Priceline Hotel: counter offer from priceline

[paula5]

I put in a 65.00 bid for a hotel in kensington -they came back with a one time offer of 99.00-take it or try again? Im new to all this and need your help. Thanks!

[thereuare]

More info is need to advise you:

What star rating? How soon 'til arrival?

If this is the same bid as the 'problem' you posted earlier please follow-up that post as well.

[paula5]

yes,they responded with a counter offer af $99.00. These dates were for the 13th-15th of June. It was for a 3 star rating. I know another person who told me about this site and got the Forum for $64.oo two days ago. i stayed at the Forum 4 years ago-not a bad hotel. I checked it out..there rates for June were $200-250.00. like I said, I am very new to this. any help would be appreciated.

[paula5]

There reply was "we have a great deal for you!" Normally you are required to change additional items (add zones,star level or dates) in order to try your request again. However we are able to extend this one time opportunity to you because of the zone, quality level and dates you requested. If you are willing to accept this new price you can get your hotel room right now.

what do you think?

[thereuare]

I would pass this up as COUNTER-OFFERS can usually be undercut and you have plenty of time to try again (as you have no RE-BIDS available). It's not like they're offering you to raise my $10 or so, their suggestion represents a 50% increase over your current bid!

The two links above make excellent reading for a newbie and you should take a look at them when you have time (but before you read them please follow-up your other post about the lack of acceptance/rejection :) )

[WillTravel]

Hi Paula,

I talked to you at Fodors before.

I would take a look at what the conversion rate is for the dollar.

When I got my $64 3* bid in Kensington, that was equal to 34 pounds.

Since I bid, the exchange rate has gotten a little worse for the pound, so it might take a few dollars more.

It's also possible your dates are harder to get, for whatever reason, than mine were.

But as thereuare said, you have a lot of time to eventually get something and hotels change their inventory all the time (which you can see from my Berlin bid thread). Many people don't succeed until a few weeks or even days prior to their trip. So it's good to have a cancellable backup.

If you only want Kensington, I would just try a bid once every 72 hours. Another good idea would be to go to the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum site and figure out what rate the hotel is asking on their web site for those dates. In my case the cheapest rate was 70 pounds prepaid. If the rate is substantially higher on your dates, then you have less chance of succeeding.