Priceline advice please!!!

[drrich]

I have never used the service before. We are looking for one night prior to our cruise in Feb '05.

I have made offers of over 100.00 for both four star and three star hotels in the Fort Laurderdale beach area which were both rejected. Now apparantly I have to wait 72 hours before trying another bid.

Some have said they paid well under 100/night for these hotels. My questions are this:

- Should I wait until closer to the date of arrival (Feb) to try for a room?
- Is there any way to guarantee a specific hotel?
- What other tips can you give me?

Also note, I checked hotwire because of some positive threads I read, but that was worse. They give you a price (about 160/night), and if you accept the price, they tell you which hotel has agreed to the price.

Please don't get the wrong idea; I'm sure these hotels are worth 160/night, and I wouldn't mind if Fort Laurderdale was my destination for a week (We're paying 500/night at Disney in May). I'm looking for a bargain price at a nice hotel near the port to sleep for one night.

Thank you,

Rich

[FlorenceItaly]

resource, but 2 sites you must visit before bidding is. These sites are a wealth of information:

biddingfun.com
biddingfortravel.com

Marie

[sail7seas]

Burbunny is the absolute expert at that sort of bidding but she hasn't posted lately. Maybe she will see your questions and will respond....

[bonnyweed]

before you bid. The best bargains are to be had about 30 days (or less) prior to your stay. Book something now that you can cancel if you have luck with Priceline....this is your back-up. In the meantime go to www.biddingfortravel.com and read,read,read in the hotel section. Don't ask them for advice with a bidding strategy until you have read the entire section about hotels. Also, their great feature is that you can read about prices other people have paid for their successful bids in the area you are visiting.
One hour (or two) of your time invested in reading and understanding the bidding strategy will let you pay peanuts for great hotels for the rest of your life. I always book through Priceline and have saved $$$$$. Be aware that you don't know the name of the hotel until after your bid is accepted. However, you will have already specified the location of the hotel and the quality-level. Happy bidding!

[jimmy2x]

Bonnyweed – agree with your answer, except it is our experience that the best pricing is early on. This may be do to the fact that we always go in high season when the hotels tend to fill up. We booked via Priceline about three months ago for Feb 26 & 27 and got the Marriot Marina for about $70/night. Recent postings indicate that the price has gone up considerably.



I have noted that many times CC members will post the amount that they got the hotel for, without indicating the date. This can give a first-timer a false impression of what they can expect to pay. Certainly the hotels are considerably less expensive in the off season and late bookers may indeed get good deals for that time period.



Priceline is really a good deal – have never been disappointed and even used them last May for a NYC weekend stay.

[drrich]

Thank you all for your advice. I'll start reading now!

Rich

[Swice]

Remember the hotel may have a group or meeting that day and less available inventory.

One night a room at a hotel could be $250... the next night that same room could be $80. It just depends on how full the property is.

[peaches from georgia]

And February is high season in south Florida. What may be a high price the rest of the year can be a bargain in Feb.

[Pilot70D]

Here is part of a message I posted here about a month ago. This covers a lot of Priceline basics.

************************************************** *******
OK, now let's talk about a bididng startegy when using Priceline. Priceline 101 (so to speak). Priceline divides metropolitan cities into geographic areas and then let's you bid on a hotel in a specific area or at your option multiple areas simultaneously. Priceline also assigns hotels into catgories based on amenities, level of service, quality of furnishings and so forth. Their categories range from 1* to 4* and resort.

The basic mechanics of Priceline bid work something like this. You select an area and a category of hotel based on your preferences. You then tell Priceline how much you're willing to pay. Priceline will then search it's database of available properties. If the bid price is acceptible Priceline will immediately bill your credit card and make a reservation at a specific hotel in your name. The catch is what happens in case your bid is NOT accepted. You can't simply increase your bid amount while leaving everything else the same unless you wait for 72 hours.

