Priceline Hotel: 3* Newark (Jersey City) Doubletree

This is part of our annual trip to The Big Apple, and had already secured a room at the Westin Times Square from September 1-4 for $173 a night. We then tried to get a room in Manhattan from Sept. 4-9, but had no luck at the 3 and 4* level up to $250 a night. We decided to book a cancellable reservation at our preferred hotel: the Doubletree in Jersey City.

Count this as a bit of a surprise to us. Looking at the board historically, it always seemed that you could never get a Jersey City hotel on Priceline during the week, especially Monday to Thursday. We were prepared to pay rack and try for the weekend only, but decided to take advantage of some free bids on the off chance we could get a room through Priceline, as we already had a ceiling price and anything lower than that was a bonus. We started at $125, added the 2.5* level and rejected at $133 (we would have been happy with the Courtyard by Marriott down the block as well). After that, we reset the bid with Jersey City and the free rebid zone and a higher bid level. Here's the final result:

Doubletree Club Jersey City

455 Washington Boulevard

Jersey City, New Jersey 07310

Check-In Date: Tue, Sep 4, 2007

Check-Out Date: Sun, Sep 9, 2007

Your Offer Price Per Room, Per Night: $142.00

Subtotal: $710.00

Taxes & Service Fees: $128.84

Total Charges*: $838.84

The funny thing was that we had bid $160 the day before for all 5 nights and were rejected, as was a $160 bid for Sept. 6-9 that was made 10 minutes before this was accepted. Our cancellable reservation here was priced at $229 a night, and the all-in cost was $1305.30. Total savings for this reservation was $467, or 36%. We may have overpaid for the weekend evenings, but we're very happy with this reservation, as it means we won't have to change hotels more than once during our trip.

Booked through the links at savingsbarn.com.

Congratulations on your win!

Glad to see you stuck with it and are happy with the results. The Doubletree is a strange hotel when it comes to priceline acceptances as there is often very little pattern to their acceptances/rejections. I've seen acceptances when rates are very high and rejections when rates are low :)

If you need any help during your stay or things to do/see in the area feel free to ask.

Thanks for starting your bids with the PRICELINE links at SavingsBarn.com

Enjoy your stay(s).