Priceline Hotel: 3.5* Puerto Rico (Ponce) Hilton Ponce Golf and Casino Resort

[Travel Guru]

So, I am trying to book the Hilton in Ponce for 23rd and 24th night (check-in 3/23, check-out 3/25). The regular rack rate is $169.

 

Priceline Express shows a 3½ Star Hotel in Ponce - Guanica Area for $125/night. Since there are no other 3.5 star hotels in that area, I am fairly confident that this is the Hilton. Could it be any other property??

 

Now, my second concern is that Priceline shows:

Summary of Charges
Price per night: $125
Rooms: 1
Nights: 2
Room Subtotal: $250.00
Taxes & Fees: $41.86
Total Priceline Charges:

All prices are in U.S. Dollar. $291.86
Charged by Priceline today when you book.
Additional Mandatory Fee: $74.17 This hotel fee is charged by property at checkout.

 

The mandatory fee description shows "Mandatory fee of 15.54% per person per stay is collected at the hotel." I could not find any hotel in that area (3.5 stars or otherwise) who has that kind of fee. Hilton does have a 14% resort fee, which I think is pre-tax so becomes 15.4% if you add 11% tax. But it is per room and not per "person". So, my question is would that fee be charged by the hotel no matter what (I mean do they have some deal with Priceline) or is that an estimate by Priceline and the actual resort fee would be the 14% or whatever.

 

On a side note, I did bid up to $125 for a 3.5 star hotel in Priceline and did not win. The Hilton was showing up as a hot Rate Hotel on Hotwire for $150, but it no longer does.

[thereuare]

Keep in mind the comments at the top of the Priceline Hotel List[/ul] in that the lists only contain hotels reported to the board, so there could always be other properties at each star rating that are not listed there.

With the above noted, this PRICELINE EXPRESS property is showing no amenities, correct? I'd speculate that it is indeed the Hilton, but with no amenities shown it's difficult to have too much confidence in any guess.

I have been seeing a lot of strange issues with PRICELINE lately and the listed resort fee. For instance, in one view of the Hilton when searching for your dates i see this at the top of the page:

All rooms are booked for double occupancy.

This room has a $151/night mandatory fee which is charged by the hotel at checkout.

Yet when i click thru one of the room rates it shows a much lower amount:

$88.24 - This hotel fee is charged by property at checkout.

So to sum it up... my guess would be the Hilton, but given the inconsistencies and the and the lack of any reasonable information about this PRICELINE EXPRESS listing, it could ultimately be something else.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases... or thru our sister site MAPS and HOTELS.com for your regular rate purchases.

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

[Travel Guru]

Thanks for the update.

I do always use the links from here for both Priceline as well as Hotwire. I was also aware that the lists are not comprehensive, but nevertheless it was a good reminder. I had based my speculation on the fact that there is no 3.5 star hotel at all in that area other than the Hilton.

 

What I was more concerned about is the mandatory fee portion - I guess my question was this. "Hilton charges a 14% resort fee and Priceline tells me hotel has 15.54% per person mandatory fee - so if I book (and assuming it does turn out to be the Hilton), will the mandatory fee be what Hilton charges or what Priceline shows - this mandatory fee is not going to be charged by Priceline anyway, it will be at checkout". I was hoping someone had some experience with this type of scenario.

 

Anyways, I bit the bullet and booked it. It did turn out to be the Hilton. Now I guess I will find out for myself what the resort charges me - I will update that once I am back.

Thanks again.

[thereuare]

Congratulations on your success!

Nice to see it was the hotel you were hoping for and that you're pleased with the outcome. As the resort fee is charged to all guests regardless of how booked, i suspect that you will be paying whatever the 'standard' amount that all guests pay, as i doubt the hotel's backend is set-up to charge different resort fees to different guests based upon how they booked.

We are in the process of launching Resort Fee.com (it's fully functional and you can give it a try, just needs a quick update before we can 'officially' go live) which should prove to be a good resource to check on resort fees as it will contain over 300K hotels and be frequently updated. :)

Thank you for sharing your win and using the PRICELINE links on the board to begin your purchase.

Enjoy your stay.