Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Priceline counting HI Kings Cross/Bloomsbury as London (City)

Just a cautionary note - have just booked my first hotel stay through priceline.

Did the following...

GBP80 - 5*Soho/Mayfair - rejected
GBP65 - 4*Soho/Mayfair - rejected
GBP72 - 4*Soho/Mayfair & City - accepted, but at the Holiday Inn situated half way between Kings Cross and Farringdon. Nothing too bad about this place, but i'd hardly call it the city!

Not sure if this can go in a better forum as 1) I'm new to this opaque booking and 2) have never posted here before (usually live on the BA board).

Just a cautionary note - have just booked my first hotel stay through priceline.

Did the following...

GBP80 - 5*Soho/Mayfair - rejected
GBP65 - 4*Soho/Mayfair - rejected
GBP72 - 4*Soho/Mayfair & City - accepted, but at the Holiday Inn situated half way between Kings Cross and Farringdon. Nothing too bad about this place, but i'd hardly call it the city!

Not sure if this can go in a better forum as 1) I'm new to this opaque booking and 2) have never posted here before (usually live on the BA board).

Yes, you could definitely have done better.
For one thing look at going rates at BetterBidding and BiddingForTravel. 72 pounds is too high for a City bid.
Look carefully at the zone maps. You would have seen the City zone is not really titled properly.

Your 65 pound bid was reasonable for Soho/Mayfair, but a little low. When that failed, you could have done a free rebid by adding the South Bank-Vauxhall zone, which has only 3* hotels.

If that had still failed, you could have started again with a new bid just for the City zone. But you likely should have started with a lower amount, say 40 or 45 pounds (haven't checked what is reasonable lately). Then if that failed, you could have rebid again by adding Mayfair/Soho. Then if that failed, you could have started again and done a bid with City + South Bank. Then if that failed, you could have done a bid with City + South Bank + Soho/Mayfair.

However, I wouldn't have chosen City under any circumstances most likely. I would have chosen Kensington and/or Westminster instead.

Just think through the logic carefully and look at other posters' winning bids.

Thanks for the input, but I've tried bidding for City hotels in the £60's previously and had no luck at all.

Also, that hotel cost me £112 to stay in on a 3 day advance purchase rate last week.

Bear in mind this is mid-week and with respect, the reason I stay in town isn't to go shopping or visit the museums - i've got meetings over in the City so Kensington/Westminster doesn't make any sense for me.

I do feel that the pricing between priceline.co.uk and .com might be somewhat skewed - either that or the protocol is only to post your winning bids when you get a good deal - doh!

Thanks for the input, but I've tried bidding for City hotels in the £60's previously and had no luck at all.

In that case, ignore much of the above.

Would the Bloomsbury zone work?

[snip]
I do feel that the pricing between priceline.co.uk and .com might be somewhat skewed - either that or the protocol is only to post your winning bids when you get a good deal - doh!

From what I can tell, London hotels enter their Priceline rates in pounds in the Worldspan database.

Yes, you're right that all the successful bids don't reflect the numerous unsuccessful bids.

Will Travel there's an art to what you're suggesting, I must admit! However, i've got a meeting with the Sales chap from the HI on Wednesday and he's going to quote me a corporate rate. We'll see what he can come up with!

Given my meetings tend to be near Tower Bridge, to end up in the Western reachest of Bloomsbury wouldn't be too clever at all.

In that case, how about the London Bridge zone? I guess you'd have to look at the farthest reach of that zone and calculate the distance to your meetings to see if it was worth the risk, and many people don't want to be on the south bank. The Mercure Bankside often has good rates too.

Otherwise, Thistle sometimes has pretty good single rates for various locations.

Now this gets interesting. The clerk was messing around at check-in and needed to be convinced that p/l was effectively a pre-paid voucher.

He went into the back office and I looked at the registration card - stapled to it was a fax from p/l which included a box at the bottom stressing that clients should never see the rate printed on this fax ;)

I'll spare the details, but I think I was within £5 of the best rate....

Thanks

Tony

That's just the sort of detail Priceline addicts find irresistible.

I think the rate you happened to see likely included tax, although I can't be sure of course.

For example, at the Holiday Inn Heathrow Ariel, I was able to see on the TV that the Priceline rate for the room was 22 pounds, and there wasn't a separate VAT line, so I think that was 22 pounds inclusive. So divide whatever rate you saw by 1.175 (because I think the UK VAT is 17.5%), round the value up to the nearest pound, and you'll have a good idea of what to try for your next bid, should you want to do so.

WillTravel That's what I thought (otherwise p/l ended up paying more for the room than I did).

Quoted price = 79.00, so take off the VAT and you're at £67.23. Minimum bid should therefore be £68 vs £72 I paid... :)

There's one other twist to this. Hotels can have multiple Priceline rates.

So it's quite possible that ~68 pounds was the lowest possible bid for that hotel, but it's also possible the hotel had some lower Priceline rate(s) preloaded into the Worldspan database as well.

There's one other twist to this. Hotels can have multiple Priceline rates.

So it's quite possible that ~68 pounds was the lowest possible bid for that hotel, but it's also possible the hotel had some lower Priceline rate(s) preloaded into the Worldspan database as well.

Just to clarify, are you saying that the HI might have had rooms available for less on p/l too?

Just thinking if that was the case, wouldn't p/l have assigned me a 'cheaper' room and taken the profit themselves???

Thanks

Just to clarify, are you saying that the HI might have had rooms available for less on p/l too?

Just thinking if that was the case, wouldn't p/l have assigned me a 'cheaper' room and taken the profit themselves???

Thanks

No, apparently the agreement Priceline has with hotels is that they pay the hotel the HIGHEST rate which is less than the customer's bid.

Yes, this reduces Priceline's profit, but it makes the hotels much happier. That seems to be the most important thing, since without the hotels' cooperation, Priceline would go away.

Ed

I stayed at Holiday Inn Kings Cross about 9 years ago. At that point it was a fairly new property, and the rooms were certainly standard Holiday Inn quality, which means about 3* in the U.S. (IME, the star ratings for Europe are generally inflated by about 1* level).

At that time, the neighborhood was a bit rough at night compared with others in Central London (particularly close to KC station), though certainly much safer than many U.S. cities. On the plus side, you are near some good live music clubs, and not too far from Kings Cross RR station which provides access to a number of Northbound train routes.

It certainly doesn't belong in the "City" zone, but PL zones are not constructed for the benefit of the consumer... :rolleyes: