I've become a big fan of Priceline for hotels only. I agree that using them for airfares is too restrictive.

I've used them for hotels 4 times since late July and have been very happy with the results. Each time I've bid on a 4 star hotel (Boston, San Diego, Denver and New York City), and we've reaped savings up to $125 per night off the lowest published rate.

I'm keeping track of every winning Priceline hotel bid I learn about (up to about 20 so far) and it's really amazing some of the bargains some people have reaped.

Last week, I decided to start a Yahoo Club to discuss Priceline winning bids. If you have something to share, please join in at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/pricelinedeals

Hey Sheryl -- it's about time you showed up. Welcome!

Regards,

Ken Hamer

Thanks, Ken. Have you used Priceline.com for a hotel stay? If you have, I hope you'll share your experience.

I had a good experience in getting
decent prices for travel at Priceline.

I recently got 3 tks sfo-yyz-sfo around
DEC 28th returning the following
Sunday morning for $250 RT each. It
was on AC (direct non-stop flights
each way). Better than most consolidator fares or published fares at that time.

I am an elite traveller in many
airlines ( 4-12 segments a week)
and am not too concerned about restricted
fare tickets. Haven't travelled yet (still
months away) but will let you know
how it goes.

My wife needed to travel from Washington, DC to Cincinatti at the last minute to visit a sick relative. Best fare I could find was $518. Sent a bid to Priceline for $175 and was accepted. She said her flights were full as well.

Maybe we just got lucky but It worked for us.

Stayed at Marriott Marquis in NYC for $125/nt Sept 6 and 7....pretty good rate, but I didn't want to be in Times Square. Priceline should break its "Midtown" hotel into Midtown-North and Midtown-South. Big Difference between staying at 46th and 56th!

Still I would use again if published prices were too high. BTW, I did get Marriott Rewards credit for the stay!

I have heard that priceline.com now allows one to increase the (rejected) bid. Is this true?

Thanks for posting your winning bid at the Marriott Marquis. Is that hotel rated 3 star or 4 star by Priceline?

As to your complaint about the zone, well, it seems as though you should have bid on either West Side or Upper East Side. Of course, you could have gotten a place too far in the other direction, but you wouldn't have the commotion of the Times Square area.

Just so you'll know, I'm aware of winning bids at the Sheraton Manhattan and the Sheraton Hotel and Towers (both 3 star) which are located in the low 50s. Both were for weekend stays at $80.

You've always been able to increase a rejected bid, but you also must change the star level and/or location (zone).

To make sure nothing has changed, I just put in a $20 bid for a 4 star room in NYC for tomorrow night. Not only was the amount surely to be rejected, I know that NYC is sold out for tomorrow night.

So my bid was just rejected, and accompanied by the same language as has always accompanied a rejected bid:

TRY AGAIN RIGHT NOW TO GET A HOTEL ROOM IN NEW YORK, NY! If you can change one or more of the numbered items below, we'd be happy to resubmit your request right now. There's no cost to try your request again, and you'll have an answer in just one hour by e-mail.

Change at least one of the numbered items below, then click "Next".

Sheryl, thanks to you I gave Priceline a whirl today and I have to report that I'm thrilled with the results.

I've been trying for about a week now to find a room in NYC at the end of Oct. for under $200, and not having much luck. And of course, no property is taking UA hotel certs. Well, none that I want to stay at. It took four bids at Priceline, but I finally ended up with a room at the Marriott at the World Trade Center for $150/night. Not bad.

For anyone wondering about the specifics of my bid, I selected a 4-star hotel in downtown Manhattan only and starting the bidding at a ridiculously low $80. Since I didn't want to revise choice of property, area of town or dates of stay in any way, I kept submitting new bids until it was accepted. My intermediate bids were $120 and $140.

I'm beginning to think that using Priceline for 4-star hotels may be one of the best travel bargains out there. Of course, it's not for everyone. I would have preferred to stay at a Hilton, but at this rate, I'm not too bothered about it. Plus, the fact that Marriott gives Rewards points even for Priceline stays is just icing on the cake.


[This message has been edited by essxjay (edited 09-14-1999).]

Thank you for the compliment, and I'm in total agreement with what you said about 4 star winning bids through Priceline being the best travel bargain out there. The winning bid I'm most proud of was for a 4 star hotel in Denver with a winning bid of $100 when the going rate was $225.

In fact, of the people whose travel arrangements I handle at work, they will *only* allow me to bid on 4 star hotels!!

I hope you'll stop by and share your Priceline experience on my Yahoo Club:
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/pricelinedeals

Oh, and is it correct to assume that your stay is during the week, not on a weekend?

Priceline considers the Marriott Marquis to be 4-star...I don't really agree, especially with the Sheratons rated 3-star. I think the Intercontinental/Waldorf/Parker Meridien/etc. Are really 4-star. Interestingly, Priceline claims that no hotels in Midtown that it uses are 5-star.

Thanks for the follow up, SD Flyer. FWIW, I've never found any city where Priceline offers hotels in the 5 star category, so I would suspect that at this time, they don't offer any.

Honolulu and Scottsdale both have 5 star properties. It seems like Priceline uses a rating system very similar to that of the Mobil Travel Guides, which means that very few hotels qualify as 5 stars.

I know there's a topic about this somewhere, but it's relevant here so I'll throw it in ...

I just used Expedia's new Hotel Matcher service, which is like Priceline for Hotels.

Same deal, I could select the area of the city I wanted, a star level, etc.

First of all, I couldn't even use Priceline for this bid, they were not accepting bids for tomorrow night when I tried (around 10:30 PM ET), but Expedia was ...

I wanted to stay close to National Airport here in DC (I need to switch hotels because I'm not expensing the hotel tomorrow night). I looked at the areas/star levels and I tried for 4-stars in Alexandria (no 4-stars in Crystal City) for $65/night (plus 15% taxes), got rejected. Here's where Expedia really shines, they tell you if your bid was accepted or rejected immediately, no waiting an hour or so, which is definitely more convenient for trying different combinations of locations/price/quality.

Next I tried $60/night for a 3-star hotel (the cheapest hotel I could find was the Courtyard for $71.10/night with AAA discount, which I'm sure is a 3-star (it's a very nice Courtyard)) so my bid definitely was not that unreasonable.

That bid was accepted immediately, Hilton Crystal City (conveniently two blocks from the Hyatt Crystal City I'm staying at now).

So far, so good, and more importantly they are giving me a $25 credit to my credit card for using their service, so my cost for the room will only be $44 for the night ... definitely not too bad!