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Using PriceLine to Bid for Hotel- success stories& help

I will be in NYC in June with my husband & trying to book a hotel for that week is challenging because it is soooo expensive.
as it is just the 2 of us this time (no kids) I thought I would use PriceLIne to bid for a hotel.

I went on the website last night & made a selection of 4* & 41/2* & 5* properties. The average price of the hotels is $300. What would be a fair bid. How close to the date should I bid??

I would like to know if anyone has used this & how successful was the outcome??
Does anyone have any tips/suggestions that they could give me?

Priceline can be a great option and sometimes save you a lot but sometimes very little.

For example, we're are travelling to Atlanta in early Febuary to visit our daugther and also a concert by Kings of Leon.

In Atlanta we're staying for 3 nights and I Pricelined a hotel within reasonable distance of the concert venue and got a Doubletree hotel for $53 a night plus about $5.50 in fees so about $58.50 per night. Taxes are extra but as we all know taxes have to be paid regardless of how we reserve. The best rate I found on the hotel site for the same dates, 3 nights, is $118, prepaid, non refundable rate plus taxes. In this case it's about 50% savings.

Up north in Georgia where our daughter lives we also Pricelined a hotel. We got Courtyard by Marriott for $40 a night plus ~$3.50 in fees so about $43.50 plus tax. When I checked the hotel site, same dates, it priced a room for $51, regular rate, plus taxes. We saved few bucks but it wasn't a great deal.

As a priceline regular for many of my/our trips I found that you can save a great deal or at the very least about 20%, but you really do have to do some research and make sure you can live with the result if succesful with your bid. Once your bid is accepted and your CC charged, there are no refunds.

One great site to look at is www.biddingfortravel.com You can at least get an idea of what hotels work with Priceline and what were succesful bids for certain hotels in your desired areas. No guarantees that you will get the same but at the very least you will know what's possible.

Good luck!

Good information from AAF.

Also look at www.betterbidding.com.

These sites are similar but not identical.

You will learn the basics of bidding, how to identify appropriate hotels and initial bids, how to up your bid by adding zones or stars, and a lot of information about what people got.

Price varies by location and calendar. Most big city rooms are cheaper on weekends because they are filled during the week by business travelers. How much would you have to save to make it worth moving on Friday?

There are few bargains during big events like college graduation, marathons and other big sporting events, conventions, and so forth. Outer zones might seem to offer better bargains, but what will it cost you to travel to your destinations, etc.

I have had good luck bidding several times, and use biddingfortravel.com to get an idea of how much to bid, based on others' posted winning bids. It is a good idea to reserve a hotel as a backup that can be cancelled. I think the best deals on bids are grabbed very close to the arrival date, when hotels truly need to fill rooms. My best win was $45 for an upscale downtown Houston hotel where I was actually attending an event.

Bidding takes patience and some nerve, so study up before you go for it.

I went on the website last night & made a selection of 4* & 41/2* & 5* properties. The average price of the hotels is $300. What would be a fair bid. How close to the date should I bid??
<<

The easiest answer is to start 15% below the Priceline Express or Hotwire prices for the area you wish to stay in. However if you study sites like Better Bidding, you can guess the Priceline property and often can tell you with certainty the Hotwire property.

We've saved different amounts, but I only bid up to what I think is a very good deal. I research hotels in the area so I know what's the best deal I could find for a non-Priceline rate.

Two years ago, we got the Marriott Marquis in NYC for $175 for s weekend when I couldn't find anything I wanted for less than $250.

In Atlanta, we stayed (near the Perimeter Mall) at an all suites hotel for $26 when the best I could find was $85.

I agree with reading all you can at betterbidding and bidding to travel to learn how to bid, what prices people have been getting, how to use free re-bids, etc.

You have to consider the rates being charged directly by the hotels. And prices for 4* hotels are going to be very different from those for 5* - which even in June in NYC can be $600/$700 per night and up.

If you can live with 4* (mostly business style) hotels versus 5* that will save you a couple of hundred $ per night right there.

So I suggest you make that decision up front - unless you MUST have specific 5* amenities.

Also - don;t neglect to look at other discount sites - to see if they have any very special deals for your dates.

