Priceline Hotel: Headed to the Joe

[dudeinvta]

I have used the name your own price with PRICELINE for local hotels, but am planning air, hotel, and car trip from LA to Detroit. Wanting to stay near Joe Louis arena and found retail prices of 4* hotels about $1500 for two people at Cadillac Westin. I am wondering what a good start for name your own price would be? Should I just totally low ball the whole trip and see what they come back with? Thanks for any help and information.

This was for four days in February btw.

[AaronJB]

Welcome to Betterbidding. :)

Please confirm your exact date/s of travel. Are you interested in bidding on hotel, car and plane tickets or only hotel?

Thank you for using the site's HOTWIRE or PRICELINE links to start your purchases and searches.

[thereuare]

... and please read your messages.

Thanks!

[dudeinvta]

Thanks! I am looking to travel from 2/22 to 2/26. Two people. Yes, looking at car, flight, hotel.

[thereuare]

There is no bidding on packages... are you looking to bid for each piece of this stay individually OR looking to purchase all three aspects of your trip in one 'package' purchase?

Using PRICELINE or Expedia packages, what is the best price offered for a package (is that the $1500 price you quoted above? if so, thru what service is that thru?) What is the cost of airfare for this route on these dates?

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

[dudeinvta]

Okay, guess that was my question about packages. I'm trying to get best deal so I will go individually. The $1500 was through Priceline, just retail prices though. So let me get this right, I should do it all separately and then name own price, but bid low and see what they come back with? I've done before, and got some k deals, but that's just been local stuff. I'm traveling from. California.

Airfare was about $500

[thereuare]

Assuming the $1500 rate was total for two people and all-in (including fees and taxes)...

You can't really count on airfare savings these days given the current environment (nor would i necessarily recommend for a 4 day trip given that you can't choose your departure/arrival times... so you could get a later arrival on your start date and an early departure on your return date, which would essentially eliminate at least a full day from your 4 day trip.

Assuming you need to pay retail for airfare:

$500/each = $1000

This would only leave $500 for 4 nites hotel plus 4 days rental car.

HOTWIRE has a 4* hotel in the Downtown zone for $105/nite (which comes to $500 all-in after fees/taxes) and economy care for $255 all-in (car rental rates look high for these dates)

Based upon the current rates above i'd question if you'll be able to beat the package deal you're seeing, and if you are if it would be by enough to 'compensate' for an opaque booking and not choosing the hotel.

Let us know your thoughts and we'll take it from there.

[dudeinvta]

Wow. Thats a lotta info. Thanks! The flights to and from detroit dont look good. They seem to take all day. Southwest has some better flights, and maybe save on fees? I have not checked Hotwire thoroughly, just done Pricelune, I will check it out. The $1500 was the price of that specific flught, and just looking to see if there is anything else out there. Should I still try to do the whole pkg, or try to bid individually?

[thereuare]

Assuming the package deal is still the same price as quoted, as are flights, hotel and rental car, it doesn't seem like the savings will be enough to justify going opaque for each segment of this trip. You could try bidding on airfare first to see if you can save enough on airfare to make booking the other pieces of this trip 'opaque', but it just doesn't seem worthwhile at the moment.

You could see if booking Hotel+Car together and then airfare ala carte, but given the numbers above, it doesn't look like the math will add up and produce much savings (given the current rates)

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases. (or you can use these links, as well as Expedia or Hotels.com to check for package deals)

Let us know what you decide and if anything appears which looks like it would produce some savings or if we can be of further help.

Good luck.