Priceline Hotel: Vague Room Choices

[feliciash]

I haven't been on Priceline since Jun 2014. I'm now planning a trip for March. I've been checking the Express deals for my dates, 28Mar-01Apr, for 4 1/2 star hotels in MTE. I used to be able to guess which hotel it was by the rating, amenities and bed choices. Now the bed choices are very vague. Instead of saying studio queen, or studio king (just examples) it says room will be assigned at check in. I'm not asking for help identifying certain hotels. My question is has anyone else noticed this? Is Priceline intentionally doing this in order to make guessing harder? I apologize if this has already discussed.

[thereuare]

Can you please start by following-up your previous Priceline Express NYC thread with whatever you ended up doing for that trip.

Please remember to follow-up your threads with your wins/decisions as you make them (even if you don't ultimately use PRICELINE / HOTWIRE, cancel the trip, book direct, etc) as this help keep the board better organized and more useful for everyone... as well as being a courtesy to anyone who took the time to help with your travel plans.

My question is has anyone else noticed this?

Yes, the descriptions have become more vague for some properties, while other properties still remain more descriptive than others. Nobody other than PRICELINE can speak for the reasoning behind the change, but i think it's a combination of a few issues at work:

1) when the PRICELINE EXPRESS product first launched they simply took room descriptions that they had and displayed them. As the product matured, they slowly have been updating their database to show alternate/less descriptive room types.

2) when the product first launched very few hotels showed any type of room description. Over time more hotels have chosen to show room types, and these new room descriptions are more vague. So while the original few hotels that showed descriptions still show 'good' descriptions, more and more hotels are now showing descriptions and these are more vague. The ratio of new hotels showing vague descriptions vs. the number of old hotels showing detailed descriptions has increased, and therefore we're seeing more hotels show vague descriptions (whereas the actual number of detailed description hotels haven't changed, the percentage of hotels showing detailed descriptions has gone down dramatically simply because more hotels are showing 'vague' descriptions).

Thanks in advance for following up your previous NYC thread and please use this tread to report whatever you do for, or if you need help with, this March/April trip.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases... or thru our sister site MAPS and HOTELS.com for your regular rate purchases.