B1

The whole point of opaque bookings is that in return for getting the deal they offer you, you don't get to make a specific choice. The star levels at Priceline are done by a formula of amenities and location. There are very lovely 3 star places in their system and not so nice 4 star. There are sites devoted to Priceline (Better Bidding, Bidding for Travel) where you could have seen a list of reported Priceline 5 star properties in your zone of interest. If even one of them is not up to your standards, then don't bid in that zone or you could get that one with no way out.

danielonn

I myself love Kimpton Hotels and yes they are 4 star hotels and very nice with their evening wine hour.

When you book a Hotel Priceline goes by ratings such as on Trip Advisor or they come up with their own ratings. AAA and Mobile has their own as well.

While AAA may rate the Kimpton 4 Stars Priceline can assign it 5 Stars and Hotwire could book it as a 4 star hotel. It makes you wonder what they consider to be 5 star standard. The same goes for Europe a 5 Star here could be a 4 Star in Europe. Italy and France have their own ratings too.

I ususally will just book 4 star Hotels and I have never been disappointed on the rare occasssion I booked a 5 star and it turned out to be a true 5 star Hotel but that was based upon AAA standards.

For me I know what a 5 star hotel is and I am sure the OP knows but really there are many people who cant tell the difference between a 4 and 5 star hotel and Priceline and Hotwire are bidding on the many who are just happy to stay at a luxury hotel.

If I were the OP I would take the price difference and keep my hotel. I love the Kimpton Hotel Group and if its in a good locaion in NYC then by all means keep it. Perhaps you can get an upgrade to a larger room. Seriously i would use the price difference to get a Suite or a nice Sunday Brunch and some good meals like a dinner at Peter Luger's Steakhouse, 3rd Street Deli and around TriBeca.

Good luck and olease keep us posted.

FTDDD

I still think this is a fraudulent business approach from the priceline group.

The Kimpton Eventi, on the other hand, amazed me. Great hotel and superb staff. They did upgrade us and bring champagne to the room. Lovely hotel. Highly recommend it.

Thanks everyone.

Tino

You must not know how to use the site. The beautiful thing about the fees is that they drop along with the price. A $9/day rental car with fees and taxes is usually less than what most people are paying in just fees and taxes.

My two latest deals:

I just booked a 4* Denver property today for over 75% off the cheapest rate available for any downtown 4* hotel during the dates of my stay. Additionally, buying through eBates cut the net fees I had to pay Priceline.

Using a Priceline promo code, eBates and aggressive bidding, I am staying at the St. Louis downtown 4* Westin for $45 a night ($56 with fees and taxes) over the holidays. The cheapest rate for ANY star-rated hotel is over $100 a night (plus $15-20 in taxes) during that time.

Besides, Priceline DOES give you a list of the hotels in each star-level. You just have to look at their master list of available hotels before you bid.

I did once buy an opaque Chicago 5* property from Hotwire, expecting the Trump, knowing that it was the only 5* available in that zone. They gave me another 4.5* (by their own definition) property instead. I called and received an immediate refund, because the 4.5* hotel had been improperly coded in their database as a 5*, but listed as a 4.5* on the website.

Romelle

I'm also a happy Priceline customer, but I have a tiny disagreement with the above statement. One can look at the retail list of hotels available on Priceline and get a very good general idea as to what one might receive via bidding. BUT, it is possible for there to be some other hotels not showing on the retail side that one can get via bidding. Correctly star rated, but just not offered through direct purchase or retail "List View".

Romelle

Alex71

I haven't had the described problem with Priceline either. Hotwire is much more likely to overinflate star ratings. I had discussions with them before to avail. This is one of the risks of using such a service.

In general, I find the savings not to be what they were a few years ago, especially in Europe, where the worst 4* can be worse than a good 3* and official star ratings are often assigned based on a checklist of amenities that may not have much to do with the real standard of a hotel.

hotturnip

This.

All that matters is how PL rates it. It's up to you to do the research so that you can see what hotels PL considers 5*. You have no case here.

TravelBrewer

I've been a frequent user of Priceline NYOP opague bidding system for hotels for many years - I've booked over 200 rooms this way. So I'm very familiar with the ratings of many of the hotels I book and the process by which to get a good price.

I was trying to book 2.5 star hotels for basic work travel, but ended up in a Comfort Inn in Green Bay, WI that had been listed as a 2.0 star hotel at Priceline for several years. It was mysteriously upgraded to 2.5 stars at Priceline sometime in the past few weeks I think, despite being - IMO - worse than almost all of the 2.0 star hotels in the area. It happens to be adjacent to several 2.0 star hotels on the same street that all have the same basic qualities, but are rated higher in terms of customer satisfaction at Priceline as well as Trip Advisor (and probably any customer driven evaluation site you can find).

Called Priceline customer service to complain about the bogus star rating jump. I got the usual explanation (similar to OP) about how the ratings are based on a number of factors, but I've stayed at literally all of the hotels in the area so I know there are no objective reasons to upgrade this hotel. It's not been physically improved and there is no customer feedback ratings that would justify an upgrade.

My fear is that this is a scam to place one or two marginal hotels in each class rating so that if you use opaque bidding process, you end up in the artificially upgraded hotel. Wondering if others have found this to be the case. The upgrade from 2.0 to 2.5 occurred sometime since August 15 last year, but I suspect it was pretty recent so I'm wondering if other frequent NYOP users have noticed unwarranted upgrades.

They are definitely trying to phase out NYOP and this is a good way to do it because it renders it useless if they are going to put one "stinker" hotel in every class rating. It's a good scam I suppose, but it's only going to work on me this one time.