Priceline Hotel: Please Advise -- Priceline Vegas Ratings

[travelAlot]

Just curious if any of you have any experience with Priceline's ratings for "name your own price" properties being the same as its regular Priceline travel hotels booking engine. On situaions like the Golden Nugget being upgraded back to a 4-star, it's pretty obvious in NYOP because the Fremont St. zone now has a 4-star option. But what about, for example, the Artisan Hotel (Strip West zone) which last year was upgraded to a 3-star (same zone as Gold Coast and Orleans) -- after numerous complaints (see Trip Advisor, etc), the Artisan (a former Travlodge kind of property) is now showing in Priceline Hotels as a 2-star. As such, it seems like a reasonable assumption that the same hotel would be no higher than a 2-star on Name Your Own Price hotels, right? Taking this further, Travelocity (2-star) and Trip Advisor (2.5 stars) are similar to Priceline Hotels, while Expedia and Hotels.com keep this property at 3 stars.

Just using this as a prime example of what I've seen recently in general and also as a regular Vegas traveler. Any thoughts or suggestions? Anyone have any experiences where the NYOP hotel star rating was higher than what was showing on PL Hotels?

Thanks for any direction on this.

[thereuare]

There was one instance i recall a few years ago where a hotel was in the process of being upgraded... had been upgraded in the Vacation Packages but not in the Name Your Own Price section (it eventually was changed in the NYOP version of the site, but wasn't at the time). The ratings at Expedia, Hotels.com, traveloicty, Orbitz, etc are irrelevant to priceline (and HOTWIRE) ratings.

The bigger pitfalls with using the non-opaque product to determine opaque availability is that not all hotels that participate with one side of the service also participate with the other side, as well as the zone(s) for each region not being the same thru each service.

There is a more indepth discussion on this topic in our PRICELINE FAQ.

[travelAlot]

Thnaks for the insight. I've tried to be pretty thorough in doing my homework and am just a bit gun-shy, lol. Even checked Vacation Packages as well as Priceline Hotels, and both have had the Artisan as a 2-star for awhile now (plus haven't seen it be posted on this or TOB as a winning 3-star bid in awhile. Have an opportunity to bid Strip West 3-star when the Coast properties retail price is $105/night and Artisan is $150+ -- just worried that PL may have a pre-determined block of rooms even though I know I could immediately complain about the star class (vs PL's non-opaque products) afterward if I got the Artisan.

Thanks again and, as always, I'll use the s-b links.