Priceline Hotel: Extended stay bidding help for Bethesda: Mid April - Mid May

[docroc]

Hi everyone, newbie here. A friend who lives out of town is coming into DC, but needs to stay specifically in the Bethesda area in a 3 or 3.5 star hotel from April 12 - May 10. I'm trying to figure out the best (and of course, least expensive) way of doing this for her, so I have 2 main questions if I could use the infinite board wisdom here. Since I'm paying for it, I would like to not go beyond $75-80/day (I've seen winning bids in the $60-65 range for the Hyatt Regency), but of course, not for that length of time:

1. Is there a way to add areas beyond the DC area to extend my bid on Priceline? What I mean by this is can I add hotel zones in Baltimore etc of 2.5 or below star areas to essentially extend my bid without having to wait 24 hours, seeing as only Zone 11 (Mount Vernon) in the direct DC area fulfills these qualitie. By doing some searching I know that NoVA has Zone 4, Northern MD has Zones 1 & 7, and Baltimore Zones 3 - 5 of only low star hotels that I could add to extend my bid, but I can't see how I can add them since they are not showing up when I attempt to bid :(

2. Would there be a less expensive way of achieving all of this through another means due to her necessary length of stay?

Thanks so much everyone!

[AaronJB]

Welcome to Betterbidding. :)

A few thoughts/questions:

Would splitting the stay be acceptable? Given the length of stay, it's most likely the best route will involve splitting the stay between different hotels. There is no way to use zones outside the selected visible region for re-bids.

Are there any other zones next to/nearby the Bethesda area that would be acceptable?

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

[thereuare]

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

... and please click each of these PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links before replying.

Thanks.

[docroc]

Thanks Aaron for the response :) Yeah, splitting up the hotels into a week at a time is what I'm trying to do now, unfortunately, gotta stay in Bethesda for travel purposes. That's what I suspected about the re-bid zones as well, although, this makes little sense in DC since the areas that they add to DC are less "central" DC then the ones they don't :(

And will definitely use this PRICELINE links at this site for bids to give you guys a plug!

[thereuare]

When bidding 3.5* in Bethesda you do have FIVE re-bid zones... but only ONE re-bid zone at the 3* level.

What is the first date range you've begun to look at, as i've looked at a few possible date ranges beginning on April 12 and your budget looks like it will be tough for this first set of dates. What is the best rate you're able to find thru conventional booking channels?

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