WillTravel

http://www.smarterliving.com/air/deal.php?id=4956 From the newsletter I got today: Lots of times these "deals" don't turn out to be so great, given the restrictions and given how cheaply you can get a London hotel on Priceline. BA is rarely the cheapest carrier, in my limited experience. But it might be worth considering.

Some might say the best option is to get a Disney hotel on the property and be done with it. However, you will tend to be stuck with Disney restaurants then, plus you might feel a little Disney-claustrophobic. Plus (my main concern) it costs more! The advantages to being on-property in Anaheim are not as great as in Orlando. Also, if you don't mind driving each day to Disneyland and parking in the Disney parking lots, and taking the tram to the gates, then obviously you don't have to be so picky about location. Priceline Priceline is a bit annoying when it comes to bidding for a hotel near Disneyland. You have a good chance of getting a hotel nearby, but the zone is drawn in such a way that you can end up several miles away and not have access to the shuttle service that hotels around Disneyland use. From what I can tell, if you bid 3* in the Anaheim zone, the worst you will end up with so far as distance is the Hyatt Regency, which does have a shuttle. But I could well be wrong about that, so double-double-check if that is important to you. 2* bids can definitely put you way outside the shuttle zone. Being "Across the Street" Even with the shuttle option, it's nice to be across the street. Your kids, particularly if young, might want a rest during the day. You might get wet on some of the rides. You might forget something. Which brings me to another problem. Every hotel near Disneyland seems to classify themselves as being across the street. You might be misled into thinking this means across from the gates - not so. Across the street might mean that you have a 1 mile walk to get to the gates. Someone out there has a web page of all the hotels that are genuinely across the street - there are about 8 that I would put in that category. Howard Johnson is pretty close too - about 7 minutes walk. If choosing a hotel across the street is important, choose a hotel that is near 1601 South Harbor Boulevard which I think might accurately capture Disneyland's gate location (Howard Johnson is 1380, but that is a little misleading, as much of HJ's rooms are actually a block up from there). So I'd choose a hotel between 1380 and 1700. Reviews of Howard Johnson: http://www.betterbidding.com/index.php?act...=howard+johnson Hotwire Hotwire is slightly better than Priceline when it comes to zones. If you choose the Disneyland South zone, you have a pretty good (some might say 100%, but I don't know) chance of getting a hotel serviced by the shuttle. Disneyland North is more dicey, or at least that's what I've been told. Airline Packages Another option is Alaska Air packages to Disneyland. Other airlines have them too, but I don't know if they are as good as Alaska's. Alaska has a "kids fly free" promotion quite frequently, although I don't know how that works out. You get to choose which hotel you want. The last time we chose this option, I opted for the Howard Johnson. Reverse-calculating from the package price, I worked out that the total price per night was $56, including tax. (They actually have a 1-free-night promotion, but I'm going by the total price overall.) Of course, I could be wrong if I chose the wrong amounts for the airfare -- you know how tricky that can be. Packaged Vacations Travelocity also has hotel+Disney pass options. Howard Johnson and other hotels are offered - the prices seem similar to what I got with Alaska. And I think you can get Priceline vacations for Disneyland also. I consider the Priceline option unsuitable because I always want to choose a flight that leaves at the end of the day after work, and I always want a return flight that is as late in the day as possible to maximize the last day at the park.

It's interesting that star ratings seem to vary among sites. Expedia's star level is not necessarily the same as Priceline's. Hotwire and Priceline seem to differ. With the way Priceline describes the star levels, it seems perfectly possible that a 3* hotel could be a dump, and a 1* hotel could be quite nice. So long as the 3* meets the checklist, I guess it qualifies. I've been using this program called TravelAxe the past few days to search various European cities. What they call the "Class" seems to have only a modest relationship to the price. TravelAxe says: The Class is a ranking for each hotel on a scale from 1 (low) to 5 (high). The class ranking is calculated by averaging the class rankings Travelaxe retrieves from many of the websites as it searches for rates. So for example, I got a 2* hotel in London on Priceline.com.hk, Comfort Inn Vauxhall, which is also a 2* on Priceline.com. However, TravelAxe has it as a Class 3. Expedia has it as a 3*. From the reviews, Class 3 might be more accurate. But - you have to be careful with TravelAxe. Just looking now, I saw a great rate for a London hotel that is supposedly Class 3. The catch? - it has "shared facilities." I did not know that Expedia books such hotels, but it does apparently. I have booked Ibis hotels in Sweden. TravelAxe has them as Class 2. Expedia has them as 2*. On rec.travel.europe, posters who have stayed at them say that Ibis is a bit better than Motel 6, and always clean and comfortable. Motel 6 in the US is universally considered 1*, I think. I know star and class ratings in Europe might be even more complex or irrational than the US. As I've posted elsewhere, I really tend towards the lower star ratings when I am purchasing for myself. I have stayed at 3* and 4* hotels with beautiful stately lobbies that had hot water problems (I guess they were old buildings with plumbing that wasn't up to scratch), which inconvenienced me far more than missing whatever intangible ambience a modern 1* hotel is supposed to be lacking.

