Report your Priceline successes discusion area.

pcg2001

Hi,

has anyone pricelined Canterbury? It shows 2 stars only, which I am guessing is the Holiday Inn Express. I can get this cheap via the wonderful links by Obikut, but I would like a really cheap stay!! I am feeling adventurous! Any experience there?

blindman

Though not a reliable guide Priceline's "normal" travel agents side list hotels in Canterbury

"Some of these may be on the bidding side and you can see that the HEX is rated 3* by PL.

A 2* on PL is usually not a good idea as the hotel is usually a dump :eek: and the savings over booking conventionally are not worth the risk .

I doubt if there is any bidding history

pcg2001

blindman wrote: »

Though not a reliable guide Priceline's "normal" travel agents side list hotels in Canterbury

"Some of these may be on the bidding side and you can see that the HEX is rated 3* by PL.

A 2* on PL is usually not a good idea as the hotel is usually a dump :eek: and the savings over booking conventionally are not worth the risk .

I doubt if there is any bidding history

Thanks blindman.

Quick note I was looking at the US Priceline, and the only starred hotel is the HIE and it is referenced as 2 stars. On the UK site, there are many starred hotels, and yes HIE is 3 stars. Weird. Also, on the US website it is possible to bid whereas in the UK one, I can't see canterbury listed. Anyway, I think I'd better leave priceline for other destinations and bigger savings.

blindman

pcg2001 wrote: »

Thanks blindman.

Quick note I was looking at the US Priceline, and the only starred hotel is the HIE and it is referenced as 2 stars. On the UK site, there are many starred hotels, and yes HIE is 3 stars. Weird. Also, on the US website it is possible to bid whereas in the UK one, I can't see canterbury listed. Anyway, I think I'd better leave priceline for other destinations and bigger savings.

I'd noticed those anomalies too, which is odd as they supposedly use the saem database of hotels.

I did find another strange one a long while back where the UK site for a US city (can't remember where) had different bidding zones than the US one.


IMHOP PL works best with 4-5* hotels

Kerry_Anne_3

I just booked a weekend trip to Manchester for two nights in November.

I made three bids for a 4 star hotel starting with £30, £35 and £40 (all excl taxes) - the £40 bid was accepted and I'll be staying at Renaissance Manchester hotel for the total amount of £97 for both nights.

The hotel website and hotels.com are advertising the room at £89 per night. I am making a saving of £80!

Thank you money saving expert!

ferf1223

I forgot to post this here when we first booked it.

4* O'Hare Airport (not O'Hare South) - £40 + tax = £50.59 = Hyatt Regency.

It was brilliant. We'd originally booked a 2* hotel (where we had stayed before and it was fine for one night) for a higher price, and decided to take a chance with Priceline...very happy with the outcome and cancelled the other hotel straight away. The Hyatt booked direct for the night we stayed was more than double the price.

This was about 6 weeks out - so possibly could have done better closer to the time, but were most pleased with

nikkig_3

Yet another priceline success! wanted 5 star in London for 8th January for 2 nights, put in a bid of £80 for Mayfair, got a counter bid of £103 so added Bloomsbury not successful so then added Regents Park and upped bid to £90 and success! got the Landmark! so am very happy with this - made a tiny boob with my adding areas and think that would have got the Hilton on Park Lane if I had have accepted the counter bid, we are staying there in December via Priceline, so will be nice to try the Landmark in January.

danant

• Destination: Bruges
• Type of accommodation: 4 Star
• How many extra daily bids did you have available: 4ish
• How much were your 2nd/3rd etc & final bids: Started at £35 and ended up winning at £52
• And then write your Priceline hotel booking story After my research I found there were only 2 hotels in Bruges through PL so knew what to expect. Ended up booking the Crown Plaza which is approx 102 Euros p/night on their website and I'm only paying £170 inc taxes for 3 nights travelling mid-december ;-)

feesh

• Destination: Brussels
• Type of accommodation: 4 Star
• How many extra daily bids did you have available: I only bid once!
  
• How much were your 2nd/3rd etc & final bids: Started at £35 and to my surprise this was accepted immediately!
  
• And then write your Priceline hotel booking story I didn't do much research into this one - I just felt like having a bit of a play to see what I could get between meetings at work! To my shock, my first bid of £35 was accepted for a 3 night stay for 2 people in Brussels around Valentine's day. The hotel we have been allocated is the NH Atlanta Brussels which wouldn't exactly have been my first choice, but with a total price for 3 nights of £120 incl. taxes, it is a LOT cheaper than ANYTHING else we were even considering on hotel comparison websites (we were expecting to pay around £200 for the 3 nights in a 4* hotel, even including any special offers we could get).
  

mrdeepee

Destination: Bristol
Type of accommodation: 4 star hotel
How many extra daily bids did you have available: Not Required
How much were your bids: First bid of £35 accepted

I got the Bristol Marriott Hotel City Centre for my planned one night stay on 16/01/2010. £45.77 including taxes. Cheapest price for the same hotel on other sites was £74.

Does anyone know how PL works out the taxes, because having used PL a few times before I've noticed the percentage of the bid price that make up the taxes range from 24 - 30%. I was a bit surprised that the tax added to a bid of £35 was as high as £10.77 because in a previous trip to the U.S., I only had a tax of £10.67 added to a £45 bid.