Priceline Hotel: Resort Oahu (Waikiki Beach) Marriott Waikiki Beach and Spa

[EyeSee]

Hello, I'm new to this forum, and have read the FAQ's. At the risk of prematurely inquiring, is there an opinion out there about which of the two (PL or HW) is better for hotels?

Also, do I just post my travel dates and destination and someone will help me locate something or do I just launch in and start bidding?

Thanks in advance for helping a newbie.

[yellowdog]

Welcome to BetterBidding :)

is there an opinion out there about which of the two (PL or HW) is better for hotels?

When it come to quality is it the same. Some hotel appears both on HOTWIRE and PRICELINE

If you're trying to target a specific property then HOTWIRE can often be a better option if you're successfully able to identify it based upon the star rating and amenities shown before your purchase... the trade-off is that HOTWIRE usually costs a little more than PRICELINE, so you need to decide what is most important to you for a given stay, the lowest possible price OR the ability to take an educated guess as to the property you may receive.

Also, do I just post my travel dates and destination and someone will help me locate something or do I just launch in and start bidding?

Are you going to use HOTWIRE or PRICELINE?

Yellowdog.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases.

[Gallus50]

Bascially, w/HW, you start looking and trying to ID hotels. If you need help with an ID, you post. Please look at hotel lists first before you ask for ID help. Also look at history of area w/search function at top of page. Some hotels slip thru the cracks.

With PL, you can be helped by reading FAQ and Priceline tips, especially the one about rebids. After you feel informed, start to bid. If you need help or hit some obstacles, you can post for help. Many of us will chime in to help, but please be informed and have specific questions. It gets tiresome when people just ask for help and don't have any ideas or direction.

Go for it and good luck.

[thereuare]

If you haven't seen it yet, this is a good thread which explains the similarities, differences, pros and cons of each service:

I've Never Used Priceline or Hotwire

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases.

[EyeSee]

YellowDog, Gallus50, thereuare,

Thank you so much for your response. After my original post last night, I spent a couple of hours weeding through the forum, and trying to get it figured out. I actually bid and offer accepted (after an initial rejection) on a hotel that I was looking forward to getting.

I will post my win in the proper forum in the next day or so. I used PRICELINE via your site.

Thank you so much for this wonderful resource. It is amazing what kind of information I got here.

-EyeSee

[thereuare]

Please post the details of your win in a reply to this thread... we'll then edit the topic title and move the entire thread to the correct section of the board.

Thank you for sharing your win and using the PRICELINE links on the board to begin your bidding.

[EyeSee]

Resort (O'ahu) Waikiki Beach Area: Marriott Waikiki Beach And Spa $119/night

I'm new to this forum, and at the advice of a friend, decided to register to see what folks were winning for O'ahu Hotels. After reading through several posts, advice, and wins, I decided to jump in and try Priceline.

Just a side note that I am originally form O'ahu, and my entire family still lives there. I usually stay with my family while visiting, but this time going with some friends who've never been so decided to stay in the heart of Waikiki. My sister did research for me on Kama'aina rates (local residents), so I had an idea what I wanted to pay and would be pleased with.

I purposely low-balled my first bid, which I knew was unlikely to be accepted. I bid $99 for a resort level hotel in the Waikiki Beach area; 9/6-9/12. As expected, my first bid was rejected. I was then offered to try again immediately by increasing my bid by $20. I rejected and started to go through the process of submitting a new bid, with altered criteria. As I went through the steps, I decided to go back (I did not want to expand my area, nor lower the level of the hotel), so I went back and went for the additional $20/night. My bid for $119 was accepted for the Marriott Waikiki Beach And Spa. The local resident rate here that I was going to book with my sister was $179/night. IMHO, this was a huge savings.

Thank you BetterBidding for providing this site as a resource.

- EyeSee

[yellowdog]

EyeSee

Thank you for sharing your result with the board!

Enjoy your stay.

Please use the site's HOTWIRE and PRICELINE links to start future purchases.

Yellowdog.

[Dman]

Probably, but you still over-paid for it. You could have taken several free-rebids would not have actually expanded your bidding area, because as long as you kept the level at Resort, adding those areas which don't have any Resort properties - one at a time - simply gives you multiple free additional shots without any possibility of those added areas coming up. Invariably, when you get a +20 counter offer, you could land the same property for a smaller than $20 increase. I feel pretty confident that you could have won that property for something in the $105-110 range without any risk whatsoever of getting a resort outside of Waikiki. For a 6 night stay, I bet you could have saved $60-100 doing that - and note that several folks have won the Marriott September dates for $105-107.

[EyeSee]

Thank you, Dman for the additional advice. I will remember these tricks in the future.

Also, I wanted to add here that I did indeed use the PRICELINE link on this site to begin the bidding process. I neglected to include that in my previous post. Thanks for the reminder, Thereuare.

- EyeSee