Hi. I hope I'm in the right forum.
I'm staying in NYC in August for a couple nights, and would like to stay some place really nice
Thus I was thinking using the PL bidding.
Here's my question: I've read in a couple threads on a couple sites that PL as well as HW sometimes would just cancel existing and paid reservations on very short notice (then refund the money) sometimes same day. This would be bad for me, as I wouldn't have the immediate funds to just check in in another really nice place
Is is true? How common is that? It's my first time booking though PL.
So to stay safe, should I rather book through a hotel site (e.g Hilton or Starwood)?
Thanks so much.
Rieki.
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I have probably used priceline and hotwire over a 100 times in the past few years... never have they cancelled a reservation. I have never even heard of it....
I have never heard or experienced this. Highly unlikely to happen unless fraud is involved (e.g. stolen credit card info)
Good luck with PL. You will be amazed by how much you be saving. Before bidding, however, you need to look up the levels for successful bids in NY for your dates (use betterbidding.com and biddingfortravel.com) and then you need to learn how to use “free rebids”, which will allow you to bid several times for a hotel in your preferred zone. "free rebids" is explained in details on biddingfortravel.com so you need to read (and understand) this section before you start bidding.
Please note that bidding for several nights (rather than 1-2 nights) often requires a much higher bid amount in order to be accepted by PL.
This is very uncommon.
Sometimes hotels oversell or get an lucrative event offer and try to unload PL/HW customers (Wynn was a classic example this spring) but it's a rather unusual scenario and says more about Wynn rather than PL/HW.
Never heard of that either. My only remotely similar experience is that I booked a hotel in ANC through Hotwire last October for a stay in June. In April or so HW EMailed me and said that they had "downgraded" the hotel from 3* to 2.5* and were giving me $25 in the Hotwire Dollars or whatever they were called.
I guess I could have used that as a basis to cancel the reservation from my end, but even before the purchase I was pretty confident of which hotel I was going to end up with anyway. So whether they called it a 3* or 2.5* was irrelevant. Basically it ended up costing me $25 less than I originally planned
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Since with Priceline you are fully paid up in advance, the hotel will have set aside a room whether or not you arrive. Why would they cancel it? It's never happened in many years with Priceline bidding for me. I did miss a night because I was caught in a snowstorm and still had to pay. So bid $120 and MTE and get the Hyatt.
I have used Hotwire countless times for hotels and have never experienced a time where they have ever cancelled a hotel reservation at the last minute.
The only time I have ever heard of that happening is with the Wynn scenario mentioned earlier and it appeared to be Wynn overselling the number of available rooms and it affected customers of many sites and not just Hotwire and Priceline and it appeared that the sites gave plenty of notice to the customers and were moved to another hotel.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by B1
Since with Priceline you are fully paid up in advance, the hotel will have set aside a room whether or not you arrive. Why would they cancel it? It's never happened in many years with Priceline bidding for me. I did miss a night because I was caught in a snowstorm and still had to pay. So bid $120 and MTE and get the Hyatt.
I don't think they actually pick a specific room and put your name on it six hours before you get there--I think they just plan to have a room for you. You're assigned the room itself on check-in.
But if enough people extend their stay (and laws in many states prevent hotels from forcefully evicting someone from their room as long as their balance is paid current) or the hotel's no-show rate is less than they forecast (same as airlines and rental cars), when they go to check you in, there aren't any unoccupied rooms available to assign you. In that case, oops. But it's their responsibility, then, to put you in an equivalent room at an equivalent hotel. (And sometimes you get a better one--someone recently posted that they got bumped on a cheap Hotwire reservation to the Ritz Carlton--not a bad deal at all!)
Upon first glance, it seems they should still hold a room for you. But (especially depending on the hotel and their computer systems), I doubt they actually specifically count the number of prepaid rooms they have and specifically say that they have to keep that number of rooms open and unassigned until the prepaid people show up.
Same with rental cars--especially due to the varying return times, it's not like three days before you arrive they tag a specific red Pontiac G6 that is scheduled to return two and a half hours before you are scheduled to pick up for your reservation. It's all based on "forecast availability"--that is, at x time, we have y number of z class cars scheduled to return, which means we can take w number of reservations for that size vehicle. They can't tag specific vehicles, because what if the one tagged with your name happens to be extended for another week or even just returns three hours late? All they can do is sort of have a rough idea of how many cars will be available at any given time. (It's complicated by the fact that advanced planning typically happens on the daily level rather than hourly level, so the coarse granularity of the unit of analysis means that it might be possible for the company to oversell for a good portion of the day but then end up in the evening with extra cars, and they wouldn't even realize that were the case until that day arrives, forcing customers to be inconvenienced and not receive their cars until later in the day.)
I could be wrong, though. I'm not a hotel industry insider. And it's easier to plan for availability on and save specific hotel rooms, because everyone's checked out by the middle of the day. On the other hand, with a rental car, often all you have to do is wait 10 minutes and you get a surprise return (whereas you wouldn't get a surprise check-out at a hotel at 9:15pm) and are on your way out of the rental office with just a short delay, so the fluidity of rental car operations is both an advantage and disadvantage.
Thanks so much for all the replies! You're so nice.
No, I've never bid on a hotel before. But read on the relevant sites. Actually, pretty confusing
I was figuring I just put in an amount, significantly lower than what they offer on the site/stars(4+ please)/area, and go for it? And if they refuse, I can still try again with a little more money, maybe even on the next day?
Thanks so much for all the replies! You're so nice.
No, I've never bid on a hotel before. But read on the relevant sites. Actually, pretty confusing
I was figuring I just put in an amount, significantly lower than what they offer on the site/stars(4+ please)/area, and go for it? And if they refuse, I can still try again with a little more money, maybe even on the next day?
That's called guessing. Make the effort to read the information on the faqs and forums for your areas of interest at Bidding for Travel and Better Bidding. If that's too much, use Hotwire. And if you decide to bid on Priceline offer less than what Hotwire is charging for what looks to be the same thing. The idea with Priceline is that there is a minimum price that they will accept and you should try to bid no more than that. How does one do that? Not by guessing if possible. That's why those sites exist.
As noted above, do not guess (that is what they want you to do). Hotwire posts the prices, star ratings, neighborhoods but does not show you the hotel name until after you enter your credit card information. Priceline is different in that you enter a bid amount and it may or may not be accepted. Baesd on the difference in the sites, you know what you can get the hotel room for on Hotwire so there is no need to bid more for it on Priceline as if you are fine with the price, you can book it on Hotwire. Once confirmed, there is no changes or cancellations allowed with either site.
I'm sorry if that now goes a little OT. Thanks so much for all the tips
So, I took a long look at better bidding
Currently 4+ in areas I want to be in go for about 105 to 120 at PL. At HW, there seemed to be no 4 star in my preferred area for my dates under 150.
Am I missing something? I was then thinking to start bidding with 100 to 105.
I don't want to change the topic too much, sorry. So unless I really miss an important fact, I think I understood. Hopefully
In a quick sentence: This forum is awesome. Thanks so much for all the nice-ness.
