Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific - Priceline + Auckland -- Looking for bidding experience...

I tried questioning this in the Travel Bidding forum and got no replies. So....let's see if anyone in this neck of the woods can help :) I am considering bidding for Auckland on Priceline. Because the Priceline Asia board is virtually 'dead', I can't find any bidding history.

Has anyone bid for Auckland?

It would be helpful if I could get a ballpark idea of what it would cost to get a bid accepted. Otherwise, since I do have three weeks to work with, I guess I can just start low & keep trying.

Thanks for any feedback. :)

Hi,

I have not used Priceline for Auckland, but I do use www.wotif.com - it is an Australian based company and generally has good prices (but probably not as good as Priceline).

Hope this helps,

Glenn

Thank you. I did find that site earlier this week (from another FT posting). We will probably utilize it a lot. But I will go ahead see if I have any success in Auckland with Priceline.

Auckland "international standard" hotels tend to be expensive and not offer much discounting historically. It is a thin market and for many weeks all of the top hotels are sold out (for rugby events, for example). Generally you have to stay at B&B or motels to get lower price, some are just as high quality as the major chain hotels for room comfort and even location (motels in NZ tend to be a notch or 2 better than Motel 6 in the US). But these are smaller operations and only half are on the web.

I would look into the Hilton Diamond Club discussion in the Qantas forum, as I recall there is some mention of the AUK Hilton. You might find some feedback to assist assessing this hotel. Look in the Aussie/Kiwi QF and NZ forums.

Beware Hilton's policy on 'internet bookings' through PL/Hotwire as you may not get any kind of an upgrade even if you ask.
You may get just as good a deal directly through a Diamond Club or another special offer.

It may also worth posting your question also to betterbidding.com and biddingfortravel.com. There's nothing there at the moment, but you could get a response from the administrators or fellow readers.

In the meantime you might find some discussion through a google search - possibly old discussion threads from Flyertalk :)