With this in mind there are strategies you can pursue that will help get the type of hotel you want. First, start your bidding process by selecting the 4* category of hotels only. If you select 3* Priceline will automatically select 3* AND 4* categories for bid purposes. One strategy is to bid a low but reasonable price on the four star category. If not accepted then you can submit another bid immediately for the same dollar amount (or greater amount at your choice) by selecting 3* and 4* hotels.

Another strategy is to add another geographic area. Let's say you submitted a bid for a 3* hotel in the downtown area for $50 and the bid is not accepted. Priceline will already have automatically selected 3* and 4* categories so you can't raise just the dollar amount of your bid. What you can do is to include an additional area which has no hotels above 2 1/2* and then increase your bid amount and resubmit your bid immediately.

Priceline has 9 areas for Ft. Lauderdale. The areas with their highest rating category wise are as follows:
Coral Springs 3*
Downtown 4*
Airport 3*
Ft. Lauderdale Beach 4*
Ft. Lauderdale North 4*
Hollywood 4*
Miramar 2.5*
Pompano 2.5*
West Ft. Lauderdale 4*

Once again using our example above you could add the Miramar or the Pompano area to your bid criteria, leave the category of hotels alone and immediately resubmit your bid with an increased dollar amount. Note that Priceline will never search for a hotel in a LOWER category than you selected.

Just a quick word about Priceline and hotels. Priceline negotiates contracts with many different hotels in all of the categories. In the contract there is a price which Priceline and the hotels agree to. Rarely will Priceline sell a room to you at price below this negotiated rate but it does happen ever so often. Furthermore hotels release additional inventory to Priceline on an unscheduled basis whenever the hotels have a slack booking period. There is no predictability but the bottom line is that your bid which may have been rejected today may be accepted at sometime in the future without changing anything.

Another thing to consider is selecting an area a little fruther from the port. In these areas the hotels go for a much lower rate for the same star category of accomodations. For instance we just bid on 3* hotels in the Ft. Lauderdale North area for $40 and on a date very near yours. Our bid was accepted by the Marriott. Admittedly we will have a rental car so the slight additional distance to Port Everglade is of no consequence. It is something to consider.

I hope this information proves helpful. If you have other questions my email address is Pilot70D@yahoo.com.

Everyone have a great day out there.

[Pilot70D]

The earlier thread I mentioned contains a lot of valuable info beyond Priceline 101. For those interested simply do search for all messages posted by me and then go to the FLL Hotel Priceline thread. Rather than rehashing much that was posted in that thread I would suggest looking for this earlier thread.

Pilot70D

[robsvacation]

a few bits of advice:

1) Book a hotel reservation now that you can cancel without penalty as a backup, best you have a Plan B now especially during high season.

2) Read the hotel FAQ section on biddingfortravel.com. Figure out how the "Free Re-bid" works

3) Pilot70D advice has good but !!CAUTION!! priceline constantly adds hotels to zones, combines zones together, etc. If you're going to use a zone as a "free rebid" you must look them up just before you start the bidding process each and every time or risk ending up in a zone you do not want.

4) You can strike out on Priceline. They really are "distressed Inventory" seller of hotel rooms, so if hotels are all selling out Priceline may not be getting any rooms assigned to them, so see point 1

I've used Priceline for over 35 nights of hotel stays in the last year and 1/2. They've truly great and since they choose the hotel for me I no longer have to obcess over "which hotel is better." It takes some getting used to but you can save so much through them. Truly a great service.

[Snieman5]

I always check HOTWIRE and then bid about $5 less and get it. This year I really did not have the time to play the 72 hour waiting game so I booked Hotwire. Last year about this time I booked Priceline on the pre-cruise stay and Hotwire on the post cruise . They came out about $4 difference. Total for the 2 hotels (Taxes and fee added) came to $108 or $43 and $45 and we got the Hyatt on priceline and the Radison on Hotwire. Both were excellent hotels but I liked the Radison better because it was closer to Bayside market and had 2 fastfood places accross the street. After 7 days of great food I needed fast food.

[Himself]

Get DOONE to particpate in this thread and do EXACTLY what she says and you will get a wonderful hotel at a good price.

HIMSELF