lowballer

It's five hours from SF to Yosemite. Each way. Maybe closer to four if you start from like Livermore, but no better. I have no knowledge of touring services to Yosemite, but a bus ain't going to be faster. Map with Directions 191 miles each way. About two-thirds is off freeways. Gas is $3+/gallon, higher near the park. Cheapest lodging IN the park are the Curry Village tents at $39/night on weeknights. Cheapest thing in the park that approaches a modern hotel room will run closer to $100. You can stay outside the park, but then you're 20+ miles from Yosemite Valley and will pay about what a downtown SF hotel costs on Priceline. I have an upcoming trip to Yosemite and am looking at four DAYS in the valley. That doesn't count Tuolumne Meadows, etc., which will be another day or two. I guess you can drive into the valley, look around and drive out, but given the cost and effort is this the most interesting thing you can do? If you want mountains and nature there are oodles of places around SF to go, many even accessible by public transportation. It's your money and time.

A day trip from SF to Yosemite without a car? You can't possibly mean Yosemite; what are you really thinking of? Either that or you must really like driving. Hope your budget accommodates $4 gas in and near the park.

So you want to stay in the city during the week, then go out to Monterey during the weekend. Are you aware it will probably be substantially cheaper to switch this around, even taking into account renting a car at a higher weekday rate? You are seeing only 2* in USE probably because hotels don't "need" to release inventory to HW during the week. OTOH, Monterey will probably be cheaper during the week because people drive down from the Bay Area for the weekend. Also there will be fewer people around and less traffic going down to Big Sur or whatever. You'd still be in the city for a couple of weeknights (Wednesday and Thursday?) but doing it this way will likely make bid-splitting more successful, and at the very least you should be able to PL/HW something for the weekend. Also, they can stay in the city that Sunday night too and head down to the airport the next day, quite possibly for the same as Friday and Saturday cost. Finding a place at the airport would be the least of your problems, assuming this is SFO. In fact if it's a late flight into SFO on Monday you can consider a hotel at SFO on Monday night, *then* drive down to MRY the next morning. Maybe your folks want to be in a certain place on a certain date, but as I tell people, the more flexible you can be the more you can save.

I previously reported an upcoming stay at the Royal Palm. My winning bid was so low ($65) that the resort fee won't be that big a deal. But generally, I'm not so blase on this issue. I have no problem with resort fees when (1) everyone, including conventional bookers, pays and (2) the property is classified on PL as a Resort. I consider a Resort a more or less self-contained destination, with enough facilities (restaurants, extensive pools or spas, tennis courts, beachfront) to occupy most or all of one's time during an entire stay. This seems to describe the Palm, but not everyone wants a hotel with all these things. Such a place should not be classified 4*, or even 3* as a couple places which charge resort fees are. PL should shunt all the places with resort fees into one category, so that a bidder can choose to pay or avoid the fees by bidding Resort or X* respectively, and separate the Resort category from the star continuum, so that a bidder does not receive an unwelcome "upgrade" to something with a resort fee. I'm surprised PL allows the practice of non-Resorts charging Resort fees for two reasons. One, which thereuare implied, is that it is uncompetitive compared to hotels at the same star level that do not charge fees. If the Palm's PL rate is $65 with a $20 resort fee, but 4* Hotel X has a $70 rate with NO resort fee, Hotel X will lose business even though its total cost is lower. In addition, now that PL's booking fee is based on a percentage of the winning bid price, PL doesn't get to collect its vigorish on the extra $20 the Palm charges. Given the inexorable creep of the booking fee over the years, how could PL keep allowing this? Why isn't the Palm classified as a Resort? It's not to protect its identity because there are other PL Resorts in South Beach. As for your issue #2, thereuare, that's not unique to the Palm, and $97 + 20 doesn't strike me as the threshhold where that phenomenon kicks in. It's pretty common right now to find very ordinary Holiday Inns and Courtyards in locations more prosaic than South Beach with published rates north of $200. I haven't stayed there yet, but South Beach is as hot a destination as it's ever been and you can't beat the Palm's location. You can certainly pay a lot more than $97 + 20 a night down there and get less.

If you mean bidding two nights instead of four, the answer is yes. When you change the dates of your stay it's like a completely different bid, and you can start from scratch. For 3* right around DC, you probably want to leave some bidding room above $100. For the stuff outside of DC, given the list of what you want to do, I don't see how using PL in a DC zone is the best way to go, but maybe I'm missing something.

