Fear of the unknown...

[Alex Franke]

Anyone ever booked on Priceline.com?

We tried it on a whim and hesitated a little while before clicking the "book my room" button... sooo many unknowns... Where will it be? Will there be all kinds of crazy fees? Will we have to pay for parking? Will they have double beds and room for the kids?

But we took a chance, clicked the button and ended up getting an $85 room about 1/2 mile from our destination for $50. Pretty cool!

[herb fellows]

We've also done it on a whim and made out ok.. If you don't have anything that is a must in mind, and are the kind of person who can go with the flow, it usually works out in my experience. After all, I guess if they were selling garbage they would be out of business by now. News travels fast about anything associated with vacations, because a bad experience can ruin the whole time for you, especially if you have to live with it for a week or two.

[LCHIEN]

i tried it last time I went to Austin. Got a $120 room for $80, bidding the night before.
I picked an area in which I figured there weren't any bad hotels, near an upscale suburban mall.

One thing I wondered, did I bid too much if they accepted my first bid???

should you start really low (say 50% of typical internet rack rates as found on Hotels.com for instance) and work up by $10 increments?
You never really know if you hit an off weekday (no conventions in town) or a hot weekday (two or more conventions in town).

[Cochese]

You can eliminate a lot of the unknown about bidding sites by doing some snooping beforehand.

http://biddingfortravel.yuku.com/ is a great site for Priceline bidders.

www.betterbidding.com is another one.

Basically, you can almost always figure out what hotel it's going to be by reading other's experiences before and while you do it, and there's a lot less unknown in the process.

Clark Howard is the master at this, you can find a bunch of tips at his website.

[Uncle Cracker]

I've used Priceline for hotels twice, but I really was 95% sure which hotel I was getting beforehand, due to the fact that there was only one 4-star hotel in the immediate area in both cases, hence only one possible outcome... I saved about 70% both times, as I recall.

[Alex Franke]

should you start really low (say 50% of typical internet rack rates as found on Hotels.com for instance) and work up by $10 increments?

We offered 50% of the "median retail price" (listed by Priceline and seemed actually a bit low) for hotels in the area we chose and didn't get a match. Then we had an opportunity to increase our offer by $10 and try again. We increased our offer to $50 and were accepted. Bargain hunter that I am, I immediately went to the hotel website and saw that their current rate for the same weekend was $85.

It sounds like typically they only let you make an offer once a day unless maybe the hotels are really trying to move rooms or your asking price is pretty close.

[dbhost]

I've never been able to get any deals on Priceline. They always seem to want to charge through the bidding what I would pay using Orbitz....

I have tried this for Hotels in Portland Oregon, Phoenix Arizona, Dallas and San Antonio Texas...

[sailor55330]

I've used priceline for cars. Since you designate that you are picking up at a given airport, the chances are pretty high that you will be with a national company. I got a full size (ford taurus) in Miami last fall for $12 a day. Hertz wanted 54. The rental was from Budget.

As far as hotels, I'd rather know where I'm staying, plus as someone said, Orbitz and others will get you basicially the same price and tell you where you are exactly.

I don't like Priceline for flights. All they give you is the day of departure. No times, schedules, layovers, etc. The one time I used them, we ended up with more layover time than actual airtime. That was a few years ago, so things may have changed.

[woodturner]

Anyone ever booked on Priceline.com?

I usually find better pricing on Hotwire. I did recently book a hotel through Priceline, though - the $10/off per night coupon made it worthwhile. Rack rate on the 4 star hotel I got is $250 in a major East coast city. Really can't complain about the $35/night I paid. Hotwire was $55/night, best other web price was over $100/night.

[jziegler]

I used it once and did pretty well. I got a "4 star" hotel (their ratings tend to be a bit inflated) in Wakiki for $72 a night (price on the back of the door was up to $300, other internet prices were in the $150+ range). I normally like to know where I will be staying and pick the hotel, but it worked well in this case.

Their pricing if you just book through them, rather than name your own price, does not seem to be anything great.

I did use some of the advice on betterbidding.com or one of those other sites. There are methods to use that can help out.

Jim