ozeboy1

After several months of work we are soft launching iBidlow, and Flyertalk members are invited to be the first ones to use the service, with hopes that you would use this thread to feedback and help us improve it further.

iBidlow is a search engine for Hotwire and Priceline hotels, and also includes deep links to hotel comparison and hotels websites for each listed hotel.

We built this database (apx. 10.000 hotels) using several methods of web crawling and user generated input, and then analyzed this data comparing it with the actual databases of Priceline and Hotwire.

The product we're launching today is still a rather early version of what we hope to achieve, and in the coming while we would add a live price functionality to the Priceline product (allowing users to estimate how much to bid on each search) along with tools of live comparison between Hotwire, Priceline and the retail channels.

In order for this service to succeed, we would need a real contribution from the Priceline & Hotwire users community. We built automated email service that can analyze confirmation emails from Priceline & Hotwire, and also have winning forms that handle the same function. That, together with retail data should allow us to offer a very useful service to the community and make the purchase process on Hotwire & Priceline an easy and knowledgeable task.

I would love hearing from you with thoughts and comments regarding this project.

Oz @ iBidlow

Hertz4me

sweet ill check it out

BearX220

I had a quick (less than 10 minutes) spin around the site and I'm still not certain what your value proposition is. I'd suggest some spare, clear language on the home page explaining it.

There is a definite opportunity for an "intelligence" site that helps Priceline bidders refrain from overbidding -- one less emotional and crazed than biddingfortravel.com, and more complete than betterbidding.com. But with a couple of dummy bookings, I couldn't make your site do any more than generate a list of hotels Priceline (or Hotwire) might book me into. The going-rate data for a metro area you offer via Hotelscombined.com, I can obtain anytime via Kayak, Sidestep, etc.

Is your aim to excise the opacity factor from HW/PL, or to help PL users bid more wisely?

In short, why should I spend time on ibidlow.com?

ozeboy1

Hey BearX220, thanks for taking the time here.

At the moment we're offering a comfortable way to find the hotels available on Hotwire and Priceline and easily navigate to check their prices. Moreover, we supply a fairly easy method (email fwd / online form) to post winning feedbacks to the site, making user feedback an effortless act.

Very soon we would roll out features that allow deep links to all hotel websites, and later integrate the prices offered on both Hotels Combined and the hotel websites into the site interface, allowing instant comparison on iBidlow.

What we're surely missing at the moment is the Priceline price indicator, which is a feature we've been developing for few months now, and hope to roll out during March. Once this feature is in place, you won't have to go and figure out what others bid on Priceline, but could rely on an algorithm that takes both past winnings and retail market prices for your dates into account.

Are there other features you'd like to see?

will5404

Tried the iBidLow and got:
Please correct the following field(s):
Please choose bidding star level to generate a bid range.
Please choose at least one bidding zone to generate a bid range

Even though I filled all the fields in, using Safari on OSX.

Personally I just have doubts that any algorithm can magically give a better bid estimate that I can do by quickly looking over winning bids on betterbidding.

The site seems scattered with buzzwords, and I can't be bothered to spend 20 minutes figuring out what all the features of the site do. Also be careful saying a particular hotel is on Hotwire, the amenities can change at anytime and are no guarantee you will get a particular hotel.

lo2e

Ditto for me on Firefox and OS X.

Why do the pop-up calendars where you select your checkin and checkout dates have Mondays on the far left? I almost selected the wrong dates because of this ... maybe certain people think Monday should be the first day of the week on a calendar, but obviously this is not the accepted norm (at least not yet).

ozeboy1

Hey guys, thanks for this feedback.
Will5404 - The selection menu bug would be fixed instantly, thanks for this tip.
Reg. the algorithm- there is no magic here. We simply analyze retail price on the dates coupled with the day of the week/month together with past winnings and generate a bidding range. This is the same you may do with a 30 minutes of research on your own, but hey - why bother when an algorithm can do the same task?

lo2e- thanks for these tips, I hope we'd solve these in the coming hours.

Any other tips you had in mind?

crhptic

That's a US vs Europe convention issue, I think. In Europe Monday is normally shown as the first day of the week on a calendar, and the site is run out of AMS (I assume since the OP is there). If the site is intended for primarily a US audience I would suggest changing it so Sunday is shown as the first day of the week.

