mrxow

Do the parking places offer weekly rates? Park your car where you are going to leave it for your trip, take their shuttle to the airport, then take the hotel shuttle to your room. Take the hotel shuttle the next day. Worst case, 6 bucks for parking for the night in the hotel. If they have a weekly rate, maybe won't cost much or anything... I have stayed at the Crown Plaza - 3* I think and fine. Got the La Quinta at 2.5 once. Nothing wrong with the place - nice breakfast, shuttle. Don't know about other 2.5 places, though. There is a street running down the backside of the Crown Plaza where you can park overnight if you can find a spot. I didn't have to pay for parking when I was there - parked on the street.

If you must have two beds, you can't use Priceline. You can look at what HOTWIRE has to offer for your dates. You can expect them to be nice hotels, no need to worry. I don't use Hotwire much, so I am not sure, but you might need to designate more than two people in the room to make sure that you get two beds. There are listings for New York hotwire hotels on this site. You can compare the amenities listed on HOTWIRE to the amenities in the New York Hotwire hotel list. You might be able to figure out which hotel it is and where it is that way. Or you can ask for help if you are unsure. The people who run the board might give you some direct booking options you might like, too. In any event, use the links to the site you want to use so that you support the board.

I had 3 priceline wins there for 2.5 and 3 star last year. Got the Embassy Suites, Springfield Suites and Holiday Inn. Embassy charged 10 bucks for parking. It was free at the other two, though the club at the Holiday Inn made for some parking troubles on a saturday night. If you are going to leave that early, you could return your car and take a shuttle back to the hotel, then take the hotel shuttle to the airport in the morning if it is available 24 hours. You could drop your luggage at the hotel and check in before you return the car. Then you might not have to worry about parking if you end up somewhere with a fee. The accepted bids for these places was in the 50-60 dollar range. Springfield suites room was very nice - brand new looking with plasma tv, full kitchen and nice decorations and is at the 2.5 star level. Of course, the Embassy Suites was nice. The Holiday in was acceptable and certainly fine for what you need. All were less than the Hotwire option you are looking at.

They seem to be only offering rooms with two double beds online. They do offer roll away beds if you don't get that or a king. It seems they are asking for $175 per room per night and up for your dates, so you got a very good price!

This person knows that one room will not work for them. The question was what chance they have of getting two rooms to accomodate them. In a pinch, they say two rooms with king sized beds will work. They would put one adult and two children in each room. Depending on the age of the kids, that seems to me a workable option. Maybe they wouldn't want to check in with the whole family in tow, though. The chances they will get either one king or two beds is very high, especially if they go 3 star or above. They might be looking at some single, smaller than king bed rooms if they go 2 or 2.5 star, but they might be able to get three of these rooms for the price of two 3 star rooms. If they do plan to go the 3 star route, while they aren't certain what their two rooms will have, they can call the hotel and ask what types of accomodations their rooms have. Or they can look at the hotel web site and see what is offered. Chances are, the hotel will tell them that the rooms either have two beds or a king, in which case they will know that in a worst case scenario their needs will be minimally met. If, on the off chance, the hotel tells them there do exist rooms on their property with one bed smaller than a king, they can decide whether to take the chance or try to secure another room. They asked for odds, not guarantees. The odds are very much if not overwhelmingly in their favor that they will get at least two king sized beds if they go 3 star and be adequately accomodated. They should see what they can get bidding two stars for three rooms, though. It is possible it will cost less than two 3* rooms anyhow. The odds are also very high that they will be able to get adjacent rooms and even connecting rooms if the property is equipped with them. The odds are also very high that they will be able to get rooms with two beds. They leave an adult with one or two kids in the car when they go to check in, though.

In some zones, there definitely are 2 or 2.5 star hotels that could possibly have one queen bed in them. I think I have even had a three star with one bed smaller than a king. That was very rare, though (a place called Club Quarters in SF, doubt there is one where you are going). Almost certainly you should expect to get a king or two doubles in a 3 star. It is very likely that you will be able to get two doubles. It seems very, very likely you should be able to get connecting rooms or at least rooms next door to one another if you lay the groundwork for that prior to your trip and follow up again in the morning of your arrival by calling the hotel. You also might want to arrive at the hotel early. If they haven't cleaned all the rooms yet and they say they can't accomodate you the way you would like when you get there, you might also offer to come back a little later if, once some rooms are cleaned, they can place you the way you would like. If they still can't accomodate you as you might like at check in, you can try to have your rooms changed the next day. Two doubles in one room and one king in the other would work ok for you, too. I wouldn't rule out the possibility, though, that you could get three 2 star rooms for less than two three star rooms. It depends on the area and what is available. My experience at some of the 2 star hotels is that somebody assigns the rooms early in the day or even morning, so you would definitely want to call then and try to get them assigned the way you want. I have never booked more than one room at a time, so I don't know what the general practice is, but you would think they would try to put such reservations together anyhow. On higher star level hotels, it seems they are more likely to assign the room when you arrive.

