Priceline for Hotels - the best and worst kept secret of online travel

For a while, Priceline was a prolific advertiser, with William Shatner bombarding all of us with his message about naming your own price for anything: air, hotel, rental car, and even groceries. Priceline has since developed a more conventional travel site attached to its old name-your-own-price (NYOP) model, and has been advertising the new feature of seeing a price before you buy. Of course, this is what every other site has always done, and Priceline is no better at it. What Priceline does better than all other web sites is help you find hotels at prices far better than any alternative that I have seen. It also occasionally gives you the best deal on rental cars (though Hotwire is frequently just as good a deal, and with less hassle).

The bottom line: Priceline is the best place to get a hotel room in the US, in most major cities, if you're not overly concerned about brand.

The hard part is that you never know how much to bid. Priceline gives you suggestions, but how do you know they're valid, and not just encouragement to bid a number that makes them a lot of money? The fact is that Priceline buys the hotel room and resells it to you at the price you offer (if it sells), and they make the difference, so it's in their interest to convince you to bid more than you have to. So you cannot trust their suggestions.

There are two sites that provide you with historical data on Priceline bids and results:

BiddingForTravel.com
BetterBidding.com

Using these sites, and the tips below, you can usually save 50-60% over the best alternative prices on hotel rooms in US cities (and some outside the US).

1. Go to Priceline and enter the relevant data for your hotel stay (city, dates, people, rooms). You'll see which neighborhoods are available (if any). You can now go to the above referenced sites (BiddingForTravel.com and BetterBidding.com) to find out what the recent results are showing, see the lists of hotels that are coming up in the neighborhoods that interest you, etc. Also look at Expedia or Hotels.com to see what the general availability and price range of your target hotels are, on the dates you will be traveling. Then check Hotwire to see whether there is much availability of wholesale rooms. (Normally, if Hotwire has rooms then Priceline does, and vice versa.)
   
2. When you know the neighborhood and star level you want, you need to plan your bidding strategy. Priceline allows multiple bids if you change your neighborhood or star level, so you can plan out your bidding to optimize your results.
   
3. The most useful tactic is to use phantom neighborhoods. For example, if you're bidding on a 4-star hotel in neighborhood X, then you can add neighborhood Y to your second bid, if neighborhood Y has no 4-star hotels in the Priceline system, and effectively have a free re-bid. So before you bid, make a list of the phantom neighborhoods you can add to your bid to get free re-bids. Once you see how many free re-bids you have at your disposal, you know how aggressive you can be with your bidding.
4. If you have no free re-bids available, then you might want to look at the high end of the successful bids accepted in your neighborhood. You also want to look at the high end of the range if Hotwire doesn't show much of a price advantage. On the other hand if you have a lot of free re-bids, and Hotwire shows good availability, then start low and re-bid until your price is accepted. Don't be afraid to be aggressive!