Median standard price reported by Priceline was $169 or so.
$50 initial bid for 4*
$70 second bid, added 3.5* (accepted, $88 including tax)
Standard rate for same date at this hotel was $199.
Note, the Philly hotel list on this board says the hotel is "3.5* (formerly 4*)" but Priceline currently shows this hotel as 4-stars again.
This is quite a bit above the ~$60 others have been getting, and still above a previous poster who bid two weeks ago for almost the same dates and paid $85.
One reason for the higher price could be the Space Shuttle launch on 1 November.
As the "previous poster" I can say that you're probably right. We'll be attending the launch of STS-133 and spending the remaining time at Disney. Cape Canaveral is going to be very busy.
Bid on 9/26/2010
Initial bid $70 (at 4-star level, zone 1 only), rejected.
Second bid accepted at $85 (added zone 4, which had no 4-star properties).
Will probably have to pay additional resort fee ($20/night) but this is a huge discount over the lowest posted rate of $283/night for the same stay.
How far in advance to bid on PL?
in Priceline Tips
Posted
Hotels and airlines use highly sophisticated software for revenue management. This software is capable of forecasting 365 or more days into the future, with relatively high accuracy, how many rooms of a particular room type (standard, suite, etc.) will be booked on each date and how far in advance the booking is made. These forecasts are based on highly statistical models that take into account years of booking history for each property.
A hotel is more likely to publish a deal on PRICELINE or HOTWIRE when the actual bookings expected for some number of days prior to the stay is lower than what is predicted/expected. The number of bookings allowed under such a deal is likely to be only enough to make up for the shortfall between actual and expected bookings. Once the bookings match the forecast, the deals will be retracted unless actual bookings continue to dip.
Because you don't know the date ranges that apply to these various periods, it makes it very difficult to guess or intuit when a property will put its rooms "on sale". Further conflicting the matter is that the software can also calculate a "cost to serve" a particular reservation at a particular time.
Logically, consumers assume that the costs for a room are rather fixed and that any offer "above cost" should be money in the bank for the hotel. So why shouldn't they offer the rooms? Based on the forecasting information previously described, the software can show revenue managers how making a guaranteed sale now may actually prevent a more profitable sale of the same room at a later date. So it's not just a question of does the hotel make a profit, but instead how much profit given what the property expects to happen between now and the date you wish to stay there.
The simple fact is, due to the advanced software in use, as you get closer to the date of your stay there's no guarantee that rates will decrease. In fact, to get a deal, you're generally betting on the general public to not do what the statistical models predict. Otherwise, all else equal, you should expect rates to rise as you get closer to the date of your stay because the properties want to capture a premium price from the people who need to book that one last room on exactly those date(s).
And the same can be said for the airlines. They have a lot more data than we do, and it's hard to beat their data.