Travelweb Makes Priceline a Little Less Mysterious
Activities: Lodging, Tips and Resources
Author: Sascha Segan

May 26, 2004 -- Priceline lets you save 40-60% on hotels around the world. This we know. But giving up control of the exact hotel you win is too much stress for many people. Priceline lets you lock down your hotel's star level, but the hotels Priceline considers to be worthy of four stars might garner three or five stars on other travel sites.

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Now, there's an official way to check Priceline's hotel star ratings. Earlier this year Priceline bought most of hotel-sales Web site Travelweb (www.travelweb.com) and said they intend to buy the rest of the site in the future. (Travelweb was originally owned by five hotel chains, but they decided to sell the site in favor of running specials on their own individual Web sites.)

Later this year, Priceline will integrate Travelweb's hotels into searches on Priceline.com, letting you see the names of hotels before you buy (at somewhat higher rates than you'd get by bidding, of course.) That won't affect the super-low rates you get by bidding for mystery hotels, though it'll probably add another screen you have to click through to get to the good stuff.

One Star (System) To Rule Them All

The Travelweb purchase still helps bidders, because Travelweb's hotel star ratings will soon be the same as Priceline's, with one important exception. Travelweb doesn't use half-stars, so Priceline's 2.5-star hotels will show up on Travelweb as 3-star hotels.

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So later this summer, if you want to know what Priceline considers, say, a 4-star hotel in Denver, you'll be able to go to www.travelweb.com, click on "Advanced Search" and ask for four-star hotels.

While that still won't help you divine exactly which hotel you'll get on Priceline, it'll be a useful bit of help for smart bidders.