Priceline Bidding Strategies for the Win!

Priceline.com is a travel site where you book flights, hotels, cars, vacation packages, and cruises, much like Expedia, Travelocity, and a host of other sites. But the great part of Priceline is their "Name Your Own Price" system. You tell Priceline how much you are willing to pay for a hotel/car/air fare, and Priceline will search their list of participating hotels, car rental agencies, or airlines to see if one of them will accept your offer. If your offer is accepted - and you have bid wisely - what you pay will likely be far less than any posted or advertised special rate that you may find.

My experience has generally yielded me hotels at about 1/2 to 1/3 the posted rate on the hotels' sites.

To get a quick sense of what people have been recently successful bidding on hotels and car rentals, click below:

Hotels                             Car Rentals
      

There are three criteria that you need to specify before you are able to name your own hotel price. These are:

• The dates of your stay
• The star-level of the hotel
• The region of the city where you would like to stay

Note that you are not able to choose a specific hotel that you may have in mind. If you absolutely must stay at XYZ Intercontinental Hotel for your cousin's wedding, then you will need to use Priceline's standard booking service or another booking site. However, if you are flexible as to the hotel, and know the region where you would like to stay, then get ready to start bidding and saving BIG! You may feel apprehensive that if you don't know what hotel you are naming a price for, then you could end up in some cockroach-infested dive. That will not happen. Priceline has strict rules for their participating hotels and ensures that they are the star level that they report. A four star hotel booking through Priceline will yield you a four star hotel. Personally, I have NEVER been disappointed or unpleasantly surprised with the hotels that I have acquired by naming my own price.

Click here to watch the video

1. Do your research:
   In order to ensure that you don't bid too high (or too low and waste a bid), see what the going rates are for hotels in the region you are interested, and what others have been successful at bidding (more details in the following section).
   


2. Understand free rebidding:
   This is essential to getting the best deal.
   


3. Optional: Register with Priceline by clicking here and then clicking on Sign in --> Register at the top of the page. This makes it much quicker to make rebids using the advanced method as you do not need to re-enter your personal info for each bid
   


4. Start bidding! If your bid is accepted, great! If not, add a free rebid zone and do it again. Note that if using the Advanced Rebidding Method, then it is best to print out and use the worksheet for the number of rebid zones that you have available.
   

The first time I used Priceline, I didn't do any research and just threw out what I thought was a low-ball bid of $45 for a 4-star hotel just to see how the process worked with the website. And to my surprise I got the hotel (the Hyatt right next to Disneyland)! Researching afterwords I discovered that my bid was about right for the lowest that a four-star in that area would accept. I got lucky. I would not recommend this method as chances are you will be bidding too high.

Follow the below steps to get a solid idea of where to start your bidding:

• Review recent winning bids on Priceline for top cities from $23 per night. It is useful to get a rough idea of bids for some of the larger cities, but it is a list prepared by Priceline so I would take it with a grain salt and suspect that you could do much better.
  
  


• Review recent winning bids on www.biddingfortravel.com, an online forum where people post their successful bids. It is categorized quite clearly into the various regions throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, and beyond. This is my preferred starting point for determining where to commence the bidding. There is also good information here about other aspects of Priceline including car rental.

If you do not change any of the three bid criteria mentioned above (date of stay, hotel star level, hotel region), then Priceline lets you make only one bid every 24 hours. If you are not willing to change any of these, then you may be tempted to increase your bid so as to increase your chances of getting the bid accepted. After all, when in trip planning mode it is nice to get things like accommodation taken care of quickly and then move on to the next item on the list. This is what Priceline would like you to do. BUT DON'T DO IT!!! In most cases, you will be able to make another bid (a rebid) immediately by changing your bid to include another region, without the (undesirable) chance of having your bid accepted for that new region. Thus, just raise your bid by a few dollars and you have another shot of it being accepted. The Basic Rebidding section below explains how to get, in most cases, at least a couple more bids in. The Advanced Bidding explains how one can get upwards of 20-30 rebids depending on the city and the star level that you want.

Basic rebidding is quite straight forward. In a nutshell, you add regions to your bid that DO NOT have the hotel star level that you desire. Doing so meets Priceline's requirement that you change your zones, and there is no danger that you will get a hotel in that region as it does not have a hotel at the star level that you require. Simple as that. The number of rebid zones that you can add depends very much on the city and star level that you are bidding on. For example, if the city is large and you want a 5 star hotel, then there will likely be several rebid zones as there will be several zones in the city where there are no 5 star hotels. However, if you want a 2-star hotel then your rebid zones are likely quite limited as most zones probably have 2-star hotels available.

How to determine free rebid zones?

