Discount Hotel Rooms: A Rose by any Other Name?
Travel Blog • Alexander Basek • 04.10.09 | 10:12 AM ET
The New York Times Practical Traveler has a good how-to on using opaque booking sites like Priceline for hotel room discounts. I, for one, am not a fan (of the booking sites—I’ve got no beef with the Practical Traveler). I have a list of no-go properties in most towns, no matter how discounted their rates, so the opaque strategy is too risky for me. Plus, some people believe that the rooms booked through those sites are the worst in any given property, and that your chances of getting walked should the hotel be overbooked are higher.
How do you guys feel about spinning the wheel of fate with these auction-style sites—yay or nay?
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Ling 04.12.09 | 9:35 AM ET
If you look upon it as a roll of the dice, then it is scary. But doesn’t have to be that way. Do a quick search for ‘priceline rebid’, and you’ll have a whole new world open up for you. :)
Carolina 04.14.09 | 5:22 PM ET
Sure, you might get the worst room in the property, but the worst room at, say, the Intercontinental in Atlanta (where I stayed for $70/night) is far better than the best room that I could find elsewhere for $70. Sometimes it’s not worth it, but I’ve found that for big cities I can often get a great deal. I’ve never lost a room because the hotel was overbooked, and I’ve never been stuck in a really bad hotel or been treated differently from other customers. You can also check which hotels are on Priceline and read reviews ahead of time to get an idea of where they might put you—I decided not to bid for a room in Vancouver because I didn’t want to risk ending up at this one hotel that was completely panned and sounded awful (and it sounded like it was a popular place for Priceline to send people who were bidding low).
I’ve used it (and Hotwire) for airfare and rental cars too. It’s a little trickier for the former, since you don’t have control over the times of your flights, but it works great for rental cars.