on winning bids (or check the hotel list, though many haven't come up in quite a while), and calculate the average rate over your stay. Determine the Priceline zone for each hotel, start at 40% of the lowest rate and add $5-10 for each additional zone (you've determined is suitable for you) with the same star level or less until you've run out of zones.

Morning all
Going to try Priceline again now with all the added advice - I will split up the dates as per easytraveller. I also found betterbidding an easier more helpful site than bidding for travel
On the subject of sites - all weekend we have had problems with US sites coming up &quot;page not available&quot; and then reappearing when you click refresh. Don't think it our internet connectivity as I got someone else in C Town to try and her had the same problem - this is all sites from Expedia, to Grayline bus and especially Priceline - has anything changed over there?
Will let you know how my bidding goes. Not very hopeful with your prices Easytraveller as I went up to $200 yesterday on split up dates - way above the $155 suggested, but no harm in trying

Rejected again - can you believe it!!
All the way up to $201 for weekend o 16-18 June
Tomorrow I will book/ reserve a hotel room as suggested that i can canel, but keep bidding on and off - i will keep you all posted.

In the meantime I will look into an apartment at the Manhttan Club - I have read previous postings on this site and trip advisor and it is an option. Where will i get a good price -expedia?

Again, check rates on Hotwire and refer to Betterbidding.com for probable properties.

And, if you shop your dates on Quikbook, you'll see a pattern - some are higher weekends, others weeknights, others static.

CApetown: Not to worry.

This is a weekend. The hotel managers are probably in bed, unlike me (suffering a hayfever attack!).

Try again, Monday and Tuesday New York time.

On making reservations, personally I use Travelocity a lot. I checked Travelocity for your dates and came up with:

6/16/-6/18 Doubletree Metropolitan $197

6/16/-6/22 Hotel Mela $278

6/22 - 6/25 Doubletree Metropolitan $206

These were all at the Travelocity 4* level. Those are really good prices, especially for the Doubletree which is a Hilton chain hotel.

I'd suggest that you use some of the other websites that have been mentioned and see if you can get better rates, especially during the week.

Again, good luck! :)

Poor you Easytraveller - hay fever is not nice - try a hot shower.
Stunning day here again and I am going to get off this site - it is very addictive!

I think i need to now spend some time planning the trip and not worrying about accomodation, after all I can always fall back on the Milford! ha ha! Besides, in NY we only need somewhere to crash as we will be playing out all the time.

It's actually going to be a challenging trip in that the first 5 days are spent with my best friend - we have been to NY many times, yet have not done many of the &quot;tourist&quot; things eg Statue of Liberty etc, so this time we want to do them. BUT, and here's the rub, half way through the trip, best friend leaves and teenage daughter arrives, and she has never been to NY before so she wants to do all the &quot;tourist&quot; things - how on earth do I avoid the Statue of Liberty twice!!
I know - sunset cocktail cruise with girlfriend, and day time cruise a few days later with daughter
Bye for now, will check in again

I think it's really unlikely you're going to get a Priceline bid accepted now for June unless you really overbid and even then, maybe not. Have you booked something cancelable yet? Hate to be a nag, but you gotta do it. I'll also repeat you should be talking to the moderator on betterbidding.com who's the expert. ;)

Saturday check ins can be difficult to get on Priceline as well. If you try to break it up do so that you check in mid week and you may have better luck.
Also worth a shot is bidding on less days and calling the hotel to see if you can add dates...you also have the option sometimes after a winning bid on Priceline itself.
I have had luck adding extra days through the hotel itself and its certainly worth a shot!
Good luck!