Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Facts about Priceline.com

I did a little research on how much you can save by booking a hotel room through Priceline.com. I found all of this in their investor relation page. It was in their annual shareholder meeting. Here is a link.

http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=pcln&script=10959&layout=6&item_id='http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/NSD/pcln/presentations/6_9_03.ppt'

The main points that I found were:

-The medium customer savings are 46% over expieda and 46%over Hotels.com.

-Their star rating system is on par with AAA. Hotels.com rated the same hotel higher 72% of the time. (So while Priceline might have a hotel rated 2 1/2 stars hotels.com might rate it 3 stars.

-92% of polled customers said that their Priceline experience met or exceeded their expectation.

-Priceline.com works with over 9,500 participating hotel properties in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Asia (China and Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia). All of the major hotels in the U.S. work with priceline.com. Hotels is one of priceline.com's fastest-growing travel products. In the 2nd quarter 2003, priceline.com reported that it sold a record 1.5 million hotel room nights - a 38 percent year-over-year increase.

I always thought that using Priceline.com was like taking a crap shoot. You pick a 4 star hotel but get stuck in a hole in the wall. Seeing that Priceline rates their hotels like AAA and almost always rates them BETTER than hotels.com sure proved me wrong. If the deals on their hotels are this good I'm going to look into their rental cars and vacations too. I hope this information helps people in their travel needs.

Welcome to FT!
Thanks for the info.What a great way to start your posting.
My observation is that this is from Priceline to investors so the numbers can be biased.That said,I agree that their ratings seem to be on line with AAA.

Jabez--I don't think OP will be back. The exact same post is on other boards (same user also only one post).

PL ratings are similar to AAA but if you have a mistrated hotel PL will tell you they don't follow AAA and the fact that other services rate the hotel lower doesn't matter.

I agree if you bid on a 4* hotel you won't get a 1* but there are numerous examples of people getting hotels (or rooms in hotels) that are misrated a star level.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by homermotts:
I did a little research on how much you can save by booking a hotel room through Priceline.com. I found all of this in their investor relation page. It was in their annual shareholder meeting. Here is a link.

<A HREF="http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=pcln&script=10959&layout=6&item_id='http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/NSD/pcln/presentations/6_9_03.ppt'" TARGET=_blank>http:// www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=pcln&script=10959&layout=6&item_id='http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/NSD/pcln/presentations/6_9_03.ppt' (http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=pcln&script=10959&layout=6&item_id='http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/NSD/pcln/presentations/6_9_03.ppt'</A>)[/url]

The main points that I found were:

-The medium customer savings are 46% over expieda and 46%over Hotels.com.

-Their star rating system is on par with AAA. Hotels.com rated the same hotel higher 72% of the time. (So while Priceline might have a hotel rated 2 1/2 stars hotels.com might rate it 3 stars.

-92% of polled customers said that their Priceline experience met or exceeded their expectation.

-Priceline.com works with over 9,500 participating hotel properties in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Asia (China and Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia). All of the major hotels in the U.S. work with priceline.com. Hotels is one of priceline.com's fastest-growing travel products. In the 2nd quarter 2003, priceline.com reported that it sold a record 1.5 million hotel room nights - a 38 percent year-over-year increase.

I always thought that using Priceline.com was like taking a crap shoot. You pick a 4 star hotel but get stuck in a hole in the wall. Seeing that Priceline rates their hotels like AAA and almost always rates them BETTER than hotels.com sure proved me wrong. If the deals on their hotels are this good I'm going to look into their rental cars and vacations too. I hope this information helps people in their travel needs.</font>

This is so cool. Thanks for the heads-up, as I'm incapable of visiting www.priceline.com (http://www.priceline.com) http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/rolleyes.gif

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"There's no sadder sight in this world than that of a football player trying to think." -- Daria

Well, if it's on their investor relations page, then it must be true! Thanks for the "information."

http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/rolleyes.gif

Welcome aboard FT. I believe the Enron Inc annual report etc always had glowing things to say about the solid company, its wise ventures, its secure future etc and its wise astute leader, Mr Kenneth Lay. Ditto for WorldCom and Mr Bernie Ebbers. If you want to see such, just visit your local library , your local brokers office or check Court TV.

BTW are you interested in purchasing a bridge? Or how about some rock solid Russian bonds?

