Priceline Hotel: 5* Phoenix (North Scottsdale) InterContinental Montelucia

[vanpoodle]

My family are heaading to the Phoenix area for Xmas and are booking 2 rooms. I currently have a cancellable room at the Intercontinental Montelucia at $173 a night that I booked in February. Fairmont has just had some promotional pricing for those dates and on their site the Scottsdale Princess is $220, and it's $186 on Hotels.com and Expedia. I either want to stay at the Intercontinental or the Fairmont and won't risk a PL bid to try to get the Intercontinental which is in the Scottsdale zone for fear of getting the Scottsdale Resort & Conference Center which is in the same zone as the Intercontinental. If I book with a "known" as opposed to "opaque" site I have a coupon for one free Fairmont night for one of our rooms that I could use if we make the switch.

The Fairmont is listed (on this site's hotel lists) as the only 5* in the North Scottsdale zone on PL so that would be a safe bid as far as I can tell if I go the PL route.

Hotwire has a 5* North Scottsdale Hotels listed, with 95% happiness, the other 3.2-10.5 mi at $139. If I go Hotwire I'm thinking the $139 in North Scottsdale would be either hotel which would be great (on the hotels list here those are the only two 5* listed for that area). I'd book two rooms for all the nights together if I did this and not use the coupon since I don't want to risk our family being separated at two different hotels and find that neither is the Fairmont anyhow.

So I'm looking for advice -- either keep what I have, take a pretty good web deal on Expedia and use the 1 night coupon, or do some gamblin' with either PL or Hotwire (or try a round in North Scottsdale with PL first then go with Hotwire?). Does anyone have a sense of which hotel Hotwire is offering at $139? It's got resort, fitness center, pool, tennis nearby, golf nearby, children's business center, high-speed internet, spa, restaurants. I have never been to the Phoenix area and have no idea which hotel is nicer, but both seem like a fantastic indulgent family Xmas getaway place!

[vanpoodle]

Hotwire has a 5* North Scottsdale Hotels listed, with 95% happiness, 3.2-10.5 mi from city center at $139. Does anyone have a sense of which hotel it is?

It looks like it could be either the Fairmont Princess or the Intercontinental Montelucia.

It's got resort, fitness center, pool, tennis nearby, golf nearby, children's business center, high-speed internet, spa, restaurants. I have never been to the Phoenix area and have no idea what to expect, but if it is one of these, both seem like a fantastic indulgent family Xmas getaway place!

[vanpoodle]

I was looking to figure out my safe re-bids and it seems that for North Scottsdale the Fairmont must be in the Resort category and not 5*. In setting out the hierarchy, where does resort fall? In order on PL, it goes 5-1* then resort. Is resort a step above 5 star?

[hohogap]

Resort is its own separate category.

Those are the two 5* hotels reported to the Board so far, but hard to be sure that those are the only possibilities. The moderators are excellent in helping to identify what your options may be, so good luck!

[vanpoodle]

Resort is its own separate category.

So any zone with no resorts but hotels of one to five star ratings are safe rebids? Sorry if I'm being pedantic, I don't want to make a horrible bidding mistake!

[vanpoodle]

Bid the North Scottsdale zone at the resort level on PL (where Fairmont Princess appears to be the only resort) starting at $75 in $2 increments to $115 and then $1 increments to $139 using the free re-bidding permutations table as set out by Smilingboy on Sept 7 2008 (with 9 re-bid zones it seems to give a massive # of free re-bids -- I squeezed in 44 rebids and there are still tons left in my 24 hour window).

I stopped at $139 because Hotwire has a 5* North Scottsdale at $139 which, as far as I can tell, could be either the Fairmont or else the Intercontinental Montelucia. The Intercontinental is in the Scottsdale zone on Priceline with a few other hotels which aren't as nice and therefore I don't want to risk bidding in that zone.

I am now deducing that the Hotwire hotel is most likely to be the Intercontinental since not even a counteroffer from PL. I know my husband would prefer to stay at the Fairmont just because he has coupons for free upgrades and meal discounts there and he is a Fairmont fan. We need to figure out if we should take the Hotwire offer (and hope that it's not some other 5* that suddenly appeared in the North Scottsdale zone), keep going with PL for the Fairmont's zone, or book it as a known hotel on another site. I'm going to sleep on it and come back to this later.

[thereuare]

So any zone with no resorts but hotels of one to five star ratings are safe rebids?

No, the star rating hierarchy is as follows:

5*

Resort

4*

3.5*

3*

2.5*

2*

1*

Therefore your Resort class bid could be upgraded to a 5* hotel. Therefore, you wouldn't want to use any zone that has 5* hotels in it as a re-bid zone.

Does anyone have a sense of which hotel Hotwire is offering at $139? It's got resort, fitness center, pool, tennis nearby, golf nearby, children's business center, high-speed internet, spa, restaurants

Assuming this is 5* rated and in the North Scottsdale zone, this does match previous reports for the Inter-Continental Montelucia so that would be my best guess for this one.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases. (or our Hotels.com or Expedia link should you decide to book direct)

Let us know whatever you decide and how it goes or if we can be of further help.

