Priceline Hotel: Need San Diego help please.

[shelmarc]

Hi. I'm brand new to the forum and I have no idea how I should go about bidding for a hotel in San Diego for our upcoming trip. We will be there 7/15-7/17. Would like to stay in a nice family location (Coronado looks like a great area, but not sure I can afford it). Anyways, it would be perfect if we were on the beach too. Would love to get at least at 3* for less than $100. Any advice on where we should stay and how I should go about bidding?

Thanks so much,

Shelly

[Colfax]

Welcome to the board, shelmarc.

How many adults and children are in your party? PRICELINE only guarantees double occupancy, which could be a room with one bed. If you need two beds HOTWIRE might be the better option.

Coronado will likely cost more than $100 on a July weekend.

Once your bedding situtaion is clarified we can talk more about zones/locations.

Please use these HOTWIRE and PRICELINE links for your purchases and searches.

[shelmarc]

Hi. I have 2 younger children with me (5 and 7). We don't have to be in Coronado, it just looks nice. We are coming via Colorado (just moved from Ohio), so I know nothing about California really. We will be leaving from San Diego on the 17th, so would like to stay close to that area. Beach front would be fabulous, but most VRBO, etc. requires minimum stay so we are looking more a getting a hotel. Any advice on the zone we should be looking to stay in would be fantastic as well. Thanks for the help.

[thereuare]

As noted above, using PRICELINE for double occupancy is a risk since they only guarantee double occupancy... so you could get a room with only one bed. Some people take the risk, others prefer not to, so whether you use PRICELINE, or go with the safer HOTWIRE option and including 2adults/2children in your search, depends upon your risk tolerance.

One other advantage of HOTWIRE is that they show amenities associated with the hotel, so since it appears that a Beachfront property is important to you for this stay, you could search HOTWIRE and choose a hotel displaying the Beachfront icon and know that you'll be on the beach... even though not all hotels in the zone are on the beach. Whereas with PRICELINE you'll need to pick a zone which is geographically small enough in which all hotels in the zone would be on (or at least have access to) the beach.

The trade-off is that HOTWIRE usually costs a little more then PRICELINE.

Let us know your thoughts and we'll take it from there.

[Colfax]

This is a bit more than your $100 budget but HOTWIRE has a a 3* in La Jolla--a good area--for $126. One of the icons is "Near Beach".

Near Beach, Nonsmoking, Fitness, Restaurant, Highspeed, Golf, Tennis.

I'm not certain but I think these are new icons for the La Jolla Shores Hotel.

That hotel comes up when searching Hotwire on 3 adults/0 children, but not 2 adults/2children. Reserving 3/0 will still guarantee you more than one bed.

If this appeals to you please use this HOTWIRE link and let us know what you get.

If you want to keep it at $100 and you're willing to take a chance on the number of beds I suggest bidding for a 3.5* on PRICELINE in the Coastal zone or for a 3* in Coronado. Nobody ever seems to try for 3* Coronado but it's possible there is one.