You might want to make fully cancellable reservations first; I usually bid pretty close to the date, as that's when hotels will release/lower the price on unsold rooms.
Be wary of added on charges that Priceline doesn't include in their pricing ("resort" fees, etc. are often charged by hotels that are not resorts).
Sign up for PL now, and play with the process (try a bid of $69 for a 4* Manhattan hotel) so that you're familiar with the site.
Check Hotwire also; they don't list names, but amenities are there; if you've sussed out the hotel, you can undercut the hotwire price when you bid on PL; hotels.com is a good place to find out what's available, too (they have somewhat better prices, but you can often call hotels directly and say "will you meet/beat" a price).

BTW, don't ever accept the "if you can raise your bid to $XXX right now" priceline offer.

thanks everyone for your great suggestions & advice. I will check out the better bidding sites.

I will decide closer to our dates if I have the courage to bid. I have booked a cancelable hotel as a back up.

Hi again Millie. That is exactly my plan with a late March trip to Palm Springs. I booked a place I can live with that is cancellable, and will try my bidding luck starting about two weeks prior to arrival. I will check biddingfortravel posts showing what people are getting in Palm Springs, and base my bids on that. My thoughts on Priceline are if I can get a really good deal, it is worth the effort. Otherwise, I will just go with the known factor.

IF you get stuck with a bid win on either Priceline or Hotwire or any other prepaid hotel room there is now a website that helps you resell your room. I read about it in the NY Times. It is also worth a look see if you need a room to buy.

http://roomtraveler.com/

Excellent DebitNM...i will definately check that out.

First of all, you're not trying to truly save money when using Priceline. If instead you go into it with a realistic plan to upgrade your digs for something near to the price you would have paid had you done it alone, then it makes more sense.

(that last part can include landing yourself in a Manhattan neighborhood you wouldn't likely have been able to otherwise afford) (Maximizing your value for your hotel dollar)

The fact that it is just the two of you gives you lots of (bidding) freedom you really don't have with a larger group/family.

Also, while you can pick the general (broad) area in which your room will be, it is crazy to use Priceline's bidding system when you need to be in a pinpointed neighborhood.

With that said, I love Priceline, and have landed rooms with Priceline bids dozens upon dozens of times (most for friends, using their credit card data).

The lady who runs biddingfortravel.com is just terrible... but there is some useful written understanding there (along with some reviews from 2002). There is nothing at all which justifies registering to that site to interact with the (lady). Just take advantage of the minimal amount of useful info the site can offer, and then don't give her anything in return.

Ultimately, your task requires patience, and discipline, along with mastering the free rebid art.

Scan one of the aforementioned travel websites for lists of actual rooms scored on Priceline for the area you're going to be in, and from that you can gen-er-al-ly sense in what price range you're likely to land.

Show the patience to start low and then inch-up your bids, using the free rebids applicable to your area of interest.

Sometimes this involves charting what you've done, and then running out of options on one bidding day, before waiting 24 hours to bid again with a clean slate and likely inching-up your bidding amounts relative to what you've already tried and missed on.

All you need to do is get a "yes" once, from having done the procedure correctly, so don't get impatient, and don't bid more money than necessary.

You could start bidding anytime, but the sooner you begin, the more patience and discipline make sense.

Read-up on how Priceline gets its rooms... (from projections done by hotel managers, who try to anticipate how full they will be on certain dates) (perhaps not too many hotels in some areas are contemplating June enough yet to make a bold investment in anticipating correctly - where others may have a different strategy, and may indeed have rooms available to Priceline customers already).

If, say, for a room needed on June 15... the hotel management begins to have a strong sense for reservations by May 1, then they might already release X number of rooms to Priceline.

You too, are betting a little bit, that the whole area won't be reserved full, and thus will have zero rooms available for Priceline.

Indeed it doesn't cost you anything but time for a patient exercise in attempting to know great value for your hotel dollar.

I have on many dozen occasions bid for Priceline rooms on the very day I (or somebody else) needed one, and have been very content with what I got about 80% of the time.

(in all honesty, I have never had a Priceline horror story, but that comes more from knowing the ropes than anything else)

I've never even encountered a situation where the bid I offered was more or the same as the cost would have otherwise been. (some situations find you not saving as much as others)

(crazy statement: IF, say, all of the best rooms in a certain area had the same $300 rack rate and I were bidding for the middle of June in NYC... I would generally HOPE to land something for a $180 base rate (per night) on Priceline. Now it may be true that I wouldn't have a prayer of that... depending upon how full the area is at the designated time, but when looking forward 5 months out, that would be my initial hope {meaning: IF I could book for $180 per night right now - I'd accept it and the certainty I could know with it} )

I have had quite a bit of luck with Priceline and know I have saved quite a bit!!! Sometimes it does not make sense....as in when there is a chance anything can change......it can be a bit confusing with the free re-bids, etc.....I am not so into it that I have much patience to figure all that out so recently, I have been using www.biddingtraveler.com and it made it soooo much simpler. It submits a range of bids for you, tells you what others have bid and been rejected or accepted and when. It figures out your free re bid zones...suggests recommended low ball bid and also the top limit you should bid.