This thread discusses the issues with 3* vs. 4* in downtown SF somewhat: Priceline Bidding San Francisco 3* bidding in either of the downtown SF zones doesn't work too well for a number of reasons: * There are many free rebid zones for 4*, but only a couple for 3* * 4* tends to hit pretty reliably on weekends for around $70, unless demand is crazy * 3* bids might get "upgraded" to Boutique, which many people don't appreciate, or to 4* anyway * 3* hotels usually don't go for much less than the 4*s (ie, the short answer to your question is "no") * you can still try bidding 3*, but doing so first blocks out most of your 4* opportunities, so people usually start at 4* anyway and end up hitting It would be nice if there were some sort of semi-reliable 3* that hit at, say, $55, but it doesn't happen. (Years ago the Hyatt Regency used to be 3* I think, and was dirt cheap, but it is now 4*.) The most reliable way to save money is not to stay in downtown SF at all -- stay out by the airport and use the hotel's shuttle to the airport and BART to and from the city. Even then the savings might not be worth it when accounting for the extra time and the cost of BART ($5 each way). Finally, staying in a "really upscale hotel" won't be a concern if you end up with the Hilton in USW :)

Could it be one tricky night? (Edit: It seems you ruled this out, though.)

One obvious alternative is to split your stay so that you spend two consecutive days doing DC things, staying somewhere close to the city, and two consecutive days doing the more suburban/rural things. That way you're not paying for parking the whole time, nor are you stuck with one place for too long if you don't like it. You're also more likely to hit something in one of the closer-in zones at a non-exhorbitant rate when you're only bidding two nights. Furthermore, this gives you twice as many choices near the city, because you can stay EITHER the first two nights close in OR the second two. And in the more far-flung location a conventional (and therefore changeable) booking might work better. I realize you might want to do certain activities on certain days, but saving money is all about being flexible and creative. :)

DC has become super expensive on weeknights recently... not sure if those bids are going to work. Also, not all of those zones are free rebids for 3*. It wasn't clear whether you did this, but if you're indifferent among those zones you should be starting with fresh new bids in each of the 3* zones rather than immediately piggybacking one 3* zone onto another. (IOW, bid Alexandria 3*, then add Springfield because it does not offer 3*, then start a fresh bid with only Arlington 3*, then add Springfield and then Alexandria, etc.) If you win something in Crystal City, you will almost certainly pay for parking. Figure at least $10/day. If you are OK with that you may be able to drop down to 2

It would be helpful if the titles of the two recent threads about this hotel clarified this is the Westin River North. There are two Westins in downtown Chicago. The other is on Michigan Ave across the street from the Hancock building, and while it might be in a different zone this isn't obvious.

Resort fees are a legitimate gripe when the property is not listed as a Resort. If the hotel charges everyone the fee my gripe would be with PL; if it only charges PL customers my complaint would be with more with the hotel. In either case I'd let PL know about it on the feedback form it asks you to fill out. This deserves its own topic, but "resort creep" into the 4* and 3* categories is worthy of criticism on several fronts. As for parking... if you're not leaving South Beach you really don't need a car, and depending on your circumstances seems possible to do without one for getting to and from the airport. Again, a separate issue.

A Homestead Village came up as a 2

I should add there's an Internet computer free for guests to use just inside the hotel's front door. It was certainly nice to have.

Yes, two nights, August 19 and 20.

Wow. This was my first bid and when it hit, I was worried I had entered a bad parameter, like the wrong dates or something. This hotel apparently used to be a Crown Plaza until recently, and is now owned by the Sol Melia outfit. It is at 1545 Collins Avenue in South Beach. The website says everyone pays a $20/day resort fee, so it's not the great deal it sounds like, but its own rate for these nights is $139 + 20 ($159 + 20 for ocean view and $239 + 20 for oceanfront). Total $130 + 25.95 = $155.95 (plus resort fee)

A 10K convention here is nothing. We had a few 40K+ conventions come through in June alone. Also, there's no big downtown festival I know of, and the Cubs aren't even at home. Start low.

