Priceline Hotel: 3.5* Portland (Downtown) Embassy Suites

[estaban]

7 Nights - 8/29 - 9/5, Used the BetterBidding link and started at 3.5 stars for $65 Downtown, added $5 and Northwest Portland - No good; Added $5 and South Waterfront District - No good (neither district has any 3.5+ star hotels on the Priceline site). Did not want to expand further. Waited until email came. There is a link at the bottom to change price only. Went to $80, downtown only. Got Embassy Suites Downtown! Have stayed here before, loved it then.

Love me some Better Bidding,

Estaban

[AaronJB]

Congrats on your success and thank you for sharing your results with the board.

Glad you are pleased with the results and that you've enjoyed staying at this property in the past. The free breakfast and evening reception are also certainly a nice bonus.

Using the site's PRICELINE link is greatly appreciated.

Enjoy your stay.

[tilepusher]

Judging from your post, I don't think you have a strong grasp of rebidding technique; I'm concerned that you'll get burned sooner or later.

The correct method of determining your rebid zones is explained in this post on Priceline Rebidding. Don't use any other method, including searches of Priceline retail service or the hotel lists here. I emphasize this because there is, in fact, a 3.5* hotel in the South Waterfront District zone (the Avalon Hotel and Spa).

If you use this method before each bidding session, then it's safe to add any zone that only has hotels of less than 3.5*-level to a 3.5* bid; it doesn't matter how far away it is from the zone for which you're bidding. You're not expanding your search when adding rebid zones because you can't get a hotel in these zones; you're adding them so that you can make essentially the same bid without that bid being rejected as a duplicate.

[Colfax]

The Embassy Suites haven't been reported to the board before. Thanks for contributing this new hotel for the Priceline Hotel List.

The Embassy appears to have a higher Priceline rate than other 3.5* hotels in Downtown Portland, which explains why we don't see it come up more often. Your length of stay--seven nights--was probably a factor in helping the Embassy Suites "emerge". There were probably other 3.5* available in the $50's or $60's for select dates within your stay, but no 3.5* available at those rates for all seven nights.

Enjoy your stay!

[yellowdog]

Colfax

Thanx for the heads up!

Yellowdog.