Priceline Hotel: Search on Priceline.com then Name your price?

[bwoods]

I am looking at booking a hotel in San Luis Obispo, CA. When I just do a search on priceline.com, it turns up two hotels with a 3* rating. There are no other 3* hotels in the area. If I then go to the Name Your Own Price part of Priceline, if I bid on a 3* hotel, will I get one of these two hotels? The region is call Central Coast CA, I think, which also includes Morro Bay and Pismo. Is this a legit way to narrow down the hotels in a bid, by first looking at priceline.com's regular search for rates, looking at the hotels the search returns, and noting their star ratings?

IOW, does the Name Your Own Price use the same hotels as a regular Priceline.com search? I would not mind either of these two 3* hotels as each one is very nice.

Thanks,

Brad

[dahammer]

welcome!

What are your dates of travel and your budget per night for this trip?

[bwoods]

welcome!

What are your dates of travel and your budget per night for this trip?

6/25 - 6/29. $120/night max.

I'm just wondering about isolating the hotels for the bid side.

[Colfax]

Priceline's retail product and "Name Your Own Price" are separate lines, and hotels can choose to participate in one, the other, or both. When you "Name Your Own Price" you can win a hotel that doesn't appear in Priceline's retail product. I don't think that happens very often but it's a possibility.

If you're trying to target or avoid a particular hotel Hotwire can be the better choice.

If you want a bidding strategy let us know. If you buy something on your own please let us know what you get. We don't get many reports from San Luis Obispo area, so your bidding experience will be useful to others.

Please use these PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links for your purchases.

[bwoods]

Are there any other sites that give hotels and their star ratings besides TripAdvisor? According to that site, their are three 3* hotels in San Luis Obispo, two of which are ones that I already knew about and a third that would also be very nice to stay in.

Hotwire has one 3* hotel to offer.

Yes, I would appreciate a bidding strategy as I have never done this before.

I will definitely report my experiences on this to add this area to the forum.

Thanks!

Brad

[thereuare]

All travel websites give star ratings next to the hotels, but there is no uniformity in the hotel industry and each site uses it's own criteria to rate hotels, so a 3* on one nite could be a 2.5*, 3*, or 3.5* at another site (or even 2* or 4* in some extreme instances)

When bidding 3* in this area you have TWO re-bid zones. If you're not familiar with re-bidding please read Priceline Re-Bidding Explained and feel free to ask questions and/or confirm your re-bid zones with the board before proceeding.

(NOTE: 're-bid zone1' is not the same as priceline's Zone1, 're-bid zone2' is not the same as priceline's Zone2, etc, etc)

Select 3* San Luis Obispo...

Bid $80, if rejected add re-bid zone1...

Bid $90, if rejected close browser and use our link to re-access PRICELINE

Select 3* San Luis Obispo and re-bid zone2...

Bid $95, if rejected add re-bid zone1...

Bid $100

The above may likely prove too low, but i'd start there since you have time and try to lowball a little.

Any questions feel free to ask.

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

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

[bwoods]

Great, thank you. I will follow your steps and report back.

Brad

[GM Mike]

When you "Name Your Own Price" you can win a hotel that doesn't appear in Priceline's retail product. I don't think that happens very often but it's a possibility.

What happens more often for me is I'll receive a hotel that's "sold out"... thus not appearing in the retail section and yet still available for bidding.

[Colfax]

That's happened to me a couple times too....I've won a hotel on "Name Your Own Price" that shows "sold out" for the same dates on the hotel's own website.

I've wondered is there a reason why a hotel would choose not to participate in Priceline's retail listings? Does a hotel have to pay just to be listed (I'm not talking about commissions paid on booked rooms)? It seems like all hotels would want to be available through as many retail channels as possible.

[dahammer]

I have wondered about this as well, but I believe that not listing on the "Shop and Compare" site increases the "opacity" of the hotel, especially in smaller zones with few options. I'm not sure if a hotel has to pay for the listing, but they probably have to pay a commission.