lewisc

Thanks for fixing the bug. Assume I use IE and auto bidding:
1) Are the free rebid zones verified at the time of auto bidding?
2) Is there an option to stop auto bidding if PL gives us a counteroffer? Might make sense to tweak the bidding at that point.
3) Probably beyond the scope of your program but comparing the winning "bid" with the lowest available price available (at that time) on the hotels website is probably more useful then knowing if the bid was for a weekend or weekday stay.

biddingtraveler

Yes. It could potentially be disastrous if they weren't. You could get put into an area where you had no intention of staying!

Kind of. If you were counteroffered we tell you at the end (if you do not win) for how much it was. For most users, it doesn't make sense to stop right as a counteroffer is received, particularly when the counteroffer price is not optimal. If the counteroffer price is less than your maximum bid you will not see the message since the bidding strategy would have gotten you a better price anyways.

We sort of do this. If you win, we show you the dollar and percentage savings off published, directly on the win screen, so you don't have to do it yourself.

Also, a quick shoutout to everyone who reported that the manual bidding frame is squished/invisible in Firefox. That was a major error and it's fixed now!

lewisc

Your OP indicated your program simulates the kind of bidding that's done by many PL customers.

Some people think a counteroffer suggests a winning "bid" will result with a bid somewhere between your current bid and the counteroffer. Maybe halfway.

Depending on the number of rebids available a bidder might want to tweak the numbers. An example. My current bid is $80, the counteroffer is is $100 and the maximum bid I indicated before starting autobid is $88. I'd at least consider raising my maximum bid to $90 or $91 before using up all my rebids.

I'm not one of them but a bidder who's been trying for days, doesn't have a lot of patience, is getting concerned.....might want to just grab $100, or at least make sure his maximum is $100.

edited to add--The counter offer should probably be your new maximum. Assume your current bid is $80, counteroffer is $100 and your maximum bid is $120. Most people would reduce their hypothetical maximum bid by reducing the increment between free rebids.

jackal

Used the site tonight to bid a 4.5-star in MCO on Sunday. I used FF (forgetting that the site prefers IE) so was led to the manual walk-through, which I actually appreciated because I learned a couple of things about the art of using free rebids. (I never thought to start a new search over with a different combination of zones; I only thought to add zones to an existing bid. Yes, I'm a novice. )

I did receive a counteroffer and thought for a minute that the bid increment after I received the counteroffer was a mite too high, but I went ahead with the suggested bid anyway and won on the next bid. Still, I think I agree with some of the previous posters that there should be an "I received a counteroffer" button that adjusts the bid increments downward a bit, both in the walk-through version and automatically done during the autobid option.

Also, a reminder on the non-IE version of the site that you recommend IE for automated bidding might be helpful for newbies who just want to let you find the best price automatically. (I didn't realize until about halfway through my bids that I wasn't seeing the autobid option because I was in FF.)

Nice work, though, and after seeing how the site works through the walk-through opton, I'm confident to use the autobid version next time, especially if you finesse the counteroffer calculation a bit.

euromannn

Can anyone explain why BiddingTraveler(BT) web site has "low bid" prices higher than many winning bids on biddingfortravel web site?

I posted a winning bid of $70(tax/fee/bid==$88.40) for Vancouver, CA for downtown 4* on Jan 22, 2011. BiddingTraveler said start low bid was $108. Not even close.

Seems like BT has insufficient data to determine winning bids and you still must use other web sites to find the best bids?

I have posted above on this blog and written to BiddingTraveler but has not responded.

jabez

"Can anyone explain why ..."
BiddingTraveler has not been here for about a week. When, and if, he returns I'm sure he'll respond.

goteed1

I had a very disappointing time with this yesterday. I'm a priceline veteran, been bidding for years etc., so I was excited to take this out for a test drive.

I was bidding for a 4* in AMS central. PL works very well here with known hotels and bids. The first problem is that it just took forever to load everytime I would input the info. Finally when the Active X ran it took a good 5 minutes and when I sent the bid I got a weird message about a problem occured that they had never seen before and then sent me ahead to the PL bid page. At this point I assumed that the software was not working since I got the weird message, so I input a bid and about 2 seconds later the software took over and said my highest bid was rejected. I got an e-mail from PL saying that my input bid was rejected (which was lower than the highest bid that the software told me was rejected).

I thought I would try again with a stay in Burbank, CA but the map for the Area never fully loaded. When I tried again the software said it didn't recognize Burbank as a city. After that it wouldn't recognize any city I input except for Amsterdam.

Seems like a lot of bugs to work out.

biddingtraveler

Thanks again for all the error reports. Frankly, the hardest part of improving software is actually getting other people to tell you that it's broken.

Regarding euromann's question about bid recommendation, let me take a stab at answering. First, you'll definitely want to check the map to get the complete picture of what hotel wins have been. For example, if you're talking about Vancouver, if you selected the Downtown Vancouver location and then 4 star, you should have seen a link that says "Show me a list of hotels others have won." If you click that, you'll get a list on the right hand side of the map which shows you a lot more detail. But as for the actual bid estimation, you do have a point. Vancouver happens to be one of those cities where our data is pretty good, and it's gotten to the point where there enough rejected and accepted bids that they have roughly converged. Usually, we can get by only considering rejected bid information, because it's almost always lower than accepted bid information. But now, there's enough data to see that someone got rejected at $108, but someone else got accepted at $81, so it makes sense to more weight the accepted bids when calculating a lowball recommendation. I've tweaked the algorithm appropriately.

