Priceline Hotel: 2.5* Lansing Country Inn and Suites

[lizamead]

I first bid on a 3* in Lansing for $40; when it was rejected added East Lansing and upped to $45, also rejected (E Lansing wasn't a free rebid, but I was okay with either zone). Thought about waiting 72 hours and trying again, but wanted to just be done, so bid $40 for 2.5* in Lansing, and it was accepted. I bid the same $40 because a) that seemed the usual winning bid for the hotels in Lansing (a bit less in E Lansing), and :) the websites I checked (Courtyard, Holiday Inn, plus for 3*s Sheraton and Radisson, plus Quality Inn where we've stayed before) showed lowest rates of abt $90 for the 2.5* places, and the lowest hotwire rate for 2.5* was $52. After winning the Country Inn and Suites, I went to look at their rates, and they had a webrate of only $59, so I'm a little bummed that I probably could have won this for $30-35, but $40 is still pretty good, and since I'd never heard of the CI&S before, it's not like I just hadn't thought to check them.

Anyway, it looks like a nice place, and has a pool and free breakfast, so I'm pretty happy. It's also a new place to add to the hotel listings - I was bummed that the hotel listings for Michigan so far only have Detroit places, because I was hoping to get more of a sense especially of what the hotwire place might have been. But OTOH, this place wasn't listed on TOBB's listings either, so it likely wouldn't have been on BB's listings even if we did have non-Detroit places already...

[thereuare]

Welcome to BetterBidding!

The lists continue to grow and posts like yours help us get more 'coverage' each and every day... so thank you.

This board has only been live for about 16 months and (IMO) we've come a long way in a short period of time. Many of the zones in more popular destinations are fairly 'complete' and since we can't choose our hotel anyway, there at least are enough datapoints to make an educated bid and/or come up with a logical strategy. It's just not easy to convince people to go to MSU and the Lansing area :) (j/k... i know it's the state capital and lots of govt. business taking place there)

Enjoy your stay and thank you for helping us get one step closer to becoming the Better Bidding board.

[lizamead]

Okay, that's super weird - the last sentence of my original post had read wouldn't have been on *BB's* listings, meaning here. I have no idea how it ended up as TOBB (which I know is used here to refer to TOBB, which was in the same sentence!), which really makes it make no sense. Sorry about that.

Thanks for the welcome. The first year I moved here, I thought Lansing was pathetically small town. Now it's my mecca. (Ann Arbor makes a better mecca, but it's farther away.... :) )It's pretty sad. But there's so much more to do there with kids than there is in Mt Pleasant, where we are! So even though it's only an hour away, we end up making a weekend of it when we go down for something - we're going for Lansing Pride on Saturday, but then will hit the zoo, and maybe the science museum, and any other outdoor fairs that are going on.... But at least I'm doing it more cheaply now!

[thereuare]

I've corrected the above... if it's not how you intended please PM me with how you would like it to read.

I've been to Lansing a few times and East Lansing a few times more than that....the MSU campus is a nice place to walk around. Problem with Priceline/Hotwire in Ann Arbor is that neither of the hotels on campus participate, so if you want to go that route you'll need a car and not really be in a central location. Sometimes you can stay out by Briarwood Mall and take the short 10 minute bus ride to campus.

Regardles, sometimes it's nice just to 'get away', even if it isn't too far from home.