I have looked at three cities recently San Diego, San Francisco, and Vancouver, Ca (downtown zones, 3*, 4* hotels, weekends). In each of these scenarios I saw winning bids from BT lower than the suggested starting low bid price for the same weekend. BT fails to show specific dates of winning or rejected bids.
On consecutive days I will see the suggested low bid price of these cities go HIGHER for the same weekend dates even when new winning bids posted by BT are lower for the same weekend. Very strange algorithm that when inconsistencies occur BT just assumes it's not a coding algorithm issue and doesn't identify the inconsistencies in the algorithm.
Beta testing requires exhaustive hours to get accuracy and the inability to track details for the complaints and then fix hinder the BT tool's accuracy.
Regarding the market: I do cross reference winning bids on BFT which is limited but seems more accurate based on my winning bids in the past. BFT and BB both provide specific dates of bids
Could you update BT posted data to show the specific dates of rejected/winning and not just a general comment "weekend"?
Again it appears to be a database issue not tracking specific dates and then correlating those bids to the low/high suggested bid ranges.
Originally Posted by
biddingtraveler
I'm sure that there will always be the odd data point here and there that doesn't always fit an algorithm. That's just the nature of hotel pricing. It could be seasonality. It could be the bid was too old to be considered. It could be that some recent information was more relevant to the user's search and displaced something else. The idea is to get a general idea of where you should start and stop bidding; but by all means, if you know the market, go with your own bidding ranges.
I should be clear here: the bidding happens between your computer and PL, so if something is slow or not responding, it's not the software. Normally you'd just click the stop button or click the link again, but when everything is automatic, you can't. Nevertheless, to answer your question, yes, there's a formal acknowledgement that AutoBid cannot continue, you can inspect what happened, and restart it when you're ready.
We absolutely read everything posted here and at other blogs or forums. The answer is just that given the choice between making excuses for all of our faults on a daily basis, or going heads down for a few days and just fixing them, we'll choose the latter every time. So just know that every complaint from the grumpy veterans here eventually goes into the work queue.
