Priceline Hotel: 4.5* Boston (Beacon Hill) The Liberty Hotel

[gberg]

I was having trouble placing some bids for downtown Boston core (Cambridge East - Back Bay - Harborfront - Beacon Hill - Theatre District - Seaport) for 3 stars, up to 140 USD. Will prices come down if I wait until the night before? I'm surprised it's still so expensive from a Monday to Thursday.

 

Any help is greatly appreciated! 

Thanks.

[AaronJB]

Welcome to Betterbidding. :)

Unfortunately, with the hotel inventory in Boston, if anything's going on in the city, rates can climb quickly and they (mostly) look fairly steep for these dates. What would be your desired max budget per night for this stay?

 

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.

[thereuare]

As noted above, for a city of it's size, Boston does not have a lot of hotel rooms, and even a small change in demand can have a dramatic increase on hotel rates.

With so many colleges/universities in this area, I suspect rates may be high for these dates as you're getting close to school starting and many parents are dropping their kids off at school and/or helping to get them settled in.

There is no way to know if rates will come down, or move even higher, between now and your dates, but with just 4 days to go before check-in i think hotels have a every good idea of occupancy levels for these dates and if they needed to fill hotel rooms they would have already lowered rates.

Hotels have no reason to keep rates artificially high and then drop them at the last minute as:

1) they don't want to 'train' guests to book later as it makes it harder for them to manage their room inventory

2) they can't change demand too much at the very last minute. If a hotel drops rates by 30% a month in advance, they can win some guests from other hotels who still have refundable reservations as well as spur some new demand by inciting guests who may have been on the fence as to whether to take a trip or not... this close to check-in most guests have their accommodations finalized and the majority of others can't make spontaneous plans.

3) while you are thinking the hotel would rather fill an empty room... the hotel is thinking that you don't have a place to stay and need to book somewhere

At current rates i think you're likely looking at the $160-$180 area for a 3* or better in one of your zones above... although i will add that HOTWIRE has what looks to be the 4.5* The Ames for $193/nite which gets very good reviews and for an extra $10-$25/nite may be a better value then some of the lower rated hotel offers.

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 your thoughts and how you'd like to proceed and we'll take it from there.

[gberg]

Thanks for the feedback! Great knowledge and tips there. It sucks but it's true as you said in pt3, that they know you need a room. I am leaning towards the HOTWIRE option, as I worry that there's a chance I could get a place like the Boston Park Plaza when doing PRICELINE. 

 

Are there any other affordable 3 star + options in the downtown area that you would recommend?

[thereuare]

If you search HOTWIRE and/or PRICELINE EXPRESS (use our BiddingHelper.com to search both at once) you'll see that 3* hotels in the 'core' part of Boston start at about $180/nite.

There is this 3 star Cambridge-Harvard-MIT hotel for $167/nite (confirm your dates and price on the landing page) with:

Business Center

Restaurant

Free Internet

Free Breakfast

Fitness Center

... my guess for this one would be the Best Western Plus Hotel Tria should this be convenient for your needs, but at this price i think the higher rated 4.5* Downtown property for $193/nite from HOTWIRE would be the better deal given the Downtown location and the known 4.5/5.0 TA rating of this offer:

Free Internet

Boutique

Fitness

Restaurant

Business

Hi-Speed Internet

Wheelchair Accessible

Bathroom Accessible

... my guess here is The Ames

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 how you decide to proceed and how it goes or how we can be of further help.

[gberg]

Yes, I am leaning towards your recommendations. Do those higher tier (4+) have additional charges? When I tried to bid via priceline, I saw another fee/tax component.

Are there also any recommendations for Boston overnight parking? My girlfriend and I are driving from Toronto, and since we don't need parking in the city, I've heard some people find a place to park outside the core.

[gberg]

Waiting it out seemed to work out great this time. I noticed a PRICELINE EXPRESS and HOTWIRE deal for a boutique hotel that matched the description of the Liberty. At around 115USD first bid, I was told to bump it up to around 148USD to win it now. I decided to start doing some incremental bidding on the property, and locked in at 138USD. The previous failed bid was around 133-134USD, so there's some potential wiggle room there for any others. I'm very happy with this deal! Thanks for helping out with the process!

[yellowdog]

Thank you for sharing your result with the board.

 

Good to see that you're happy with the outcome.

 

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.

 

Enjoy your stay.

 

Yellowdog.