Thank you for the answer. I am sorry you believe this is off topic but actually, knowing exactly how the system works does have an impact on what your strategy should be in terms of early/late bidding. if the hotels act rationally, for a usually busy period, they will not feed rooms into priceline/hotwire until the very last moment (hoping to sell the rooms without hard discount for this period). If eventually their reservation rate does not meet their expectations, then they would put rooms on the site. My guess is in that case, good rates should only appear at last minute. for usual off season, hotels should start feeding the sites with good discounts quite early, to get clientele from other hotels (clients are scarce). They will discount eventually even more in the last days if they have not sold their discounted rooms. But I guess a hotel caps the number of rooms he will sell through hotwire/priceline. of course you should also take into account specials events : conventions, etc... or on the other side, bad economic news, xhich impact hotels and hospitality/tourism business very quickly.
