Priceline - what am I doing wrong??

[HomeDepotGirl RI]

Have heard a bunch of you saying you went through priceline for your precruise hotel and for the life of me I can't figure it out :(

 

I go into priceline and click "name your own price click here" get to the page and do "step 1" enter my dates. "step 2" choose where I want to stay and it gives me a list of neighborhoods...I check one of them and go onto "step 3" and pick the star rating. "step 4" enter a price I want to pay.

 

next page goes onto say they will pick a hotel for me in my star rating...I enter my credit card #.

 

What if I want a specific hotel and enter my own price??? where is that feature. I don't want to just give them my credit card # for an unknown hotel.

 

what am I doing wrong? everyone is saying they are getting great deals at certain hotels I want to stay at but can't find how to do that...I feel so dumb...LOL Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Jeanette

[Bequia]

What if I want a specific hotel and enter my own price??? where is that feature. I don't want to just give them my credit card # for an unknown hotel. Jeanette

 

Jeanette, Your out of luck, you do not have the option of picking your own hotel. That's the whole concept of PL whether it be for airlines, car rentals, or hotels.

 

Exact hotel is shown immediately after purchase. Hotel will be from either a national hotel chain or a preferred independent hotel partner.

 

For additional help check out http://betterbidding.com/ and http://p070.ezboard.com/bpricelineandexpediabidding

 

It would be nice to know what your bidding on, I've gotten stuck with some real lemons when I've bid on a 3* hotel, now I bid nothing less then 4*. Good luck.

[HomeDepotGirl RI]

Thank you very much for your help!

 

Jeanette

[Dgonza]

Jeannette, let me just add that if you do your homework and read through the material on www.biddingfortravel.com, then you can get a pretty good idea what you are going to get. Dont assume though you have to be open to any hotel. For example I bid on a 3 star ft lauderdale beach area. The lowest price per night was the bahia mar at $249 per night, the next lowest price was the Sheraton Yankee trader for $339 per night, then there was the Hyatt Regency pier 66 for $389 per night. Well I had lowballed priceline for a few days, and took advantage of the free rebids(you'll learn how to get these on bidding for travel site) The day before I had bid a maximum of $135...that was my limit. Well the next day I started over and started low again since prices change all the time. I bid $130 and they counteroffered me. Said if I upped my price $22 they would accept my offer.....I declined thecounter offer (trick learned from bidding for travel) and I upped my price $10 instead and got accepted. I ASSUMED I was going to get the Bahia Mar since they had the cheapest rate....Remember what I said about assuming though.....I didnt get Bahia Mar I ended up getting the more expensive Sheraton Yankee trader...I was pretty happy. I would have been Happy either way. I had a really really good idea that I was going to get bahia mar, sheraton yankee trader, hyatt 66, or double tree. IF you want a "certain" hotel then, well you can just "hope" you get what you want and dont be disappointed if it doesnt happen or if you want to narrow down the search and get an idea of what hotel you might get then use bidding for travel to do your homework then go to priceline.

[ultimatemaniaccruiser]

With hotwire.com you can get some great deals AND you can make educated guesses as to what hotel you're booking. At Hotwire they tell you the facilities the hotel has and based on reports on this site, better bidding, and bidding for travel you can determine what hotel it is.

[maxs mom]

I never could get Priceline to accept any bids, but I went over to Hotwire and got a great deal in Vancouver. Hotwire was great and you can tell pretty much what hotels you are dealing with.

[BlueHerons]

Have heard a bunch of you saying you went through priceline for your precruise hotel and for the life of me I can't figure it out :(

 

Jeanette

 

Jeanette, you really need to spend a couple of hours reading www.BiddingForTravel.com and www.BetterBidding.com as the time you sacrifice will pay off tenfold.

[Froufie]

I agree w/the Hotwire comments - I was able to 'determine' that I was bidding on the Holiday Inn based on the description (for $98) and did not want to spend $145 on the 'other' hotel which I also discovered was the Marriott Biscayne Bay!

 

Good luck.

 

Froufie