I was an avid user of Priceline's Name Your Own Price feature for a long time, but haven't had the occasion to use it in the last few years. It's been a while since I've booked any hotel through an OTA and not directly, in fact.
mrsmicah, however, has an upcoming solo trip to ATL where she's paying for her own hotel and doesn't have any particular requirements other than wanting to be in the Midtown area, so I dusted off the old Priceline chops. Most decent Midtown hotels for her dates seemed to start around $140/night through normal channels. Priceline had a 3.5* Express Deal for $81 that I was 95% sure was the Marriott Suites, which would work just fine. But I figured I'd give NYOP a try first, especially since ATL has a million free rebid zones, so why not?
Observations:
- The forums biddingfortravel and betterbidding where I used to go to check other folks' bidding experiences seem all but dead.
- There don't seem to be amazingly cheaper deals via NYOP vs. Priceline's listed Express Deals, but...
- Priceline's Express Deals have a truly outrageous priceline profit built into the "taxes/fees" that must be factored in.
Data points:
- ATL hotel taxes appear to be about 20% all-in. Booking the Marriott Suites via Marriott's own site ($169 prepaid) or via Priceline's regular retail booking ($179 prepaid) yielded taxes on the checkout page of just under 20%. Other hotels in ATL seem to have similar taxes.
- That $81 Express Deal had taxes/fees of over $36/night, which works out to about 46%!!! I knew that Priceline might pad that line item a bit, but I find it extremely hard to understand how it's legal for them to list an "$81" rate alongside the regular retail rates in their search results when they add an extra 25% to the $81 rate on the checkout page that they don't add to the others.
- After a few low-ball NYOP bids to test the waters, I started bidding in $1 increments from $79 and eventually hit it (with the Marriott Suites) at $84. The NYOP $84 win only had $25/night taxes/fees, which (at about 30%) still built in a nice extra 10% for Priceline, but wasn't anywhere near the 46% that they were charging on the Express Deal. In fact the "$84" NYOP win was $8/night cheaper all-in than the "$81" Express Deal.
Morals of the story:
- Especially in zones with lots of free rebids, NYOP can still save you a few bucks.
- When comparing opaque hotel rates like Priceline Express Deals you MUST compare all-in rates and not the listed rates.