Priceline Hotel: Seasonal Price variation for FL Priceline

[alex69]

Hi there

Sorry for this being a touch OT.

Going through the posts of the past year, it seems to me that the difference in accepted bids between peak (say Feb/March) and Off-peak (say July-August) is considerably less than the difference in percentage terms in their respective advertised rates. What I mean is that it seems to me that by querying some normal reservation systems I find nearly a 100% difference between Aug05 and Feb06 prices (the latter being the more expensive) while if I go back to the posts here for Feb05 they seem to be broadly in line with the prices being posted for Aug06 (perhaps a 10-20% increase).

Is that something that the frequent observers of the PL Florida market can confirm or is this the wrong impression I got by looking at particularly non-representative hotels?

Many thanks indeed. Reason I am asking is that I am doing some planning ahead for Feb/March06 so would like to have a ball figure on the average 3/4* prices per night.

[thereuare]

I don't think you can compare rates on a percentage basis as you are... a hotel may increase their hotel-direct rate by $20/nite but not their priceline rate, they may increase their priceline rate but not their hotel-direct rate, or they may increase both, either the same amount but not necessarily in proportion to their typical opaque discount.

[alex69]

Thanks for the reply.

I did this comparison on the opaque rate for a couple of hotels and [the differences I found] didn't seem to mirror in percentage terms the difference in the advertised rates. I was wondering whether some people here following the FL opaque rates closely were able to point to a ball figure of % variations between say feb/march and slow months such as August.

BTW: Feel free to move it to another thread if it is OT here! :)

[thereuare]

You're making this much more complicated than it should be.