Travelaxe compares rates from numerous different sites to give you the cheapest rates for various hotels in a city. http://www.travelaxe.com This may be useful information when thinking about Priceline bids or selecting a Hotwire option. Of course, you should always double-check any info if you want to be sure you've gotten the best direct rate or to see if there are hidden fees. Also pay attention to whether the rates include tax or not. Priceline.com bids do not include tax -- but many European hotel rates do include tax.

Another site that searches multiple sites is: Qixo - http://www.qixo.com Of course, all these sites should be used with caution. For example, Qixo found the Air Transat flight I am planning to take on June 27 to London and return July 14, but gave a price that is higher than you pay if you go through either AirTransat's web site or ITravel2000.com. ITASoftware can't find charter airfares at all, apparently.

I don't have a clue about location, but here's a general tip if you want to get some area info. Say you want to know how Hotel Allegro fits in on the map compared to whatever Hotwire has for Chicago Loop. Go to www.switchboard.com and bring up the Allegro listing. Click Map. You will get a map of the area around the hotel, which you can zoom up and down. Print out the Hotwire map and compare. Another method: Find an intersection, if possible, in the Hotwire map. Find the address of the prospective hotel. Go to Mapquest and get driving directions between that intersection and the address. Mapquest will show you a map with both locations, and you can likely figure out from that if the hotel is in the zone.

I think is the web site: http://miamiregency.hyatt.com/property/index.jhtml I'd suggest phoning the hotel shortly to confirm your reservation for four rooms and asking for the number of beds you want in each room. Then in August phone again to confirm. Other posters have also mentioned about joining various Hyatt programs and getting bonuses as a result, so you might want to look at that too.

Sue, I think you did fine. Perhaps with a slightly different strategy, you could have saved $15-20 over the cost of 4 rooms. But then again, maybe not. Your family of 15 will all have a nice place to stay before your cruise, and I doubt they will see fit to needle you for a possible overbid of an extra $1 or even $2 per person :) The whole point of Priceline is to get a good, reasonably-priced place to stay, and it's nice when we achieve the perfect bid, but imperfect bids work out very nicely too. (I have to remind myself of this frequently - not necessarily in respect to Priceline, but today Ryanair!)

Good suggestions. The flip side of Priceline's method is that it's easy to drag another adult along at the last minute -- like my mother. With a typical hotel booking, the price might be increased and I would have to change the reservation.

Thanks for the input, squeegee. I think I want to stay downtown only, so although Jantzen Beach looks very nice, I probably wouldn't bid in that area. If I decide to go through with it, a 3* bid looks like a pretty straightforward situation with several free rebids and an end price ranging from $28-35 (probably towards the high end given the weekend). There's not much point in going to a 1* at that level.

Sometimes when a business meeting or event is planned, or even a family event, the parties involved might not know until the last few days which employee or family member is going to attend. The problem with Priceline bidding in this case is that you are stuck with the name you have put in the screen when you made the bid. There's no flexibility to handle this situation. Any way around this?

If anyone is planning travel around Europe, Ryanair is having a sale right now, with approximately

Very interesting, squeegee. I wonder how they would measure repeat business over what time period? A lot of people use hotels only once every year or two, and a lot of those times, they are booked as part of some conference or vacation package. So a lot of customers might have occasion to only use Priceline once every few years. Business travelers with uncertain itineraries might be reluctant to use Priceline. It's easy to see that you will save money in the long run if you have to discard (for example) 25% of the days you bid for, but have a 50% savings on the rate for those days, but most people notice their losses more than their gains. Anyway, time to create a Priceline business models and patents thread. If someone else does it first, that would be fine too :). Otherwise, I'm going to try to make sure I have it properly researched first.

I've gotten nowhere in trying to find out the true story of what Toronto-Dominion Visa charges on foreign currency transactions. I've gotten three separate stories: one from their web site, one from a customer service agent by phone, and one by email from another customer service rep. I'm going to wait on this until my statement arrives in the mail, then follow it up at my local branch and see what they have to say. I think I am in error about the rate being 3% - at least some of the transactions are less than that. Amex bill arrived today. A Priceline.com transaction for $66.49 USD (my Inn at Queen Anne Stay) which was posted March 24 shows a charge of $100.66 Canadian (I did the bid March 23 my time). The interbank rate at Oanda.com gives me about $99.19 for March 24. So Amex' advertised 2.2% conversion rate seems within the right range in this case. These amounts are not really a big concern, especially compared with massive Priceline savings. But I want to have a clear account from Visa what they are charging me. And of course we all still want to get the best deal!

Any ideas why some people get it, and not others? Or will we all get it eventually? (I accepted the option to receive promotional offers.)

Priceline caps the amount of taxes they can charge, based on the amount you can bid. It can never exceed 20% of what you bid. It can't include the bonus money in this. In this case, 20% of $90 is $18 exactly. If the price had been $38/night, then Priceline would have charged $17.96 in tax. A small difference, but it seems to prove the point here.