MisterNice

Wow, what a great bunch of people we have on this board! I did post this on three other boards that I was looking at to find out if I should try Priceline. From the posts I read about PL there were some great deals out there but I wanted hard numbers. After searching awhile I found what I was looking for and thought it would be nice to post it to save others the trouble. If you think PL is lying to its investors then you are entitled to your opinion; but because two companies out of the thousands that are public have mislead investors I find it foolish to think that every company does. I just hope you don't have any money in a 401k account. For those of you who care I was told about www.biddingfortravel.com (http://www.biddingfortravel.com) from another discussion board. I found it to be very helpful and I think it will help you out a lot if you are looking to save money on hotels.

homer, here's a hint:

Before you start posting "informative" posts here, you might try 1) reading other posts here; 2) using the search function, and/or increasing the number of days of posts that are displayed, and browsing those threads for awhile.

If you do this, you will find that www.biddingfortravel.com (http://www.biddingfortravel.com) is already well known to users of FlyerTalk and there are many, many threads on it.

No need to insult the intelligence of the people here. Get a clue.


Kathy

Could Homermotts be $heryl's alter ego?

Old timers,please reread what you've wrote and the attitude portrayed to a first time poster.Do you really think that this is the message we want to give to the lurkers and new posters?
This poster may have posted this news elsewhere.So what? It surely wasn't because he owns priceline and is promoting his business. If anything,it shows he believed that it was interesting news and worthy of sharing.
So he didn't go to "search".Can't we politely aim him there? I certainly didn't sense that this poster was insulting our intelligence,but it sure seems like we were insulting his.There's another web site in this post that's famous for quickly barking out a "read the FAQ".Do we want to mimic their approach?

I believe that every day there are people just starting to use web forums. Someone (I've done it many times)tells them "You do a lot of traveling.Go try out Flyertalk,it'll be very helpful". They stop by and lurk a bit. Maybe they lurk for awhile until they run into what they think is helpful.They post and then then floodgates of negativity begins.I'm not talking about "attacking" what the priceline report says,but taking shots at the poster.

As for the new poster, you are welcome.Thank you for the news.Some of us found it interesting. I can't speak for the others,but history here at FT has shown that they are valuable and usually very gracious posters.

Jabez, if one lurks for more than five minutes, one will discover that this kind of basic, and might I add, useless information, is not worthy of a new topic.

None of these so-called "attacks" are personal; we just don't want the forum to get cluttered with useless drivel from Priceline's web site.

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"There's no sadder sight in this world than that of a football player trying to think." -- Daria

Sorry, but I don't believe for a minute that this thread was started by a bona fide "newbie." A Priceline employee is more likely...this reads like an advertisement.

Priceline employees (there's no way any of us knows he is or isn't) are very welcomed here,especially if they announce that they are. Why should they not?
I'm sorry,but what is useless information to some may not be to others. "Useless" posts should die a natural death.
Before the "attack" started the thread was moving towards a discussion of PL's star rating.
Like I said,this poster (PL employee or not)is welcomed here.I just hope he has thick skin.

Jabez--The information is worse than "worthless". It implies that PL is using AAA for ratings. In fact if you complain about a mis-rated hotel (I did) and point to AAA and Mobil travel guide ratings PL will tell you they DON'T USE EITHER.
BFT has an entire section devoted to mis-rated hotels. I'm sure PL monitors BFT yet they do very little to correct the problem.

I agree if you bid on a 4* hotel you won't get a Motel 6 BUT if you bid on a 3* you may very well get a hotel you consider a 2*.

I'll join the majority who think OP is a shill for PL. Come on, quoting from the PL website and calling it "research".



[This message has been edited by lewisc (edited 09-11-2003).]

An odd observation I noticed sometime ago was about 99.5% of the people who have only nice things to say about Priceline (or BFT for that matter) have a Yahoo email address (eg pricelineisgreat@yahoo.com)

Has anyone else ever noticed this? Maybe they get a group discount.

MisterNice

MisterNice:

I do not have a yahoo address. I am an average user of PL. I am generally satisfied with them. I would not be gushing in excitement on their behalf. I think that they do have a role to play in this overbuilt economy.

I consider Hotwire as a variation of PL.

Personally,I even find that AAA has rated hotels IMHO "incorrectly".
PL,compared to their competion,seems to rate their hotels somewhat fairer. PL,however,is not a rating agency.They don't send people out on surprise inspections. They,are thus going to have some properties misrated.

If PL doesn't rely on AAA or Mobile or OHG and they don't do independent surveys, how do they rate hotels. So it's either chaos or the rating services. Chaos is a sure road to bankruptcy.

I personally found the post that started this thread informative. Although I use priceline pretty often I never thought of looking at their investor relations page.
Now, is the information is accurate? that's another story. Do they check after every booked room how much expedia was charging? Doubtful.

I'm with Jabez here. The initial post in this thread may be a combination of old news and puffery, but so what? Give the poster the benefit of the doubt on his/her motives, and politely take issue with the post.

As Jabez mentioned, it's hypocritical to rail on BFT for such conduct and employ those means yourself.