Goteed1, sorry you had trouble. I can assure you that this doesn't happen with everyone, but I'm also sure that isn't much comfort to you. From the situation you describe I was able to find some errors in the control that I've just now fixed and deployed, and I've added some more diagnostics. I hope you're willing to try again. There's always the live help option on the site as well (to my amazement, no one ever clicks on this!). With regards to searching problems, always make sure you pick something from the autocomplete on the homepage. Alternatively, you can access Burbank directly with http://www.biddingtraveler.com/priceline-bidding-for-travel-in-san-fernando-ca.

And thanks to lewisc about the suggestions for counteroffers. That's actually been on the list for quite some time, just haven't had time to get to feature improvements yet.. bugs take priority.

Martinex

I've been trying the biddingtraveler site just to see how it works and I've gotten some strange results. For example, using Washington DC for a one night saturday stay on 1/29/11 at a 4 star hotel, and selecting 5 non-downtown regions, the site shows these winning bids: $59, $72, $60 and then suggests that I start my bidding at $79 which is obviously above the 3 winning bids shown. Oddly it also shows a rejected bid of $89.

I changed the regions a few times and one time all three rejected bids shown were actually higher than all 3 winning bids.

Of course past bid acceptance can be effected by a variety of factors - driven up by holiday periods or conventions, perhaps down by winter weather, etc.

Still a great site, but perhaps until it logs more data it seems that suggested bids might not be too reliable.

euromannn

BiddingTraveler,
First, I enjoy your site and am providing feedback so I will only use your site
in the future for PL. But to obtain that confidence BT must be more accurate in winning PL bids.
I did use 4* deluxe, downtown Vancouver zone #3 and winning bid at $70, Jan 22, 2011.

I had previously check both areas on your site for the accepted/rejected bids and the "low/high bid" before I posted my last message.

Today your web site has changed the data:
Changed the suggested low bid from $108 to $73.
And, you now show a winning bid at $81. Unfortunately, there are multiple winning bids $66-$70 are posted on BFT for the same 4*, downtown zone..

So, why is your winning bid only $81 data....if BFT shows many between $66-$70?

I think your algorithm still needs to be tweaked as your starting low bid price at $73 is higher than many winning bids.

euromannn

goteed1,
I also experienced along delay more than 5 minutes. With the lack of up to date winning bid information I agree this site has more work before I would switch from PL.

I changed the strategy and submitted a bid which was from the recommended low to the high creating 8 bids. After 7 minutes of "loading" I just gave up.

jackal

Had trouble on the 18th with trying to use the site while onboard an AS jet with wifi. It could have been the Internet connection, but it did seem to be loading other pages fine.

I couldn't install the ActiveX control (decided to try using IE and automated bidding just to see what it did, but the control never downloaded). So I switched back to FF and tried to use the manual process.

I got far enough to confirm my initial suspicion that there weren't a lot of free rebid zones (actually, only one) for a 3* at SEA airport (the highest star level there) before I finally gave up and just used regular Priceline.com. I did use the suggested start bid of $45 and ended up with the SEA Hilton, which I thought to be a very good value. It does appear on BFT that it was won at $40 last month, though, but given the lack of free-rebid zones and that I was doing this mere hours before arriving, I'm satisfied with what was suggested to me.

leonard016

Your website is a great tool. I have some questions/suggestions regarding bidding increment.

It seems that depending on the difference between the minimum and maximum bid, the algorithm will choose different bidding increment, for example, sometimes $7 and sometimes $6. Is it possible to allow user to choose bidding increment at all? Say I want it to be $5 or even $3. For a city with 5 re-bid zones, we have as many as 32 chances to bid - should be pretty easy to allow increment lower than $6. And if the algorithm can not complete the bidding with user specified increment (either the range is too large or/and increment is too small) it simply tells the user to increase the increment or to reduce the range.

DIAFlyer

I ran into the site by accident and didn't find this thread until later.

I used it on a trip to Chicago coming up in February and it seemed to do a great job walking me through bidding using Google Chrome. Didn't know about the IE autobidding option since from the home page all I saw was the simple let's get started. Perhaps a link to some help page somewhere would be useful...

The process is neat because it is clearly capturing a lot of bidding data during each users session. I have to presume, especially after reading the thread, that the more data the site gets, the more intelligent it will be able to be about bidding.

It would be nice to see how many bidders' data points are being used for each zone, and as the number rises, perhaps for each star level. The site can't help if somewhere obscure doesn't have any data to aid in bidding, versus somewhere common like Las Vegas where it might get several hundred (hopefully thousand) winning bids to draw from. I did notice the map with some of that data my second time trying the site, again perhaps a tutorial page would help pre-answer questions.

This is an exciting improvement over biddingfortravel and betterbidding!

Kidz

hi biddingtraveler, great site! will definitely be using it in the future. but, as many have spoken here before, you need to perfect how you gather your data.

one very important thing that you must consider is the possibility of people doing the manual process but only checking it out to see how the tool works w/o actually putting in the bids. i, for one, happened to do that the other day... but i didn't realize nor stopped to think that you'd be using my clicks to update your recent data, and i suspect that i'm not the only one.

don't kid yourself, veteran users will never blindly follow you w/o testing it out for themselves first. i suspect that you've been gathering a lot, a lot of fauly data from test drivers... so, simple solution, just add a button that people could click to let you know if they're just testing out your site or if they're actually submitting bids as per your suggestions.

again, kudos! the site is great. but, yes, you need a lot more accurate data.