Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Bidding strategy

I just found out that I am definitely going to Portland, ME for the 3-day Labor Day weekend and I want to use Priceline for my hotel and car rental. Now with the hotel, if I get turned down with all of my rebids, can I begin anew with a one night stay bid and then a two-night stay bid? Will this work? Same for car rentals? Thanks.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Analise:
I just found out that I am definitely going to Portland, ME for the 3-day Labor Day weekend and I want to use Priceline for my hotel and car rental. Now with the hotel, if I get turned down with all of my rebids, can I begin anew with a one night stay bid and then a two-night stay bid? Will this work? Same for car rentals? Thanks.</font>

Yes, you can definitely do that with hotels on Priceline, and it's quite possible you'll succeed at least in part if your 3-day bid fails.

In general it's quite possible that one hotel might have availability one night at a reasonable price, and another hotel the next night at a reasonable price, but that no single hotel has availability for two nights in a row.

Just make sure that every bid you start is a new one, if there are any rebid zones involved at all.

I've never tried rental cars.

No problem with breaking up your stay for the bidding, but be advised that you may end up with different hotels. I have done this in the past and have had to change hotels about one-third to one-half of the time. As was suggested, it is possible that no one hotel has availability during the entire stay. Also, if there is a season change or anything of the sort over your stay, the PL rate could change by a large amount, making bidding more tricky.

You may want to take a look at Hotwire also... they offer packages for car and hotel where they actually tell you the hotel beforehand.

At the very least, it will give you an idea of what availability is like for that weekend and also give you a maximum that you would want to be bidding on Priceline.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by thereuare:
You may want to take a look at Hotwire also... they offer packages for car and hotel where they actually tell you the hotel beforehand.

At the very least, it will give you an idea of what availability is like for that weekend and also give you a maximum that you would want to be bidding on Priceline.</font>

And that is what I did....thanks! Although the car + hotel deals on Hotwire were not available from PWM unfortunately. Because of the lateness of my bid, I could not get a 3 day winning bid. So I broke it up and got a bid for 8/30-9/1 for a whopping $90 per night for a 3 star hotel. I've never bid that high but it was less than what Hotwire offered. I got the Sheraton South Portland which is really what I wanted. I still got a deal compared to what they are selling now on travel sites and on their site alone.

For Friday night, SideStep found me the Days Inn in South Portland for $89.20. That is the best I could find.

I think you did pretty well for the Labor Day weekend. For my upcoming trip, I broke it up. I needed a room (as you know) for two nights but kept getting rejected as I kept bidding up. I decided to break it into two one-night bids and the first night cleared at $70 for the Doubletree. I'm still bidding for the second night but I figure even if I end up paying, say, $90, it's still lower than two nights at $90.

Also, as you made me aware, it's not that much of a risk for Portland since there are so few 3* properties so the possibility of having to move is less than in other cities. http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/smile.gif

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by honmani2:
Also, as you made me aware, it's not that much of a risk for Portland since there are so few 3* properties so the possibility of having to move is less than in other cities. http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/smile.gif</font>

And that's the beauty of bidding in Portland. You can almost control where you are going to stay. After reading your post about going to Portland in Sept, you got me wanting to make a quickie trip up there! And voila, I leave at 8pm tonight. I think I might do the Casco Bay cruise to Bailey Island tomorrow. I feel a need to be on the water. http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/smile.gif