The tax calculation here is quite interesting. Here is how I understand it. Because the total amount you bid for the 3 nights was $90, Priceline cannot charge you more than 20% of the $90, which is $18, since they promise not to charge you more than 20%. The actual tax rate in Columbus, Ohio is 15.75%, which Priceline would normally apply to the actual price it paid for the room. But given the relatively low room cost and the amount of bonus you got, Priceline cannot charge you 15.75% of whatever price it paid. You can deduce the room price that Priceline paid has to be more than $38/night, so this was an excellent bid and even better with the bonus. Hope that makes sense!

I've also now applied for a MBNA Mastercard. I read on an newsgroup that MBNA was best for Americans in terms of premiums on foreign currency transactions, but when I asked the Canadian agent, he said there was a premium of 2.5% on foreign currency transactions. But at least I'll have the Mastercard to use for bidding opportunities :). I wrote to TD about their Visa rate, and we'll see what response I get.

Interesting story, squeegee. I'm glad you're back to full-fledged travel. I wonder how Priceline will respond to that sort of thing now that they are offering the $5/day trip insurance with your Priceline bid. Maybe they'll be more inclined to say - if you didn't get the insurance, you're out of luck? Great idea to get the lawyer and get compensation. That's exactly the type of thing the legal system is here to fix.

I'm thinking of attending an event that is held at the Portland Doubletree hotel at 310 SW Lincoln St. over Labor Day weekend. It's going to be eons before I actually want to bid on this, so don't expect updates soon :). I have to determine if I can even go, but it doesn't hurt to start planning in advance. If you're familiar with the area, please look at the map of Priceline's downtown zone for Portland and give me an idea of the farthest possible distance I could end up being from the Doubletree. Any ideas what figures might be needed, given the holiday? Would a 1-star in this area be unbearable or unsafe? Maybe I should leave 1-stars to areas I am comfortable with already. It looks like last year in August, poster Wcj1 got the exact Doubletree hotel where I want to be for $34 --the tax paid indicates a Priceline price of $31, which is a price I could live with. I note it's rated as a 3*. I've stayed at that exact Doubletree before (non-Priceline) and it was nice enough, but one problem I have with the rating system is that I don't see much reason to distinguish it in quality from some 2* I have stayed at. I guess the restaurant it has is reason enough.

That's excellent! I wonder what they would do about a cancellation fee if you had gotten one of those hotels that are less than $25/night (not likely in Boston, of course).

What about the Canadian credit card with the best exchange rate, both for US dollars and other foreign currencies? I discovered that my Visa credit card has a nasty foreign exchange habit. If I make a purchase in another foreign currency other than US dollars, Visa converts the foreign currency to US dollars and then converts the US dollars to Canadian dollars and charges a conversion rate fee on the process. Thus, for a purchase I did on Visa for Ryanair, there appears to be an effective 3% premium over the interbank rate. (You can go to www.oanda.com and select the classic currency converter to get historical conversion rates going back three years.) American Express says it has a 2.2% premium for foreign exchange conversions. I'll have to go back and look at my Priceline.com bids and see if that worked out properly (that's the only card I can use on Priceline.com). What about Mastercard?

Too late, but a revision of my math. The tax calculation should be as follows: 88.90/0.17 = 522.94 Priceline HK payment for the two nights, so the per night Priceline HK rate is about 261.47 (not 252 as I posted). That works out to a US rate of about $34 a night, I think. I suspect that if you bid that amount on Priceline.com (if for some reason you didn't want to use Priceline HK), you would be likely to win a room in Victoria, although of course it wouldn't necessarily be at this hotel. Of course, that high a price is only needed for high season - I had a US $19 win on Priceline.com for a different hotel in Victoria in March (Paul's Motor Inn, which I think I've posted about here).

Scorp, thanks for replying. I purchased a Manulife travel insurance policy -- about $110 Canadian -- for my upcoming trip to Europe. My son and I each had to buy our own policies. It allows us to cancel the trip for health reasons, and a few other reasons (I remember that being put in quarantine was one of them). It also provides emergency health coverage and trip interruption insurance. I also have health coverage through work, but our insurance agent said most employee policies are not that comprehensive for travel. I found it seemed to take forever to accumulate any air miles, but maybe I'll start doing that again. Right now all I get air miles from is Safeway.

Priceline often tells the user she should increase her bid before the bid is submitted. You may be told you have only a small chance of success. You may be told that the suggested retail price of whatever hotel room you are trying to bid is X$. You can often ignore these messages and succeed fine anyway. For example, you might succeed with a $40 bid on a hotel room when Priceline told you the retail price was $140. Another thing that's interesting - on the first bid, you might be told the retail price is say, $120, and then when you go to do a rebid, you might be told it's $85 or you might be told it's $135. It would be interesting to see a list of the greatest price discrepancies between Priceline's suggestions and what bid actually worked. Unfortunately, I haven't kept records, although I've seen some almost humorous examples. (Well, just recently, for example, Priceline told me the suggested retail price was $158 on one bid attempt, and then told me on the next bid attempt that the suggested retail price was $92, and then when I failed I was told the suggested retail price was $154. Of course, I didn't let those numbers affect my bid.) Also, what are all the variations Priceline uses to suggest you raise your bid (e.g. only a small chance, almost no chance, etc.)?