[vanpoodle]

thanks for clarifying where resort sits in the hierarchy!

Yes, the Hotwire listing was 5* for North Scottsdale. PL seems to classify the Fairmont and the Intercontinental as resort.

After some discussion, my instructions now are to bid PL up to $149 for North Scottsdale resort where the Fairmont appears to be the only possibility and if no success then the take the Hotwire 5* and hope that it is one of the Fairmont or Intercontinental, both of which look incredible on their websites (I was burned on that once in Boston after a reco from a professor of mine, but that's a whole other story!)

Once I get back from work this afternoon I'll continue working through that awesome permutation matrix $1 at a time of course using the links off this site. Thanks so much for your feedback everyone!

[vanpoodle]

I made another 23 bids (gotta love that Matrix that Smilingboy shared!) and went from $100 to $149 today on PL using my free rebids for the North Scottsdale zone, no accepted bid, no counteroffers.

Went back to Hotwire and noticed that the rate had dropped to $137 for the 5* North Scottsdale (it was $139 15 hours ago). Made a phone call, did some web browsing and went back to it 10 minutes later and it had dropped to $135. Decided to book it and not wait any longer and it is indeed the Intercontinental Montelucia. Not sure if I should have waited a few more days or not, I suppose it was just as likely to go up in price as down.

Thanks everyone for your help -- I have never done a Hotwire booking before, your site was excellent to help figure out which hotel it was likely to be. I used the link above.

[vanpoodle]

Okay, I discovered a big problem now that I'm booked and can't back out. The Intercontinental charges a $25 per night resort fee which was only discovered after the booking was accepted. The Fairmont does not. I have also just discovered the Fairmont on Hotwire's "known" side for $155 a night (I had seen it on other sites for $186 a night but it didn't come to light on Hotwire until after I'd made the booking and gone to $149 without success on Priceline), which ends up being $5 a night cheaper than what I will be paying. I have now made 2 phone calls to Hotwire and one to the hotel and no one will budge. I'm ticked off because on Hotwire's opaque side they promise me the lowest rate, yet they have the equivalent 5* on their known side that ends up being cheaper -- and the Fairmont would have given us upgrades. The Intercontinental has kindly offered to not charge us the yet additional $10 a night parking fee that they would have tacked on top of the resort fee. With 2 rooms for 4 nights this resort fee is $200.

[vanpoodle]

Of course I've gotten nowhere but thought I'd share a nugget of wisdom for others looking at 5* bookings in North Scottsdale. At the very bottom of the page, well below where it gives a description of the hotel and amenities, where you wouldn't normally look, in small print, it says there is a $25 resort fee if it is the Intercontinental. If it is the Fairmont there would be no resort fee. I'm really kicking myself for not re-checking their retail side, I could have gotten that Fairmont for less than I will be paying for the Intercontinental.

[hohogap]

Thanks for your update and good information on the bidding intricacies.

[thereuare]

Although you received the hotel you were hoping for, sorry to see that you're ultimately disappointed in the results.

HOTWIRE's 'Best Rate Guarantee' is for the same hotel... not for the same hotel class; and is for room rate only, not including taxes, fees, etc.

Unfortunately resort fees are becoming the norm in the hotel industry... even at hotels you wouldn't necessarily consider to be a resort. I've always stated that any fees which are mandatory should be included in the room rate, regardless of how the room is booked. At least HOTWIRE does disclose the approximate resort fee before purchase, with HOTWIRE there is no way to know if the hotel you will ultimately receive has a resort fee or not.

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

Enjoy your stay.

[vanpoodle]

Agreed -- a few newbie Hotwire things I know for next time -- I should have checked their retail site BEFORE booking (though with the Fairmont showing as nearly $50 less I may have assumed that is what I would get anyhow), but I wish I would have known to look on the fine print for the resort fee before proceeding, as apparently the fee was in there, and if they had the Fairmont in mind the fee would have been zero. But I guess from a deducing the hotel prior point of view it gives another hint for which hotel Hotwire will assign if you know what the resort fee is.

With pretty much every guest being totally ticked off about a resort fee, why do they keep doing it? It adds another $200 to our stay that was not expected. I guess it's better for me to be all angry about it now, it would have been worse to know once I got there and also be charged $10 a day for parking? (well, I'll still be angry about it when they take my credit card to add it on....) And thanks for listening to me vent about this. The Hotwire staff seem pretty well coached in dealing with the resort fee issue (I talked to 3 different people) and absolutely not budging on it, which is another thing that makes me angry since it shows that it is totally part of the industry and upsets so many customers that they give such extensive training on dealing it.

[thereuare]

The resort fee is more of a hotel issue then a HOTWIRE issue, imo. Unfortunately HOTWIRE can't do anything to help you at this point since it's a charge billed directly by the hotel.