I've always liked Priceline for times when I couldn't get an award room or didn't want to use points and the rates in the city were too expensive.

As a Hilton Diamond and Starwood Platinum member I have had some luxurious rooms in international cities and that is an incredible feeling because all my travel is leisure. Prior to learning the tricks of the trade on FT I regularly used Priceline, stayed in B&Bs, and always spent a great deal of time trying to find a nice bargain room for my travels. Many of these rooms were wonderfully charming and some were rooms I wish I could forget. I have enjoyed the all around higher standard of the chain lodgings with Hilton and Starwood.

That being said I am now trying to accomodate to program changes with Hilton. Airline mileage transfers made it easy to accrue 600,000 points a year with HHonors and that was enough for 36 nights in luxury hotels. It was worth the money to make sure I had diamond status and access to awards anytime and nice upgrades. Now United and LatinPass have discontinued transfers and at the same time there have hardly been any lucrative bonus point offers in 2003 with Hilton. Starwood looks much more attractive this year.

I think a strategy of Priceline and some status with Starwood is my favored route for 2004. It all depends on where you travel and need rooms as to whether a Priceline only strategy is the best way. Last night I studied the bidding-for-travel board and I see some pretty high rates in the $100-150 range for 4* hotels in several of the European cities. I favor a method of accumulating Starwood stays in the range of $60-80 to accumulate points during bonus offers, Priceline when the rates are low for the places I am traveling or in Europe when I want to conserve hotel points, and then an annual splurge of points for something really luxurious that is way out of the range of my pocketbook change.

My calculation is about an extra $1,000 to split my bookings of about 50 hotel nights a year between Priceline and Starwood, maintain status with Starwood, and accumulate 50,000 points a year vs. an all Priceline hotel stays strategy.