Several years ago, most notably in the few years after 9/11, I used to travel all over the world with screaming bargains on car rentals, and most especially - nice 3*-5* hotel rooms, using Priceline "Name your price" bidding to get the best rates. This went on and remained a viable bargain travel strategy for many years.


But it seems to me that recently, I've not found any significant bargain rates using PL bidding. I'm a sophisticated bidder, and I think I understand all of the strategies for getting the best price and avoiding bad hotels via PL bidding, but over my last few trips, to places as varied as the SF Bay Area, Hawaii, and resorts in Mexico, I've simply found that the best prices available through PL bidding just don't match those I can get elsewhere. To the point that I have consistently found that when I progressively increment my bids from true bargain prices, up to the published prices I see for properties elsewhere, I consistently don't get my bid accepted. In several cases, I get counter-offers that, when combined with the PL fees that would be levied, are noticeably higher than prices available from other sources - often non-opaque sources, and even bidding at the mid-point between the bid that elicited the counter offer, and the counter-offer price, my bids are either getting rejected, or that midpoint is itself higher than published prices elsewhere, and thus not worth pursuing. Even Priceline's own published opaque prices - which are generally now no better than Hotwire's, seem to be as low or lower, once fees are included, than any price one can obtain through bidding.


So, has the golden goose of Priceline bidding bargains finally well and truly been killed? Has anyone recently saved noticeably on a hotel stay using PL bidding?


Is this perhaps just a function of the fact that, competition has driven much of the excess capacity out of the travel infrastructure, and that as other purchasing venues have gotten more competitive, the margins have been driven out of the business?