Priceline Hotel: 4* in Paris 12/7/06-12/9/06??

[SueBarbri]

I'm new to this board (and to Priceline/Hotwire bidding in general), but this seems to be the perfect place to go for help regarding hotel bidding, so here goes:

I'm arriving in Paris on 12/7/2006 and I'm departing for London on 12/9/2006. After much thought, I've decided that rather than risking money on sub-par 3* hotels, I'd prefer to bid on a 4* hotel through Priceline/Hotwire, but am running into a bit of confusion regarding the hotels I might possibly recieve so I thought I'd ask a few questions here in the hopes that you guys can help me out.

1.) I've narrowed my neighborhoods to OTQ, the Latin Quarter, and Arc/Champs, and according to Priceline's "retail" site there are 11 hotels classified as 4* in those areas. Does anybody know what the odds are that I'll actually recieve one of those particular hotels if I win my bid, or is it likely that Priceline will produce a mystery hotel that wasn't listed at all?

2.) Assuming they won't pull any terrible tricks out of their sleeves, which hotel would I be most likely to get? I'm assuming that I'll wind up with the hotel with the cheapest "retail" price for those dates, but is that necessarily always the case? AND

3.) According to Priceline, the "Median retail price for a 4* Plus hotel in Paris, France is $202." Therefore, I assume that my first bid should be somewhere around $100. Is this too high? Too low? I'm not really interested in spending more than $120 a night for a mystery hotel, so please let me know if I'm wasting my time!

4.) What precisely IS a "4* Plus" hotel?

[Chris26WI]

"4star superior" is just another name for "5 star" in other countries. You will probably not get away with an offer of 100$ for a 5star in Paris (4star sup).

[greenchip]

Dear Sue Barbri

There is often some confusion for folks new to Priceline on the different way they group hotels in the "retail" section and the "name your own price" sections for Paris. They are quite different.

If you intend to bid your own price, several observations -

[SueBarbri]

Thanks for the tips Greenchip and Chris! I'm bidding tonight, so I'll keep my fingers crossed and will let the board know what happened!