Priceline Hotel: Very few sales done on 5* in Rome?

[besj]

I have now been bidding for 5* and 4* in Rome for a weekend in March 2005. I am trying for a real low ball bid below $100.

When bidding I have noticed that "the average retail price for a 5* hotel in Rome" suggested by Priceline (because my offer is supposed to be too low to be accepted) starts at around $380. When adding another area (a free bid) it drops to 300 and when adding a third it shows $210?

Any ideas why this happens? My theroy is that there are very few accepted bids on 5* (as well as 4*) hotels in Rome and this causes the strange result...

Also I am still very interested in suggestions how to get a luxury hotel cheap in Rome...

[WillTravel]

I think that's a software glitch. Only the Center zone has 5* hotels, so if you add another zone to your bid that should not affect the "suggested retail price" for whatever hotels these happen to be (I think Grand Hotel Minerve might be one of the 5* possibilities).

I do think it will likely be difficult to get a bargain 5* hotel in Rome.

I was just looking at this site and saw some rates that were really quite low for Rome (although I wasn't looking at 5* hotels):

http://www.hotels.de

Note this does not give the same prices as the US Hotels.com site so far as I can see.