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Priceline Hotel: 4* Seattle Downtown (Pike Place) - 7/27-7/29


WxGuy1
By WxGuy1,
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Rating: 4 *

Dates: First tried 7/27-7/31, then narrowed it down to 7/27-7/29

Location: Seattle Downtown, Pike Place desired. I've added other zones for rebidding purposes in the standard manner

Bids: I started near $85 back in the end of June, and I've been bidding just about every day going up to $115. I do have a "cancellable" backup in place in Bellevue, and it's a good enough rate that I don't want to go above $120 for the Pike Place hotel. Staying in Seattle DT will make our tourist stuff easier, but that convenience will only be worth up to about $120/nt, particularly since our flight comes into SEA ~9 pm on 7/27.

P.S. - thereuare - I haven't used Priceline since 2006, largely because I haven't traveled much and, frankly, I've forgotten about it!

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Just did another course of bidding starting ~$90 and stopping at $110/nt focused on Seattle Downtown - Pike Place (rebidding by adding no-4* zones). No dice yet. I feel comfortable bidding all the way up until 7/25 (when I can still cancel the "backup" for 7/27+), so I'm not in a hurry.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm continuing to bid nearly every day (sometimes every other day), but I haven't had any success so far. I've bumped my max bid up to $125, and I've changed the dates to include 7/28-8/31. The retail rates were highest for 7/27, so I decided to try to leave out that date in hopes that it'd improve my chances for other days.

I've also been bidding on a Seattle airport zone for 7/27 up to $65/nt, but that too has been unsuccessful.

To make sure I'm doing this right, is the following message what I'm supposed to get when a bid isn't accepted? "We're sorry, but we can't accept your offer of $125 for a hotel room in the Seattle, WA area. Your credit card has not been charged for Request Number XXX...". Others seem to be having some successful for a 4* in the Pike Place zone on similar dates, so I don't know why I'm coming up blank all the time. I have until Tuesday morning to cancel my backup reservation, so I only have more two days (Sunday and Monday) to bid. I suppose I could trim a night or two off the start of the backup reservation to give me a bit more bidding time and just keep bidding until I can at least pickup an SEA airport zone hotel for 7/27...

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The response from Priceline -- "We're sorry, but we can't accept your offer . . . " is in fact the standard response when a bid isn't accepted. Like you, I've been bidding for weeks on a 4-star hotel in downtown Seattle (Pike Place), but with no luck. I've gone as high as $125 and even started including 3.5-star upscales. Still no luck. Last week I set up a bid alert, telling Priceline to notify me when others submit winning bids of $100 for a 4-star hotel in Pike Place. I've gotten half a dozen winning bid alerts, so I don't get why mine haven't been accepted. The average price of a 3.5 star upscale is about $200 for that area, and I bid $125, which is only about a 38% discount of the full price . . . and Priceline says you can get discounts of up to 60%! I've been a longtime Priceline user, and I've ALWAYS gotten great deals and winning bids, so this is pretty frustrating.

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I just finished my daily bidding, and I went up to $135/nt. No dice.

Looking at the retail rates, I know there's more limited availability Thursday (7/28), since about half of the 4*s aren't showing any rooms available. If that's the case, then I have to assume that lodging is tight with the other 4*s as well for that night. I thought about trimming 7/28 from my bid and trying just 7/29-7/31, but the hassle of switching hotels between two 2-night stints (i.e. nights of 7/27-7/28 at one place and nights of 7/29-7/30 at a different place) is really upping the "ugh, it's a hassle" factor.

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I've tried bidding two ways this afternoon:

1. Continue to get 4* Seattle Pike Place zone 7/28-7/31. I bid up to $150/nt, all bids unsuccessful.

2. Since a lot of 4* are booked solid on the night of 7/28, I tried to remove that night and bid only for 7/29-7/31. I bid up to $135/nt, all rejected.

I'm not sure I want to go above $150/nt, so it looks like I'll need to leave Priceline behind for this trip. I'll try to bid once more tomorrow (I'll book a hotel near the airport for 7/27 and trim off that night from my backup), but I'm not hopeful at all. I suppose I could try a 4* in Bellevue instead of Seattle Pike Place, but I don't know.

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One more update for today:

I bid $170/nt for 7/28-7/31, and it too was denied. There was a 4* Pike Place hotel for $169 on Hotwire that I thought I had locked up (I just wanted to get this over with), but, after entering my payment information, I was given the message that the room was no longer available. So, sometime in the 1 minute it took me to enter my credit card and contact info, someone else must have snatched up the room. Whatever is taking up so many of the room this week is making it difficult for me to save a lot of $$ via Priceline or Hotwire...

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OK, one final post (I promise) to close out this thread. I ended up taking a non-"hot Rate" price for the Bellevue Hotel. After checking each hotel's websites, there were almost no 4*s in Pike Place area for 7/28-7/31... I made a few Priceline bids up to $180/nt for a 4* for 7/29-7/31, but those were rejected like every single other bid I've made for this time period in the past 3 weeks.

The price that I got for the Bellevue Hotel on the retail side of Hotwire was quite a bit lower than was available on the hotel's website. The average nightly rate I got was $188, which beats the Hotels.com average rate of $232. This is *far* from a very good deal, but I wasn't having any luck getting any better of a deal. I was expecting to be able to pick up a 4* Pike Place room for $110/nt, but my wife and I just happen to be traveling during an extremely busy time for hotels, evidently!

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