I also agree with the posters who said they do not understand the value proposition of the site as it currently exists. It doesn't actually tell you which hotels you might get on Hotwire, it just gives you a list of hotels and amenities. So I don't understand why it asks for dates and such since it doesn't seem to be actually pulling any availability data from Hotwire; all it does it create a link to Hotwire and provide a hotel list. This is all information that can easily be obtained elsewhere.

BearX220

Ideally, I'd like to be able to enter "San Francisco, 4-star, June 25-27" and get back a report that says, "55% of Priceline bidders planning similar trips got the Hilton Fisherman's Wharf; 23% got the Holiday Inn, etc... the lowest winning bid was $47 / night, the average winning bid was $72 / night."

That data would create some value for me. But as it is now, I just see a list of hotels in the area I'm headed for, which might or might not show up for me on PL / Hotwire, with their lowest published (non-opaque) rates showing. The organic reports on biddingfortravel.com, which can be scanned in less than 60 seconds, are more strategically useful.

ozeboy1

Hey crhptic, the dates input allows you to instantly check Hotwire, the hotel site and the price comparison site. We are also working on getting access to Hotwire which would allow us to show only the timely relevant hotels.

BearX220 - your suggestion is simply excellent. This is exactly where we are heading with this product, and although we did not think about simplifying the input into: "San Francisco, 4-star, June 25-27"- its a brilliant suggestion that is sure worth a deeper thought.

Any other ideas you may have? please be as wild as it gets, we highly appreciate this input.

Romelle

I put in Campanile Nice Aéroport, NCE, and 5/25/2010-5/272010.

I got back a lengthy error message starting with:

[SQLException]
Could not execute query [Native Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'AND ( hh.name like '%Campanile Nice Aéroport%' OR hh.displayname like '%Campani' at line 1] [User Info: SELECT hh.id as id, hh.name as name, hh.stars as star

Romelle

Colfax

Congratulations on your new venture, ozeboy1.

As disclosure I give bidding advice at BetterBidding.com on a volunteer basis. My views here are my own though. I don't represent BetterBidding or its owner.

I haven't explored all of ibidlow yet but I just test drove the "Hotwire Hotel Discovery" function, searching Los Angeles for 2/20/10, 2 adults. I enter my parameters and get back a list of potential Hotwire hotels by name with their associated Hotwire icons.

The thing that immediately jumps out at me is that the Hotwire icons you report don't match any reports for the same hotels at BetterBidding, going back to 2003. I checked ten of your icon sets for ten hotels and not a single one matched any prior documented report.

For example:

For 2/20 Hotwire offers a 4.5* in Beverly Hills-West Hollywood zone with these icons: Restaurant, Pool, Fitness, Highspeed, Business Center. I go to BetterBidding's Hotel List and find those icons are a match for the Sofitel.

But when I do the same search at ibidlow I'm told the Sofitel is a potential 4.5* and its icons are: Pool, Highspeed, Fitness, Golf, Business Center, Childrens Activities, Shuttle.

Sofitel has never been reported on BetterBidding with those icons before. A person who wants Sofitel and uses ibidlow for guidance would get the impression that Hotwire's 4.5* offering was something other than Sofitel, which isn't true. What's more Sofitel doesn't have an airport shuttle.

Where do your Hotwire icon lists come from? Are they reports from actual users? I'm doubting that because your lists assign an Airport Shuttle icon to Hilton Checkers, Omni, Westin, Kyoto Grand, and Downtown Marriott, and none of those hotels has an airport shuttle. Your site also assigns a Resort icon to the Downtown Marriott and Hollywood Heights Hotel, neither of which is a resort.

I wasn't cherry picking your site to find mistakes. I searched the first 5 hotels in your Hollywood list and the first 5 hotels in your Downtown LA list, skipping none, and 9 of 10 included at least one icon for an amenity that the hotel doesn't have.

ozeboy1

Romelle - many thanks, we'll fix that asap.
Colfax - thanks for the warm welcome and above all for the detailed feedback. You are right about the Sofitel description which is ultimately different (no Golf, Shuttle, Children activity program on this hotel). This is a database error that we are fixing at this very moment.

* Update: the Hotwire error is now fixed and the lists should be back in right order. Please let me know if this is not the case.

Roger

Getting a little OT here, it is the norm for most countries outside the US, not just for 'certain people'.No, please not. Perhaps the site is international?

lo2e

Priceline and Hotwire are US-based websites, so anyone using either site is going to see Sunday first. That's why, IMO, the same should be true on iBidlow.