The Secret to Bidding on Priceline

Priceline is a very popular site for finding low-cost hotel rooms. Priceline’s claim to fame came when their their “Name Your Own Price” model became a marketing draw. This post reveals the secret to bidding on Priceline. The way Priceline bidding works is users are allowed to enter a price they are willing to pay for a hotel room and after submitted, the site displays the decision whether or not the bid is accepted. As a budget traveler, I have used Priceline many times. I have successfully saved more than 50% off of hotel rooms and developed my own system to try to squeeze every dollar out of them.

The first thing you need to know about bidding on Priceline is that you can submit only one unique bid (geographical area, star rating, and price) each day. We will assume you need certain days, if not there is no limit to how many bids you can make on the same day, but for most of us we have selected the days and need a room somewhere close to where we will be. It could help if you are flexible a day or two either way though. Being limited to one unique bid per day means you can’t start out at $30 on a $150 room and incrementally re-enter bids by a dollar each until you reach the magic number Priceline is willing to sell the room.

To re-bid on the same day you will need to either expand your star rating for your room and/or expand the locations you are willing to stay. We say and/or, but for a good strategy you will want to go with “or”. The reason is that you can save the other option for another bid in the same day.

For simplicity sake we will stick with set dates (April 4^th , for 2 nights) to Toronto.

Trip: Toronto April 4^th, 2 night stay

Now you can either wait 24 hours before upping your bid a few dollars or you can change something in your request and bid again right away. Waiting is definitely an option if you have a lot of time before you need to book your room and just want to up your bid a couple of dollars each day. If you don’t have that much time or patience, you can try to come up with an acceptable adjustment to either the area you are looking for or the star rating you are willing to accept.

My usual first change is for another area close by to where I need to be. Priceline has 17 different areas for the Toronto area. This can be helpful or make things more difficult as we will explain shortly. The airport area is usually cheaper than other areas in Toronto, so this is a good way to use other areas that probably won’t have a better deal to up the offer a couple of dollars and still be more likely to get your area choice if the deal is accepted.

OK, our first two bids in the two airport areas have been rejected. We could go to the closest nearby areas like Mississauga, Brampton, or Toronto North or we could try a little trick or picking a much more expensive area for a 3.5 star hotel like downtown Toronto. Downtown 3.5 star hotels do not go for $55 a night, so a pretty safe bet.

You may follow this strategy and add additional more expensive areas like the other two downtown areas, Toronto East or Toronto East Don Valley, increasing your offer by two or three dollars each time. Toronto give you plenty of areas to affectively increase your bid, but remember, if your bid is accepted you are stuck with that area hotel. That actually happened to me once and I ended up with a $200 hotel room for $60 when I was really trying to stay outside of the city in Oakville.

You may also be ready to concede and consider a 3 star hotel for the same price. Again, if you have the time an patience, you might want to consider playing again the next day. What you don’t want to do is increase your bid a few times and then add in a lower rated hotel. You might have been able to get that three star hotel for your original bid of $50, so don’t bid up to $55 and then switch to the 3 star hotel.

Even if you don’t want to wait until the next day and are OK with a three star hotel, enter a lower amount in the text box, so you don’t pay $55 for a room you could have had at $50 or less.

Adjusting only the areas of Toronto, our fourth bid was accepted and we got the Airport East location. If you take a look at the bidding areas, you will see a Priceline hint that a 3.5 star hotel in the Airport East area is the best deal in the entire Toronto area. This helped with our particular strategy of using other bidding areas in more expensive areas to re-bid on the same day. If you really need the downtown Toronto area and it is more expensive to begin with, you will not be able to use this particular strategy.

You will probably be limited to bid on the three designated downtown Toronto areas and if your bidding timeframe is a little short, you may need to up-the-ante a little more like five or ten dollars a bid. Remember, we only changed the areas in our winning bid example. If you are willing to change the star rating of the hotel you wish to stay, I would recommend starting the process over as this is like a totally different bid.

Bidding on Priceline is not difficult, but we know it can be a little scary if you don’t know how the process works. You will also need to realize that once your bid is accepted, there is no going back. You are locked in at the price and no refunds will be given. However, the savings can be significant for those that are willing to give it a try. Check out our additional tips below to help you further understand how to make successful bids on Priceline.

Five Useful Priceline Bidding Tips

1. If you are traveling with a friend and you both have a Priceline account, you can double the number of bids as long as you are working together using the same strategy. You will both need to be prepared to actually pay for the room if your bid is accepted.
2. If you have the patience and enough days before you trip you can increase bid amounts by smaller increments. Just use a sound strategy to get at least two or three bids a day and you conceivably could up your offers by just a dollar at a time.
3. For towns with limited hotel options you could do a good job of guessing which hotel might be available. I once stayed in a town that had only one 2.5 star hotel. I looked on Priceline’s own “List View” area (regular price listings), checked out all the 2.5 star hotels (just the one) and could see exactly what I was getting before bidding. I knew they offered free parking, but didn’t include a free breakfast – a worthy trade-off.
4. You can get an idea of different prices in the Toronto areas (or any area) by looking at Step 3 on the bid page. Priceline will let you know what the median retail price for hotels in the area you have selected. Before you start bidding it might be a good idea to click on each area in Step 1 and make note of the different median prices for each. This will help to find more expensive areas that you can use to safely increase your bid.
5. Express deals is an option Priceline gives to allow users to know the area and star rating of a hotel for a particular price, but still not show the hotel name. You can use the Express Deals feature to get a better idea of how much a particular star rated hotel in the area of your choice should be. One complication is the geographical locations Priceline uses for bidding may not match up exactly with the areas they use for Express Deals.

Five Annoyances to Consider with Priceline Bidding

1. Sometimes Priceline will display text indicating your bid is not likely to be accepted at the price you have entered. While this generally may be true, they often will accept bids lower than their hints would indicate, so don’t be bullied. It is in their best interest to have you bid higher.
2. There are times when Priceline will make you a counter offer after your original offer is rejected. Don’t bite on this unless you are happy to pay the amount they counter with. Usually you will be able to get the room for less than the counter offer, but it gives you an idea you are getting closer.
3. Priceline does not include fees for resorts in their accepted offer amount, so you may be in for a costly surprise when the final price is tallied.
4. Priceline does not include any parking fees in their accepted offer amount, so that $45 a night hotel might end up being closer to $60. Another hotel might have been had for $50 including parking, so it isn’t really apples to apples and you won’t find out until after your bid is accepted.
5. Priceline may display some amenities on the bid page for select star rated hotels, but they usually do not. That means in addition to not knowing about free parking, you also won’t know if your hotel will supply a free breakfast, free Internet,  or even if they are pet friendly.