Help please - Newbie Q about Priceline hotel listing

[overhear]

So sorry for the trouble but I've read all the faqs and still can't seem to figure out how to see which hotels are available at t a given star-level on Priceline without actually bidding.

I did the following:

1. Signed in

2. Chose my location and dates (Vancouver, BC; Aug 13-16).

3. Clicked on Name Your Own Price

4. Selected a zone (Downtown Vancouver)

5. Selected a star-level (4*)

But there are no hotels listed at the bottom of the page. I also tried changing zones, star-levels and dates but nothing appears. Am I missing something?

Thanks for any advice!

[AaronJB]

Welcome to Betterbidding. :)

PRICELINE does not show you the hotel/s before purchase. You are bidding on a hotel at a particular star rating in a particular area (4* Midtown East in NYC, for example), and you could possibly get any of the participating hotels in the area and are not able to choose which.

Each Betterbidding state folder does have a list of PRICELINE and HOTWIRE hotels that have been reported to the board, but there are new hotels being reported often, so there could be more beyond what are included in the list.

Please use the site's HOTWIRE or PRICELINE links to start your purchases and searches.

[overhear]

Thank you for your reply. That does make sense, however the FAQs suggest that in order to make a second bid on a 4* hotel I should be prepared with information about which other zones have no 4* hotels. I'm unclear on how to identify those zones. Do I use the hotel lists on betterbidding to identify those zones? Or should I use PL's retail hotel listings? The PL retail listing for Vancouver has only one large zone for "Downtown Vancouver" which is not contiguous with the zones available in the Name Your Own Price area of the website.

Thanks again!

[g-man]

You can find out what zones have a particular star level by doing this:

1) Go to the screen where you select the zones.

2) City Hall - Downtown Vancouver South is the first zone listed. Click on it.

3) You will see the available levels listed below (in the "Step 2: Choose the star level for your hotel" section). The City Hall zone has 3, 2.5, 2 and 1-star hotels available at this time.

4) Uncheck the City Hall zone.

5) Click on the next zone (Coquitlam - Burnaby). You'll see that it has 3.5, 3, 2.5, 2 and 1-star hotels available.

6) Repeat for the rest of the zones, unchecking the zone you just looked at.

Knowing which zones have (or don't have) a particular star level is used for free rebids.

You could use the 2 zones mentioned above as free rebids for your 4* hotel because they don't have any 4* hotels.

So, let's say you place a $50 bid for a 4* in your preferred zone (Downtown). It gets rejected. You can then add Coquitlam to your bid (without worrying about getting a 4* hotel there ... because there are none). You would increase your bid to $55 (for example) and it gets rejected too. You can still bid because there's the City Hall zone available. In fact, there are 5 zones that do not have 4* hotels. This allows you to bid up to 32 times every day. Go nuts. :)

Read through this Priceline Re-Bidding Explained thread for more details on combination bidding.

Good luck!

[overhear]

Thank you so much, g-man. For some reason I didn't notice that the stars greyed out when you chose a hotel-less zone. That was a big help!