I haven't posted it yet, but I won two nights there in the near future. Marriot has the hotel you want in the south zone. They have two hotels in the north zone and one in the airport zone. That seems to be about all that is offered there. If you absolutely want that hotel, you might want to bid the south zone only. I was hoping for that hotel, too, and got it despite adding the north and airport locations. My win price was 60 for a thursday and friday night. Without looking at a calendar, it looks like you want a wednesday through friday night. After I won, I took a look at the prices asked for on the Marriot site and there were often large differences mid week to weekend. You might want to see what they are asking for on Wednesday. That might be a hang up in your bid. You might get a better price there Thursday and Friday, if splitting up your stay is an option. While I added the other zones and still got the hotel I wanted, some of the other hotels sometimes have gone for less than I paid, so you can't add the north zone with complete impunity even though the two hotels there are 4*. The airport hotel seems to cost more and might be a safer add.

It appears you meant to write "does now offer" not "does not offer"

They don't tell you because if they did, the hotels would not want to participate. If their priceline price was published, their regular customers would want THAT price, not the much higher price they are paying to book direct and know exactly where they are going to be staying. In a hundred tries, I have ended up in one somewhat seedy room. Even that wasn't that bad. It was a 2* in Atlanta. And when I complained, I got 10 bucks off per night on a reservation up to 5 nights. So the next time I needed a long stay, I got more off the cost of my reservation than it cost for the 2* room I received. I was essentially paid to stay there. Basically, you don't need to worry about the quality of the hotel. It is probably higher than average, actually. You never know what you are going to get. It depends what participating hotels have available and how much they want to fill their rooms. Certainly incredible deals happen. On high end hotels, 50 to 75% savings is not uncommon.

There is a hesitance on here to tell people what zones are free rebid zones. This seems to be because the rebid zones can change, and if you simply follow somebody elses recommendations, you could get burned. You need to know how to determine rebid zones for yourself. Looking at the zone options in Vegas for 4*, it appears that Priceline offers hotels at that level in Henderson. Therefore you should not be adding that zone for rebids!! You can end up winning a hotel there. You are lucky that you haven't yet. Anybody please correct me if I am wrong... It appears the airport, nellis and summerlin areas are free rebids for 4* hotels in Vegas. If you learn how to determine the safe rebid zones, then change the combinations around, you should be able to make multiple bids for the level you want in the zone you want. Right now, as you are going, you could end up in an area or hotel in the south zone it appears you might not want.

I don't think you can tell on PRICELINE, though they do request a non smoking room for you automatically and in scores of reservations through them, I don't think I have ever been put in a room that smelled like it had been smoked in. I am not so familiar with HOTWIRE. I don't think they indicate this before you buy. If you can determine which hotel it likely is beforehand, you can look to see what the policy is there.

Well, I don't know what other people might have gotten for that weekend, but the hotel site wants 300 per night for the room, so it doesn't necessarily sound that bad. They aren't necessarily going to give it away. Was 180 your first bid price? Kind of a high first bid. Chances are if they took your first bid, you paid more than you needed to. If you bid up to that amount, though, you got it for what they were willing to sell their 300 dollar room for...

No matter what, the price is only going to get so low. How low can be determined by looking at all the past wins. If you try to wait for some sort of magic date, you could miss out on inventory at the minimum price. You might as well make minimum bids now and then when you have a free minute at the computer up until when you think the "sweet spot" date might be, then start raising your bids. Chances are, somebody hit the sweet spot and posted about it, so you can be pretty sure it won't get much better.

Recent wins in your zones are as low as 120 - not sure if those kinds of prices apply to your date, but if it was me, I'd try around there. I am not too familiar with NY, and have never bid there, but a lot of zones seem pretty close together. It seems the theater district should be ok if you are ok with MTW, right? The prices are probably higher and you probably won't get it, but it is a free rebid. Would upper midtown be unacceptable? Looks pretty close... but like I said, only been there a couple of times and don't know the area. There do not appear to be any 4 star in upper east or west zones, so you can rebid there, too. (check first before starting) With all the combinations available, you should be able to start at 120 (it is a weekend, so might have to go significantly higher) and have a good chance of landing something the same day.