Very very helpful.

PL success in NYC at busy times like June is most likely for just a few mights. I dont see you mention how many nights you're here, but that will likely affect your success. Hotwire can sometimes give you an idea of what you might get on PL (betterbidding.com has hotel lists for both).

Wow NorthWestMale - that was very comprehensive & helped me to understand the bidding process a bit better.

we are wanting to stay for 7 nights. so maybe that could work against us.

thank you everyone for your help.

You can change hotels mid- trip.

Bid on one hotel for everything from the Cloisters to mid-town, bid on another for downtown, the Village, WTC, Statue of Liberty.

As mentioned above, you are more likely to get a good rate on short stays, and if you find yourself in a hotel, room or neighborhood you don't like, you are only there for a few nights.

I wouldnt say 'shorter' stays, as it depends on the hotel. Ive locked up 4*s in STL for 10 days for sub $55, so its timong. A good example of short stay deals, business hotels will often accept bids 75% below rack for weekends. So breaking up Fri Sat Sun at prime districts and extra days in an outer district might be an option. Use the Priceline Express numbers has barometers. Use the reverse at resort locals. Say you land in So Florida Saturday night for the week, hotwire or PL a 3* first night then move over to your $300 midweek night resort and avoid the $450 the first night

Frank, you cant compare NYC to any other city re PL, although it is true that separing weekend and weekday could yield better results. Hotels in the financial district in NYC are often good buys on weekends. The other option is staying a short subway ride outside Manhattan. Long Island City and downtown Brooklyn have become good alternatives. Millie, what are your dat and target nightly budget?

Another good tip is to watch the Better Bidding win list. Sometimes major chains will offer deals throughout their network throughout the calender. Ive been very fortunate to book several Westins(most often get SPG credit) at staggered intervals just to find all those deals gone a few weeks later

NorthwestMale pretty much nailed it. I don't think it was mentioned previously, but you are probably bidding way too early for New York in June. I seem to recall that NYC is one of those cities in which the best deals are last minute ones.

In addition to Priceline, sign up for Travelzoo and Jetsetter--New York hotel deals come up on those sites frequently.

I LOVE Priceline and have gotten some great deals with them over the years--once you have a winning bid that's a great deal at an awesome hotel, you'll be hooked!

And yeah, the only thing I never touched upon is how laughable are those who use and adore Priceline and then grumble that the hotel treated them like "Priceline scum".

It's OK to beeeeeeeeeee Priceline scum when you're looking at your 40-70% savings from the rack rate, in some Priceline situations. In all honesty, while I might not have had the room with the best view when the places were full, I've never had an instance of being truly mistreated for my having booked through Priceline.

I look at Priceline as a means through which the more expensive hotels have a legitimate shot at (your dad) when he would cart the family into various towns on vacation, and then have everybody search for the red "Vacancy" sign late at night. And that's fine (for all sides).

(*** Dad really wasn't going to pay anymore than he typically did - he was just likely to land in better digs for his hotel dollar)

and Millie:

With a window of "7 nights" you may (because you offer them 7 "room nights" {vs. Priceline's more typical night or three} find them more inclined to accept your bid), or you may find your {week-long} bids repeatedly stuck/rejected because of one particular date among your 7 where all rooms are full (and nobody has anything left to give Priceline).

It is very easy to break-up your stay across two hotels, perhaps checking out of one on the morning of a day when some big shindig is scheduled nearby to that one... and into another hotel a way down the street (perhaps for the remainder of your stay, or perhaps just for the one or two challenging nights).

Have to admit that such a picture looks better to those who know what they're doing and who are very familiar with the Priceline layout.

As for the immediate future, because you ARE wanting to bid for a full 7 days, your business might be enough of a plum to find a place accepting you for 7 days so far in advance. But by all means, toward that end, start LOW and just inch-up your bids.

