Originally Posted by divaof travel
I would like to know, however, where you can obtain good PL bidding intelligence for hotels outside of the US. The info on BFT is limited.
Depends where you are looking. For the foreign locations I looked ad (usually major European cities), BFT and betterbidding.com provided enough input for me to make an intelligent decision.
As an example, I scored a 4* hotel in London for 50GBP/night a year or so ago. I was expecting a different hotel, but it worked out just fine. Try getting a 4* in London for that price by other means!
Other than that, Flyertalk is probably your best bet -- see the individual forums for the locations you're interested in.
As an alternative to hotels, in much of Europe there are B&Bs,
gasthauses, and the like. France is especially agressive in getting their locations on the web. On our first "big trip", I got a 16th century chateau in French wine country at about 100 euros/night. It was
really cool! Then a mountainside villa on the Riviera for 60 euros/night.
The internet is your friend.
Other than that, we just drove in the general desired direction and picked places that seemed charming. It worked out well for us, but I know that some people like to have everything planned out before they go. Different strokes and all that.