Look under the New York priceline page and see what kind of wins there have been. Or maybe the cost of comparable Hotwire offerings for your dates. Start somewhere below there. Figure out if you have any rebid zones then put together a strategy of which zones you are going to start with and add. If there are three or more zones you can safely bid, you can start new bids and get extra chances by changing the combinations of the zones. There are FAQ threads on here that discuss this stuff.

If you can't change anything, you have to wait the 24 hours. I know with some car rental requests I have put in, they came back at me with messages that I had not waited long enough even AFTER the posted waiting period. When they did this, they reset the clock, too, so it took over a week to place my next car bid.

Priceline can often give better deals than Hotwire, as long as it doesn't matter which particular hotel you need. Priceline hotels, especially 4 star ones, are probably almost exclusively very, very nice. And there is a good chance you will get one for a third to half of what it would cost buying direct. Maybe if you are bidding on a 2 star there is a remote chance you will end up somewhere you don't like, but if you bid correctly, you would have paid so little for it that it probably makes up for it. Unless there is some 4 star hotel in a zone you are bidding on that you would refer to as "junky" I don't see the point for hesitation. Where is there a "junky" 4 star hotel anyway? What is the worst case scenario? You have an extra hundred bucks in your pocket but you aren't in the best 4 star hotel in the area that would have cost you $200 more?

The policy used to be 72 hours. It has since been changed to 24. But this thread predates the change, so you are seeing old information. You can place a new bid in 24 hours. Are you changing things with each bid? or are you trying to make new bids with the same dates, zones and star levels?

copley and theater are the same zone on priceline earlier quincy market was mentioned, which is next door and I imagine acceptable for strategy if not mentioning it in their last post was an oversight you might want to work that in - it had the lowest recent win price

Well personally, I don't mind wasting time on a longshot lower bid. It is fun when you get it. If you are happy with any of the zones you are interested in, you should try to determine which zone has the best chance of winning and start with that one. Between the zones you are interested in and the ones you can rebid in, with all the possible combinations, you can make a lot of bids in a single day. There are threads that discuss how to do this. If it was me, I would start at 60 at least on your first day of bidding. I wouldn't care if I didn't win on the first day, even. It really sucks to win on your first bid - I try to avoid that as much as possible... But that is me. Maybe you would rather get the whole thing over with than waste time on a longshot low bid. Sure, you could start at 75 and you probably won't even get it. But as I said, I only made a cursory inspection of wins for your areas. There may have been lower wins that I didn't see. Certainly there are probably lower wins that aren't reported on the board. It mostly a matter of how much time you have, how much time you want to spend, and how much you enjoy the "game" of bidding on priceline... :) I don't know about Boston, so I don't know if prices in these areas are higher or lower on weekends. Are there a lot of business hotels in any of the zones you want? If you check out prices in these zones on standard sites, are the prices higher or lower on the weekends? These are things to consider...

You can't rebid in zones 8 or 11 if your list is correct. The others do not have 4 star hotels in them. You can (and should) confirm this by starting a new bid, selecting each zone separately and seeing which star levels have white or gray check boxes. If a box is gray, there are no hotels of that star level available in that zone. This has to be done at the beginning of a new bid. As long as you do not repeat combinations of zones, you can keep starting over and doing new bids that include the zone you want and various combinations of zones it is impossible to get. There are so many zones at 4 stars that the number of possible combinations means you should almost certainly be able to raise your bids incrementally and end up with a winning bid in a single day. Those aren't dumb questions... At least you are trying. A lot of people are too scared to even do that.

It might be nice to know if it will be on a weekend or weeknights. I wouldn't say you need to wait longer. A cursory look shows wins as low as $80 so below that level seems wise.

I live in the area. I am not sure if there is an Embassy Suites in that part of town or not. Can't think of one. There are two in the area that appears to correspond to the fullerton/brea zone as it shows on the map. One of those embassy suites is off the 91 freeway at kraemer/glassell, which is almost in anaheim hills. The map zone makes it looks like the place where that embassy suites is located is in the fullerton/brea zone, even though that hotel is probably in anaheim. Possibly if you are looking for that anaheim (almost anaheim hills) embassy suites it is in the fullerton/brea zone. There is also an embassy suites farther north in Brea.

Based on what this person posted on another thread, the dates for this stay are supposed to start on 2/29, not 3/29...

It appears Toronto has a bunch of 4 star rebid zones. So you don't have to wait to make a new bid. You can start over with Downtown, one of the other rebid zones you did not use at 4* and keep bidding. You have to start the process over, though, from the beginning. It appears you cannot rebid in the airport or vaughan zones, but you can add any of the other ones. Just don't start with the one you already used. If you insist on having a 4* hotel, the market is what the market is. Getting it for 60 or less might be unrealistic to expect. Of course, it is worth a try...