Priceline Hotel: Fort Lauderdale (Feb 24/25) - bidding strategy

[bidding newbie]

Thanks for this website ... I've found it to be very useful so far. The maps are terrific!!

I am hoping that someone can advise me re priceline.com bidding strategy: I would like to book pre-cruise (2 nights) in Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 24 and 25, 2006. I have called numerous hotels in the Fort Lauderdale Beach and downtown areas, and have found very little availability.

I currently have a hold at the Days Inn Bahia Cabana Beach Resort for $143 USD.

My preferences are:

(1) I'd like to stay in the Beach area for around $100 USD. My concern in choosing the beach area is that I'll end up with a hotel from priceline that is more north than I want (I'd like to stay at hotels where I can use the water taxi as my primary form of transportation). Has anyone experienced this problem?

(2) I'm open to staying in the downtown area for $100 USD. (AmeriSuites seems like a good option for cruisers b/c of the complimentary shuttles)

If anyone has advice regarding a bidding strategy (including what you think I should use as a low end on my bid), or recent experiences for either of my preferences, please post!

I'm also interested in how seriously you take the retail prices that priceline lists when you select the appropriate star rating, e.g. if priceline.com lists the retail price at $300 and they (priceline) indicate that you can save up to 40%, do you expect to pay $180 for that hotel?

Thanks for your help!!

[thereuare]

Welcome to BetterBidding!

Your hotel can be anywhere in the shaded region that Priceline uses to define that zone. If there are areas within that zone that you do not want to stay then i would recommend not bidding that zone (or bid low enough where if you did receive a hotel in that area, it would make it worthwhile do to the savings).

You should ignore Priceline's suggested retail prices, but a []very brief look it appears that many hotels are close to full and there is very little occupancy given to the opaque suppliers. Therefore i think your $100 maximum will likely be tough, you may want to consider at least raising your bid to the price of your back-up, and trying to improve upon the quality of the hotel (although this too may be quite difficult).

Let us know what you decide regarding zone(s) and price and we'll suggest a strategy to proceed.