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The new "Extend Your Stay" feature


LoneStar
By LoneStar,
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Has anyone fiddled around with this yet? It used to be that you could only add nights up to the number you were already booked (like a 1 night stay couldn't add 2 additional nights). Have they changed that? And is priceline fair about its additional fees when you use this service?

The reason I ask is that I've got some family members thinking about booking a 9-night resort stay in Arizona. I'm pretty confident I know what hotel they're going to get (or at least that it will be very nice!) but, as everyone knows, you can never be 100% sure about anything on priceline. I'd like to offer them the option of booking 1 night to make sure it's what I think it is. If I could then add the additional 8 nights for, say, only $5 or $10 more in fees than it would have cost me to initially book a 9-night stay, this may be an attractive "insurance policy" for them.

Thanks for the help.

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I'd like to offer them the option of booking 1 night to make sure it's what I think it is. If I could then add the additional 8 nights for, say, only $5 or $10 more in fees than it would have cost me to initially book a 9-night stay, this may be an attractive "insurance policy" for them.

this would be a great exercise!! I have to believe this add a night feature, as well as the other two recent changes (rebidding in 24 hours and accepting same day bids up to 11pm) were designed to increase Priceline's revenue. Would you get a better deal by bidding all 8 nights together or winning one night and adding 7? :)

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Seaparate bids will always raise your overall cost unless you luck into gettting a lower winning bid for some of the days than for others and it ends up offsetting the extra fees. The priceline "processing" charge was $5.95 last tie I kew but now they bundle it into "taxes and fees" - it may even be higher than that. Every separate winning bid incurs the charge.

IMHO it's pretty risky to bid for one night, hope to get the "extend your stay" option and then expect that the nights you want will be available and at the same price.

This condition:

Availability depends on the hotel and is not guaranteed;

spells out the risk - the fact that they offer it means only that there were most likely some nights availabel either before or after the nights you won on your initial bid. That availability could be at either end of the trip and can change by the hour.

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IMHO it's pretty risky to bid for one night, hope to get the "extend your stay" option and then expect that the nights you want will be available and at the same price.

Well, it depends. In this situation it would be a bid that matches the availability of a resort hotel on hotwire. While nothing is totally predictable with priceline, if the resort is available at a constant price for all the nights on hotwire, the odds that it will be available for a constant price on priceline for the remaining nights are extremely high.

Looking at the screen shot from the related link, it does look like priceline has indeed now changed the "Extend your stay" feature to be more customer friendly (and bring in more dough!). As long as your stay does not exceed 21 days, I see no restriction that indicates your additional days have to be no more numerous than your original booking. So I think this "trick" would work, albeit one that has limited utility. In addition to my situation, I could see using it where there's a hotel in a zone that you really don't want to spend your entire vacation at. This way you could "test bid." Also, you could conceivably use priceline vacations and hotwire to see if you could figure out which night(s) during your prospective stay the "bad hotel" was unavailable and bid those nights on priceline hoping to then "extend your stay" at the "good" hotel.

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I guess my biggest concern would be how much would the hotel charge you to extend your stay? Lets say you win a bid for a stay that will commence in 30 days. Will the extend your stay rate be the same rate at the time of your bid or will the rate increase a few days before check out?

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I recently helped a family member who won a bid for one nite for $120... clicked the extend your stay option (for one additional nite) and was given the option to extend the say for $191 for each nite. I didn't see the screen so i can't comment if it was actually increasing the cost of the stay for each nite as told to me (or just for that 2nd nite), but still the price difference was enough to not make it feasible to extend the stay thru this means.

Please use this HOTWIRE and these PRICELINE LINKS: HOTELS, CAR RENTALS, and AIRFARE to begin your travel purchases

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As long as your stay does not exceed 21 days, I see no restriction that indicates your additional days have to be no more numerous than your original booking.

When you go to the screen where you would extend your stay, there are drop-down fields from which you can pick a new check-in or check-out date. The lists are limited to a number of days not exceeding your original booking. So if you originally booked 1 night, you would only be able to add 1 night.

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here are the conditions to the Add a Night

It's easy to add hotel nights to your request. Just choose additional check-in or check-out dates below and we'll search the hotel you were originally booked in for the additional nights. If rooms are available, we'll book them immediately and charge the credit card you used to make your original offer.

The following conditions apply to Adding Nights:

Availability depends on the hotel and is not guaranteed;

If your request is accepted, you must check-in with the Front Desk at your hotel to confirm your new reservation/room assignment prior to the check-out date of the original stay, even if you are already in the midst of your stay.

