Priceline Hotel: Ten nights ?too long for discount deal ?

[zenron]

What a fantastic site ! Two of us are coming from Australia for 10 nights from 14-24 September for a dream holiday. Have already booked Belvedere for $154 but having found this site and read about Priceline I'm thinking, hey for that money maybe we could seriously upgrade. I am gradually learning about the process here. We want to stay in Midtown West and I am looking 4* now. Questions -

a) We have a fair lead in time for bidding, but I noticed many bidders have much shorter stays than we are wanting. Is the 10 nights a problem for getting a room do you think based on you knowledge?

b)Is the Grand Hyatt Midtown East finished their renovations as we may consider this area , too.

I will follow " flyaway" posts as that poster and your reply will be directly informative given our needs, but your help with the above would be appreciated.

Thanks for your patient and informative help on this site

[thereuare]

Welcome to BetterBidding!

September can be a beautiful time in NYC.

Regarding your 10 nite stay....

The hotel must have a rate equal to or lower than your bid amount for each nite of your stay. Therefore, if one nite of the ten is higher than your bid amount... your bid won't be accepted. On the otherhand, bid high enough for that one nite and you are in effect 'overbidding' for the other nites (which would have accepted a lower amount for the lower priced nites).

It costs nothing to try for 10 nites together, but if you have trouble then you may want to consider SPLITTING YOUR BID. The other advantage of splitting your bid is that it gives you MANY more combinations in order to re-bid. Normally you have to wait 72 hours after a rejected bid in order to bid again, but if you change the dates it is then treated as an entirely new bid. So you could try:

Sept 14-24, if rejected try

Sept 14-23 (and if accepted then try for the individual nite of the 23rd), if rejected try

Sept 15-24 (and if accepted try for the individual nite of the 14th), if rejected try

Sept 14-22 / Sept 22-24

Sept 14-21 / Spet 21-24

etc, etc, etc

Splitting your bid for such an extended stay also enables you to 'live' in two different parts of the city... as each has its own 'neighborhoods' and personality.

The renovations at the Hyatt are completed, but besides MTW and MTE, i would also suggest opening up your possible zones to UM/CPS and MTS... all 4 areas are really fine for the out of town guest and transportation options are easy and plentiful (everything is a subway or train ride away). You know your plans better than i do so the location is something that you have to be comfortable with, but i have no problems recommending any of the above zones. If you havn't seen it yet you may want to give NYC ZONE DESCRIPTIONS a read.

Let us know what you think of the above ideas (zones and splitting the bid) and we'll be happy to provide a recommended bidding strategy for you to follow. Any strategy that we suggest will include RE-BIDDING, so make sure you read and understand the concept... if not feel free to ask questions (hint: you have 2 re-bid zones available at the 4* level, see if you know which ones)

I know i covered a LOT in the above, but feel free to ask any questions you may have.

There are a few of us on the board that are local to the area so i'm sure we can also help you plan your itinerary, tuning you in to some 'local' things that you won't typically read about in the tourist books :)

[zenron]

Wow, that was quick. Thanks so much.

I'll study the two advice pages and chat to my husband about the options you suggest and form any questions and I'll get back.

I am thinking the answer to your "quiz" re 2 re-bid zones is UPW and UES

These two zones don't have 4 star options on Priceline. Is this what you mean, I would add these two zones knowing that they can't help me but it would allow me to raise my bid?

I'll be back

[thereuare]

You seem to have a good understanding of re-bidding :)

[zenron]

We've talked and agree that splitting the holiday into a couple of different areas would be an interesting addition to our holiday and would assist our attempts at successful bidding too. Given that our goal is primarily about an upgrade for the $154 (acutally, 2 nights are $160 - Fr/Sat) we are booked to spend at the Belvedere already, we are going to begin our bidding with an attempt to get the 5* Waldorf Towers!

We feel a minimum of 3 nights would be good and so thought we'd bid with the following blocks of dates

1) 19th-23rd Sept

2) 20th-23rd Sept

3) 21st-23rd Sept

We will go up to $160 a night.

Given your experience, would you be so kind as to give us a bidding strategy please?

Based on our sucess or otherwise we will then go to the rest of our dates and what we want to do. Not sure yet, but we do have the Belvedere as backup in MTW as I have said but will probably end up including the UMT/CP area too.

[thereuare]

A few comments before providing a strategy....

I think you're too early for the 5* Waldorf. You can try 5* bidding but they're known to only release inventory very close to check-in (and hasn't come up for some time... probably do to the strength of the NYC hotel market), so i'd be very surprised to see that come up this early in the game (don't want you to get your hopes up).

The dates above... are those nites? For example if you leave NYC on the 24th i would bid up until that date... not the 23rd as indicated above. Otherwise it leaves you with a 'single' nite, which is why i assume the dates you provided above are for nites, but i ask just to clarify to make sure we're on the same page.

Along the same lines, rather than break up the dates beforehand, i would let the bidding determine how your stay gets broken up, trying at first to get as many nites together as possible as per my post above. Notice how all the bids include either the first nite of your stay OR the last nite of your stay. Doing it this way allows you to get a continuous piece of your stay taken care of which includes either the first day or the last day. From there you can determine how to break up the remainder of the stay (including the first or last nite of your stay in your first bidding cycle gives you flexibility with the remainder of your bidding). I'm not really sure if you had a plan as to why to break up the dates as you suggest, but if there is some bigger picture at work let me know.

Let me know your thoughts/questions as to the above. Also, which zones are acceptable at this point?

[zenron]

Ok, I think I have to clarify this with you, thanks for pointing it out.

Yes we arrive for our first nite the 14th and we leave NY the morning of the 24th Sept. So, what, I should bid the 24th and the hotel knows that's the check out date? Is that correct ??

[thereuare]

Yes, your bid dates go according to check-in/check-out dates (you wouldn't have been the first person to make that mistake! :) )

Did you understand what i was saying above about 'letting the bidding determine how you break up your stay'? Was that ok with you (if you haven't yet talked this over with your other half that's fine... just want to make sure you're not waiting on info from me while i'm waiting on info from you).

I'm still also not clear if you're only considering MTW... or if MTE, CPS/UM, MTS are also options.

[zenron]

Great, I'm glad that's sorted out, glad you're there providing the safety net!

Yes, I do understand what you mean about letting the bidding define the dates , I see the sense in that. I can see what you mean about the 5* hotel too, and that's fine. (A 4* would be just great anyway)

.Staying in MTW for the first part of our stay if possible is our first priority but we will have to make some other decisions about areas before we ask you for a strategy. We'll talk more and get back.Thank you so much again.

[zenron]

Sorry haven't been back but I tried to set up a profile on Priceline and of course found that I couldn't given our Australian address and Credit cards.

I emailed Priceline and they replied saying at this time they couldn't help consumers outside the US.

Is there anyway that's known to be reliable around this? After travelling the 23 or so hours its going to take us to get to NYC, we need to be confident our bookings are OK. What is your experience of this problem?

Thanks.

[spitfire20003]

Try this: Bidding Tips for Canadians.