Utah has recently (within the past year) renumbered the exits on I-15, with all the new exits bumped down by three or four. Why this was done is beyond me, but the upshot is this hotel is located at what is now exit 263, or U.S. 189 north. Had a three-night stay here I reported previously. Had a good stay, no complaints. If you've been in one Fairfield you've pretty much been in them all... this was no exception. I got a queen nonsmoking room without a problem. Room included a fridge and a microwave. The (free) continental breakfast was more like a transcontinental breakfast, with pour-your-own waffles in addition to the usual fare. I received the local Provo paper on Saturday and Sunday and the USA Today on Monday. The walkup rate was $79. Provo has oodles of lodging options apparently to accommodate BYU football crowds and such... when there isn't BYU-related demand, stuff goes begging. There's a mall and lots of strip shopping around but the nearest grocery store I could find was an Albertson's a bit out of the way to the north. For relatively cheap gas, go one exit south on I-15 to the Flying J Travel Plaza.

Interesting... for quite some time you could get this for around $45. Let us know if they're still bilking people for the $10 "resort fee".

It is not practical to use the L (or some combination of L and buses) to get to the Museum of Science and Industry. Maybe you can catch a bus downtown; I'm not sure. OTOH, the Art Institute will be only a couple blocks away. As for getting in from MDW, one option is to take the Orange line all the way in to either Adams or Madison. Neither of these stations is wheelchair accessible, but there is no changing trains and you are only a block or so from either station to the rear entrance to the Palmer House. The CTA system map makes it look like you can change from Orange to Red at Roosevelt, then take the Red line to one of the accessible stations in the Loop (Jackson or Washington; Monroe is listed as not accessible but the entire downtown Red Line is actually one big long platform). However, this transfer is not intuitive for an out-of-towner, because the Orange line is aboveground and the Red is underground at Roosevelt.

I've been seeing this a lot recently and posted a similar experience. The general pattern is, the higher you bid, the greater the increment PL asks you to raise your bid by. Maybe PL is trying to give the impression that the good deals are slipping away by the minute: "You can have it for $49... whoops, too late, but you can still get it for $52". We're smarter than that, though, right? :)

Here's another suggestion: Resign yourself to the Harbor Court and bid $65 3* for another room there. I mean, at the very best you're going to be eating the cost of one room, and a conventional booking will cost you about as much as two PL rooms anyway. And with two rooms you'll be GUARANTEED to get two beds, which you can otherwise never be sure of using PL in downtown SF for one room. In addition to what BEAV wrote about 4* versus 3* in downtown SF, note that there are plenty of rebid zones for 4*, but only one or two for 3*. So you can't refine your bid as well with 3* to begin with. Downtown 4* bidding is rather predictable -- the Hilton isn't my favorite place, but when I'm bidding in the USW at least I know what to expect. If you have a car, I'm not sure how you expected to drive into the City and pay significantly less than $30 for parking.

Lots of wins at $70-75 for this property and even a $68... but looky here, you can get it for a buck less! This is for one night, the 4th of July. Failed at $66. I bid for this a week or two ago. Total = $67 + 17.06 = $84.06

Provo? Yeah, Provo. Provo and Orem are all one zone, so all you can do is wait out the 72 hours. Right before this hit I failed at 3* $37 and 2

In March of 2004 I hit the La Quinta you speak of for something like $33. I needed a nonsmoking room with two beds and was accommodated without a problem. The property was a solid 2* and the breakfast was nice to have. YMMV. I've also stayed just west of Greensboro (whatever zone that is -- there are a bunch of shopping centers and things in the area and it was closer to G'boro than W-S) through PL once. Don't remember the details as well but the place was right off I-40 and OK.

I had a good one-night PL stay here recently. Again, this is the Wyndham at 14th and "M" streets. Two Metro stations are within walking distance: McPherson Square at 14th and "I" and Farragut North at 17th and "K". (Remember there's no "J" street in DC so the stations are a bit closer than they might seem.) The McPherson Square station is served by the Blue and Orange lines and interfaces with both the DCA and IAD airports, requiring a transfer to another Metro line or to a bus however you do it. I got to the hotel around 12.30pm and a king-size bed was available. No mention of PL. I got a lower-floor room facing the atrium and near the elevator, but noise was never a problem. The room was a solid 3* and included a mini-fridge (not a minibar) and the bed had plenty of pillows. There is an exercise room, which I didn't investigate, but no pool or spa type facility. I asked for a checkout time of 1.30pm and got it; it seemed I could have even chosen something a bit later. There are plenty of restaurants/fast food joints open on the weekend in the vicinity, especially down towards "K" street. A CVS drugstore is nearby on 14th and is open 24/7. The White House is maybe a 10 minute walk down Vermont Avenue, and to the north you have the Dupont Circle and Logan Circle neighborhoods. East of about 10th street things start to feel sketchy.