I just now looked at the Priceline website, to see the various "zones" offered there.

Let me say that the first operation anybody should DO upon going to Priceline with serious interest in getting a room now/today (for a future stay, I mean) is to list ALL of the zones in the town/city of interest. THEN, you go ONE-by-one through them, as if you were ONLY going to stay in THAT zone. Write down the HIGHEST hotel class for each zone remembering to UN-CLICK the previous zone, so you get a clear read!!!!!!

In NYC as of right NOW... zones #8 and #13 do not have 4-star hotels contained within them. That means they are "free-rebid zones" for persons trying for 4-star hotels in any other zone. (definition: Because Priceline requires that you change something about your original bid before bidding again, you would then add this impossible zone, which would not affect your original bid at all - they can't give you a 4-star hotel when none exists in zone #8)

(for the most part, that isn't a comfort relative to other cities, which tend to have many MORE free-rebid zones. However, perhaps NYC has more areas in which you would consent to STAY - which partly makes up for it )

(Then it is very wise to familiarize yourself with the "rack rate" among LOTS of the hotels in your targeted area - if, for example, some spot is having a giant special of $150 a night that week, YOU certainly don't want to pay $180 a night and the Priceline fees)

So, for further example, IF in New York I would consent to stay most anywhere in zones #2, #11, #12, or #16, I guess I'd list those in my head in order of preference (maybe 16-2-12-11), then I would add the aforementioned "free-rebid zones" (#8 and #13).

Maybe with my $180 (dream??), I might start this far in advance bidding $150 (base rate) for 7 nights as my very first bid, then maybe boost up the bid $5 worth while adding my 2nd choice zone, my 3rd choice zone, my 4th choice zone, then my first free-rebid zone and then my second free-rebid zone.

IF my wishes were heavily centered on staying in ONE particular zone, then I'd alter the order in which I did my bidding, using the free-rebid zones before my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th preference zones. Not that it would make that must difference as decribed, but maybe.

Hopefully though, your NYC lodging needs are flexible, and afford you a vast swath of real estate from which you might pluck a 4-star hotel at an affordable price.

Hope this helps paint a clearer picture.

PS - Oh yeah, I never even THOUGHT about the could-be added convenience to relocating yourselves mid-week, for the specific purpose of placing yourself nearer to new and different attractions (perhaps having a positive impact on your transportation budget in the process). And yeah, I know it is "traditional" to drop your bags and accumulate all of your souvenirs in one room, for a week.

Good luck

Wow, I just... looked at somebody's offered biddingtraveler.com... just to see what it was about...

and I can promise you, Millie, that the Priceline bidding process is METHODICAL, and LOGICAL all the way through... so a computerized system LIKE that is likely to work.

I remain a tad fearful of the unknown, but I know that the approach should be very suitable to a logic-based program. (though I'd love to see data for all hotels won that way, to see if the amounts were near the center of the offered ranges, and not near the TOP of the offered ranges)

Best way to utilize something like that is to reduce your bids even further as you test it out.

If the rack rates were $300, and I was hoping for $180, and willing to pay $210 (plus priceline fees), and starting my bidding at $150... I probably wouldn't complain if I landed a room at $140 when merely experimenting

A few other suggestions. The Hudson Hotel, which is right at Columbus Circle has specials. The prices generally increase as you get closer to the date.
Also, you can get a great apartment on www.airbnb.com. I checked and found a penthouse overlooking the river for a little under $200 a night.

thanks everyone. I will definately have a go bidding closer to June.
enjoyinglife - thanks for the info on the Hudson HOtel, which i will definately look into. However, I am a bit worried about going down the airbnb path as I understand it is illegal in NYC.

Almost all apartment rentals for less than 30 days are ILLEGAL in NYC and many of them are scams.

enjoyinglife: >>Also, you can get a great apartment on www.airbnb.com. I checked and found a penthouse overlooking the river for a little under $200 a night.<<

Please don't encourage folks to look for short term apartments in NY since about 99.7% of them are illegal.

Agreed - unless the owner is still stayin in the apt this is definitely illegal - if it isn't a scam. (Air BnB knows this and continues to allow these illegal istings.)

The only way this is legal is if 1) it is in a room/rooms in a privately owned family home (VERY few of these in Manhattan) or if the owner stays in the apt with you - and the landlord or co-op/condo rules allow it - most don't).

I wouldn't want to risk the chance of getting there and not having a place to stay.