You may be required to move rooms for the additional nights;

You may only add additional nights to this priceline hotel reservation one time;

If the credit card you used to make your original offer has been deleted from your profile, you will not be able to add nights to this reservation;

If your original offer was for multiple rooms, nights will be added to all rooms;

The option to Add Nights is only available up until 11am on the date of check-out.

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I just used the Extend Your Stay option for a trip to NYC this past weekend. I had won the Millenium Hilton (across from WTC site) for a Sat/Sun night stay several weeks ago and decided about a week before the trip to add Friday night.

Sure enough.... due apparently to adequate availability it allowed me to add the night at the same rate I paid originally ($121 per night).

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  • 4 years later...

Probably for the same reasons PRICELINE doesn't let you bid for more than double occupancy :)

There could be dozens of reasons for both of these situations, but the easiest explanation is the time/expense to develop the backend to allow for the new feature to work within the existing programming architecture, and then getting all the hotels to learn a new way of doing things (ie- creating a new way for them to load their rates into the system)

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases.

Please use this HOTWIRE and these PRICELINE LINKS: HOTELS, CAR RENTALS, and AIRFARE to begin your travel purchases

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  • 2 months later...

I tried to add on today and was rejected, then offered a rate of $189 for Sat on a room I paid 79 for on a Friday night. I did expect to get rejected, however, some new restrictions have been added, see below :

Please review the following when Adding Nights:

Availability is not guaranteed.

Nights will be added to all rooms on a multiple-room request.

Nights can be added either to the beginning or the end of your original request, not both.

Total amount of nights added can be up to the number of nights on your original request.

You may add nights to this request one time.

The option to Add Nights is only available up until 11am on the date of check-out.

In rare cases the hotel may require you to move rooms.

Your new Add Nights request will be booked as a separate request. Your original reservation remains unchanged.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases.

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I tried to add on today and was rejected, then offered a rate of $189 for Sat on a room I paid 79 for on a Friday night.
Can you please add your win to the board.
...some new restrictions have been added...
The items you've bolded above have always been part of the 'add a nite' feature... nothing new there.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases.

Please use this HOTWIRE and these PRICELINE LINKS: HOTELS, CAR RENTALS, and AIRFARE to begin your travel purchases

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  • 2 months later...

Priceline just recently made a change to its Add a Night policy and did not post its new policy so that winning bidders were aware.

A friend won a December hotel stay in late July. When he went to see if adding a night was possible -- flights that would accommodate opened up -- the bidding landing page indicated that it was not possible to even try because it was more than 120 days from the original booking. And to basically not try contacting customer service because the reps have the same retail booking access as us (as far as landing the same hotel).

I assisted him in contacting PL customer service and the response was again about the 120 days making the extend a visit inoperable. The ironic thing is that the day it was tried was exactly (by dumb luck or unluck) 120 days from original booking so I helped him respond to PL with the math. When he investigated how it would work the other day (but didn't place the bid), the landing page said nothing about the 120-day rule (some ad-speak about "limited time only" to encourage the bid).

FYI to others who do some advance planning, especially if bidding successfully 4+ months prior to arrival. If anything comes out of our outreach to PL, I'll be sure to post. But thought this info might be helpful to others.

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I don't believe the 120 day rule is new... see THIS POST i made over 2 1/2 years ago where i mentioned the extend your stay needs to be made within 120 days of the original booking.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases.

Please use this HOTWIRE and these PRICELINE LINKS: HOTELS, CAR RENTALS, and AIRFARE to begin your travel purchases

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I don't believe the 120 day rule is new... see THIS POST i made over 2 1/2 years ago where i mentioned the extend your stay needs to be made within 120 days of the original booking.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases.

It's just something I've never heard of and is definitely not stated on my friend's reservation page (when you look at the res and see the "Extend a Stay" link) as a disclaimer -- only the "hurry now" kinda advertising verbiage. Now PL reps (in India?) are emailing my friend creative "counting" rationale to justify why he couldn't place the bid on the 120th day (by dumb luck, that's when he randomly attempted to link to try the bid).

I mean, the response email is hysterical -- it's like when you were a kid and a relative counted 10 9 8 7 6 backwards to count fingers and then said "plus 5" (other hand) equals 11 to impress you with funny math. Only thing on that level is when United's call center told me that, when I switched a Hawaii return award flight to a different date, the reason it left at 1030 (instead of 1130 original flight) and arrived in US at same time non-stop is that there "must be a stop but I'm not seeing exactly where" -- LOL it was called daylight savings time (warp).

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