I read the article, but they don't seem to be specific about a very important factor: How did they decide how much to bid on Priceline? I don't see how they can make comparisons without specifying that.
All I can say, after using Priceline many times, is that if they got better deals on Hotwire than on Priceline in many cases, then they were probably bidding too high on Priceline. But you can't figure that out precisely from what they say.
Ed