How to find Priceline zones for European cities

[6inarow]

I've searched the boards but I can't find anything about what the "zones" actually are, though I did figure out that it was what pops up on the maps when you're choosing a hotel in a specific city on Priceline. (right?) But I can't find anything about which zone is which in international cities or how to search areas of a country rather than the 1-2 choices they give you on Priceline.

For example, we have a 3 day stopover in the Netherlands and don't necessarily want to stay in Amsterdam or Rotterdam and those are the only two choices Priceline gives. I can go to the PL europe site, but they don't have the choose your price option. If I know that I want to stay in "South Holland", how do I specify that without PL giving me someplace in Michigan or Missouri?

Thanks a bunch!

[mrxow]

Name your own price options in Europe seem to be limited to only specific, generally larger, cities. I was thinking myself that it would be nice to be able to know where all the name your own price cities are, as you save so much money considering the exchange rate, it might be a good idea to plan a trip to Europe around the cities where you can bid on PL. I think there used to be more options for bidding in Europe. I could swear that I got a hotel through PL in a town near Frankfurt that no longer seems to have a zone. I was going to try to figure out where it was and add it to the hotel list, but it no longer seems possible to win that hotel. It seems they have consolidated their operations there as far as bidding goes and limited it to large, popular metropolitan areas. It would still be nice to know where those areas are. I don't know if anybody has any idea how to find that out. Obviously the major cities are going to be covered. The question is: are there any smaller areas which allow bidding? I don't know. It doesn't seem that way from the limited attempts I have made to see where bidding was available. For instance, you can bid in Munich, Frankfurt or Berlin(I assume, haven't tried) but attempts in smaller areas take you to retail booking pages only. I don't know if there are other places in the Netherlands that offer bidding. There may not be. I could not find anywhere on PL pages that indicate where you can bid when I looked a few months ago. It seems you have to just find out by trial and error. If anybody knows any different, please speak up.

[thereuare]

Use this Priceline link and enter "blah" as the city (and enter some random, but valid, dates)

On the next screen below the text box (with the word "blah" in it) is a link: 'See a complete list of cities' which you should click.

On the next sreen click EUROPE near the top of the page (or whatever country/state you're intersted in) and you'll be given a list of acceptable cities. (use CTRL+F on your keyboard to search for specific countries/states/cities if the list for the area you're looking in is large)

Please use these PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links to begin your travel purchases.

[mrxow]

Interesting, though Munich did not seem to appear on the list I got, so doesn't seem to necessarily be complete and leaves one still wondering what other places one might be able to bid. For the person asking the question in the first place, Amsterdam and Rotterdam were the only two Netherlands cities listed...

[rapazfreiburg]

Interesting, though Munich did not seem to appear on the list I got, so doesn't seem to necessarily be complete and leaves one still wondering what other places one might be able to bid. For the person asking the question in the first place, Amsterdam and Rotterdam were the only two Netherlands cities listed...

The list definitely isn't complete for Europe. It doesn't list all the cities in Germany where NYOP is available.

[WillTravel]

There may be exceptions, but it's already bad enough in big cities that Priceline often includes outlying areas in the central zones. With smaller towns, often with no zone maps, you could really be shunted to a far-off location.

For various locations in the Netherlands, I've often seen good rates at these sites:

www.bestwestern.com (and I know there is a BB link for this too)

www.hotelbooking.com

www.booking.com

www.hotels.nl

www.edenhotelgroup.com

In my opinion, Leiden or den Haag would be excellent places to stay, among many others, I'm sure, but those are both very nice places.