Priceline Hotel: Hotels Matching Priceline Rates by Calling?

[pokepsw]

I'm wondering if anyone has had any success with the following:

I want to ensure that I get a certain hotel w/ Priceline, specifically Holiday Inn Santa Monica. The 3* bidding zones there give you 2 options according to the Priceline Hotel List; Holiday Inn SM and Courtyard MDR. The latter is not desirable, so I thought of this...

Calling Reservations at Holiday Inn and asking them to offer me a rate above their recent bid acceptance points (but still well below rack rate). I figure, if they'd take it on Priceline (and I'm sure PCLN takes fees/commission), they'd still be likely to take it over the phone so they can fill the rooms and get more revenue than they would have normally. Specifically, I'll be asking for 2 rooms w/ double beds next to each other in less than 3 weeks from this past Sunday (8/22-8/29, 6 nights).

What do you think?

[thereuare]

The above is your viewpoint... the hotel's viewpoint is this guest wants to stay with us, so why should we offer a deep discount?

Others have tried... unsuccessfully about 99.7% of the time.

[micronta]

I've thought about doing this before but never tried. You'll never know until you try. I might give this a try myself next time. You could give the sales department a call and let us know what they said. Worst is they say no and that's it.

[PAUL71]

hey ive tried this with two hotels the first being HI santa monica! i only wanted to reduce by a few dollars to around 100 usd per night and was refused, the second was the chamberlain west hollywood this was for a 14 night stay, and simply asked if i could have a reduction on the normal nightly rates, given the extended stay, i received a polite but rather patronising e mail, praising the property.and offering me a slight reduction on an even more expensive room! So i go with the opinion they know you want to stay there you gotta pay

[pokepsw]

I tried this w/ Doubletree SM and Holiday Inn SM - both failed lol