Priceline Hotel: 4* London Airports (Heathrow) Marriott Windsor

[jraway]

Tried variously over several days between $50 and $60 with counter-offers >$70 before $60 accepted for Marriott Heathrow Windsor. Total $77.24 including tax.

Could not use your link because "Heathrow" offers places in Florida via the link, but certainly shall continue trying in future.

[thereuare]

Welcome to BetterBidding!

If you search for "heathrow airport" or "LHR" you'll immediately be taken to the correct bidding page you're looking for :)

Hope you're happy with the deal you received and this works well for your needs.

Thank you for sharing your results with the board and in advance for using our PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links for your future travel purchases.

Enjoy your stay.

[jraway]

Hope you're happy with the deal you received and this works well for your needs.

Hmm, I've been taking note of the Priceline taxes and fees. My $60 room came to $77 with taxes and fees. I can see that another poster's $59 room at LHR at about the same time translates to $69 including taxes and fees, meaning I actually paid $8 more for a $1 difference in room rate. Also I see that another poster's excellent $50 result converts to $65, only $4 less than the $59 result. IOW the fees/taxes seem to vary a lot. I'm guessing that Priceline knows that people focus on the pre-tax price, meaning that Priceline can manipulate taxes and fees to "accept" lower bids accompanied by higher fees that may more than make up the difference. Something for all of us to watch!

[thereuare]

Plenty of explanations for the difference(s) you reference:

• I believe the $59 wins you're referring to were on HOTWIRE, not PRICELINE, so not an apples-to-apples comparison as each service uses their own fee calculation.
  
• I don't necessarily think the situation here, but the $50 PRICELINE win was for a different hotel than your own, so it's possible that one of the hotels resides in a different 'city limit' than the other and therefore has a different tax rate (same applies for the HOTWIRE wins referenced as well)
  
• Tax rates change over time
  

Note the last item in the list and then the following info:

Effective January 1, 2010, the VAT Increases to 17.5%

Effective January 1, 2010, the Value Added Tax (VAT) in the United Kingdom increases from 15.0% to 17.5%. Please contact the hotel for further information.

Analyzing the PRICELINE wins (your $60 win ($77 all-in) and the other $50 win ($65 all-in)), and taking into consideration the increase in taxes, the "taxes and fees" are consistent and inline with each other, and not as different as you imply.

Another aspect to keep in mind is that multi-nite stays have a lower per nite fee than few nite stays, so that's another aspect to keep in mind when doing such an analysis.

[jraway]

Plenty of explanations indeed. Thanks for pointing out that a VAT change explains some of the difference, but even so the room still costs $6.50 more (>10%) when there is only a $1 difference in base price. Thanks also for pointing out that I'm comparing Hotwire with Priceline.

Certainly from now on I'll be actually clicking Hotwire offers and noting the total cost (rather than just noting the base cost) before making a Priceline bid. I'll also be paying more attention to the Priceline total cost rather than just my bid.

Some changes already are visible. For example, right now on Hotwire I can see that a Heathrow hotel room costing $69 has more taxes and fees than a room costing $79. Since we don't know what the hotels are, it's price to which we have to respond meaning that this sort of imbalance is not useful to consumers. Perhaps Priceline/Hotwire should build their fees/margins/costs apart from taxes into their base rates so that all that gets added is taxes, meaning that base rates are reliable and comparable again.