Priceline's interface makes determining your free rebid zones easy. Let's say I am looking for a 4-star hotel in downtown Vancouver, Canada. I go to the main bid page and Priceline presents an interactive map that shows Vancouver has 9 hotel zones. In the "Step 1" section when I check the box next to any one of the 9 zones, the hotel star levels available in that zone immediately update below in the star level "Step 2" section:



The above image shows that the Langley zone of Vancouver only has 1 and 2-star hotels, so this would be one of my free rebid zones. I make note of this, uncheck the box, and then check another box for another region and see what hotel star levels are available. If there are no 4-star hotels for that zone, then I have found another free rebid zone. I proceed with this method for all of eight zones that are not the "Downtown Vancouver" zone. In this example, there end up being 6 rebid zones for downtown Vancouver for a 4-star hotel. This means that I have the opportunity to make up to 6 rebids immediately (without having to wait 24 hours). For each rebid I just increase my bid a little and hopefully I will hit the minimum required by the system and the bid will be accepted. Giddy up!

If you have many rebid zones available, then the basic rebidding system above will likely serve you well provided you have bid wisely. However, if you are limited to just a couple of rebid zones and are not happy with just a couple of rebids that the basic system will give you, then you need to use the advanced method. Advanced rebidding is not difficult by any means, but it requires tracking carefully the bids that you have already made to maximize the number of rebids that you can make.

The number of rebids possible grows very quickly (exponentially) with each new rebid zone available:



I have prepared some tables below that will make tracking your bids much easier. You just need to print out the appropriate table for the number of free rebid zones that you have available, and fill in the blanks as you go. Link directly to the tables here:

• 1 rebid zone
• 2 rebid zones
• 3 rebid zonese
• 4 rebid zones
• 5 rebid zones

The key concept to understand is that Priceline requires you to change the combination of zones for your bid in order to be permitted to rebid. For example, let's say that I have 3 free rebid zones available called Z1, Z2, and Z3. The basic method would permit me to make 3 free rebids with the following zones selected:

• My desired zone and Z1
• My desired zone, Z1, and Z2
• My desired zone, Z1, Z2, and Z3

Each of the above represents a unique combination of zones. However, there are several more combinations possible. Those not included above include:

• My desired zone and Z2
• My desired zone and Z3
• My desired zone, Z1, and Z3
• My desired zone, Z2, and Z3

The order that one bids these different combinations is very important. If my first rebid was the combination of my desired zone, Z1, Z2, and Z3, then I would not be able to make any more rebids. The reason for this is that any other combinations that I can come up with have already been included as subsets in that combination. To maximize the number of rebids that you can make using the advanced method, just choose the appropriate rebid table below for the number of rebid zones you have available and work your way down the table using the combinations shown.

One little challenge that Priceline throws at you when using the advanced method is that pressing your browser's "back" button to return to the main bidding page and selecting a new combination of zones will not work. Priceline remembers your previous combination of zones even though the page lets you uncheck/check other boxes. You will likely get a message saying that you have already made that particular bid. To get around this, you simply need to go back further with your browser to the first page where you choose your city and date.



On this page you can either select your most recent search from the drop list that will include the city and date, or just re-enter the details in the fields below. This results in a "clean" rebid without any lingering bid information being stored behind the scenes.

Below I have created a series of tables that will be useful for you to track your bids and ensure that you add the free rebid zones in the correct order so you get the most possible rebids as explained above. I suggest that you print (by clicking on the link at the top of the each table) the table that corresponds to the number of rebid zones that you have available, and then write the names of your various zones (e.g. "Newport Beach", "Hollywood", "Disneyland Area", etc) in the column headers. Select your zones in your bid according to the "X"s in the table, i.e. if the zone has an "X", then select that zone. Start your bidding, tracking the bid amount in the far right column. If your bid is rejected, move down one row in the table to get the zone combination for the next rebid. Increase your bid slightly (by $2-$5), and re-submit the bid. Personally, I have never gone beyond 8 rebids before my bid is accepted.

Print this table

Print this table

Print this table

Print this table

Print this table

• "How-to" Video from Priceline
• How to "Beat" Priceline - Star Trek theme
• Newsweek article with some useful tips on Priceline
• BiddingForTravel.com: Great forum where people post their successful bids
• Amusing Priceline Commercials:
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTqrFrEwee8
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KjMDc5IxUk
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELlM0d3-u0s&NR=1
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPPZS0tzQtY
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se-orWPMfU4

Well that's all I know about Priceline and what has worked for me over these past few years. Hopefully this information will be of use to you and some great deals that you never thought possible will be in your near future. I welcome any of your comments or suggestions if you know of other strategies that work.

Ready to start bidding? Click here
Be sure to click on "Name your own price" once on the page

Good luck, and have fun in the process!!!