Priceline Hotel: Help needed for Priceline/Hotwire stay in London

[shoemacl]

Hi everyone!

I will be arriving to London on or around November 5th or 6th (wasn't sure if flexibility helped the search) and will be staying until November 11th. I will be attending a conference at the Excel London venue in London Docklands. I will be traveling with one other person (only one bed needed).

As expected, I would like to get the best value for my money. 3 or 4 star would be fine, easily accessible to conference hall and downtown london, clean, b&b OK and with basic ammenities (wi-fi, safe area, clean, good location, easily accessible to tube...)

We are on a tight budget, so if at all possible I would really like to keep it under $80 US/night. May consider flexibility for a really great deal.

Any tips or tricks for how I can get the best deal would be really appreciated. I've used hotwire.com in the past, but never the 'Name your Price' feature on priceline.com. Attempted to figure it out but didn't have much luck. I've heard there's a real science to getting the very best deal.

PLEASE HELP!!

Thanks!

[thereuare]

Welcome to BetterBidding!

...easily accessible to conference hall and downtown london, clean, b&b OK and with basic ammenities (wi-fi, safe area, clean, good location, easily accessible to tube...)

When you bid on PRICELINE you have to be willing to accept any hotel in the zone at the star rating (or higher) that you select. There is no box to select "near the tube" or any of the other criteria you have designated. If you go to PRICELINE and look at the map of the zones and boundaries, are there any zones which you think will meet all of your criteria?

We are on a tight budget, so if at all possible I would really like to keep it under $80 US/night. May consider flexibility for a really great deal.

Once you decide upon the zones we'll suggest a strategy for you to follow, but my guess is that $80 will likely fall short for these dates unless you consider the airport zones or outside of the 'core' city.

You can also have a look at HOTWIRE but a i did a search for your dates and anything at 3* or higher in the most frequently chosen zones is above your budget.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases... please click each of these previous links before replying.

Thanks.

[vanpoodle]

I've done some bookings earlier and managed to get the Hilton Hyde Park in the Notting Hill zone for $84 a night Nov 5-6. A few thoughts -- I am very reluctant to stay at a 3* in England, they can be more than a little lacking.

There is a section of this forum called Priceline Re-Bidding Explained -- this was huge for me in learning how to get the most out of my bidding and not over bid. The key post for me was on September 7, 2008 which sets out a fantastic rebidding matrix that I now follow when bidding, upping each bid by $1, which is on about page 3 of that topic.

I'm not sure if that deal is still available or not, but take a look at the 4* zones but beware of some of the boundaries. I'm reluctant to bid in Chelsea and Kensington, for example, because some of the properties are a ways out, but I was having problems getting a bid accepted for Nov 7-10 and used the PL map feature, realized there was a cheap hotel to be had in Chelsea (was coming up at about half the price of the other 4* who had rejected me up to $145) and won it for $120 after implementing lessons learned in that rebidding post. I reckoned that for the difference in price over the 4 rooms that I needed, we would give it a try. I started at about $75 for a 4* in the first round, but must have spent a few weeks on the project. (I decided that since I was having bids in the $140s rejected that I would try Kensington up to $110 as well, but above that it wasn't worth the risk of a poorly located hotel at a price higher than that)

My own favourites are Notting Hilll, Bloomsbury, Regent's Park, Mayfair and Westminster. You'll have 2 free re-bid zones to use. You've got time to work with, so if you're patient and don't mind spending some time at it over a few days, you can start low and follow that matrix and slowly work your way up in the bidding to know you're getting the best possible deal. Others might have different words of advice. I am fairly new to this so I might defer to them if they have differing points of view!