Advanced Priceline Name Your Own Price

Following on from my beginner's tute on how to use the Priceline NYOP function, I thought that I would share with you a slightly more advanced use.

Basically, as you may recall, when bidding on hotels in Priceline's NYOP, you are bidding on unidentified hotels. You narrow your search by the following parameters:

city area;

star rating; and

price per night.

If you make a bid which is rejected by Priceline and you wish to bid again, you have 2 options:

1) wait 24 hours and you can repeat the exact same bid - i.e. dates, area, stars, price; OR

2) change something about your bid (dates, area or stars, not just the price) in order to bid again within 24 hours.

That's where this tutorial comes in. Recently, my sister was overseas and wanted to add on a night for a stay in Milan at the last minute. We had originally secured the Westin Palace, Milan by using the secret hotels function on Hotwire but I thought I would try Priceline to see if we could get the extra night any cheaper.

I knew from experience that on Priceline, the Westin Milan falls within its 5* hotels category and that it falls into the Northeast Milan zone.

That said, I went straight in and decided a low-ball bid of US$80 per night which once taxes and fees were added would be about US$100 per night.

In order to make this bid, I selected Northeast Milan, 5* and $80. It was rejected straight away as I thought it might be.

In order to determine which zones are rebid zones, I wanted to work out which ones did not have a 5* property in them so that I could then use them with the Northeast Milan zone to bid for a 5* hotel in the Northeast Milan zone. As you will see, in the image below, for the 8 zones that I have ticked there are no 5* properties available to bid on using the NYOP function.

Accordingly, if I am looking for a 5* hotel in the only zone that does have one, I can use these zones as free rebid zones to allow me to not change my star rating or dates yet still be able to bid within the 24 hour period. This meant that I was able to make 9 bids within 24 hours without changing the date or the star rating and still be guaranteed a hotel within the area I wanted (Northeast) because there are no 5* hotels in any other area in Milan available through this function. This was perfect with such a last minute booking.

I then closed out of Priceline and went back in again. This time I clicked on Assago and noted that the 5* field was greyed out. That means that Priceline does not have any 5* inventory availlable in that zone. I then also ticked Northeast as that is where I want to be. I upped my bid by $5 so it was an $85 bid before taxes and fees.

This meant that as far as Priceline was concerned I had changed something (area) about my bid so that I was entitled to rebid within the 24 hour period since my last bid.

I placed a bid for $85. Instead of a flat rejection, I was given a suggestion to bid again. I got this counter-offer to increase bid by $34 to $119 to get accepted.

I decided not to do that but to proceed with using my rebid zones to see whether I could manage to get a hotel at less than the $119 + taxes and fees counter-bid price. To do this, I again closed out of Priceline and went back in and this time I clicked on Linate airport and Northeast Milan, selected 5* and bid $87.

Again, I was rejected and given the same counter-offer of $119.

 Went out and back in and this time selected Milan Malpensa and Northeast and again 5* and this time bid $90.

Again rejected and again suggested that I increase to $119 for acceptance.

Added Milano Due and bid $95

Rejected again! They really want me to pay the $119 which is exactly what the express deal price is... I don’t think so!

Added Northwest Milan and went up to $97 per night

Again rejected and again suggested that I pay $119!

This time added Sesto and bid up to $100.

Still no luck! They really don’t want to budge!

So I added my last second to last rebid zone of SOuthwest Milan and went for $102 per night

Again no! Tight arses! I’ve come up $22 and they haven’t budged with their suggested price of $119 for acceptance!

Lucky last rebid zone (well not really, but I'll explain more about that below): DUOMO + NORTHEAST MILAN – $105. Not holding my breath but still kind of holding my breath!

 Finally got accepted – so glad I didn’t go all the way up to the $119 they suggested!

Offer Price: avg. per room, per night	US$105.00
Rooms:	1
Nights:	1
Room Subtotal:	US$105.00
Taxes & Fees:	US$19.55
Total Charged to Card:	US$124.55

Otherwise, I would have either had to just bid the $119 that Priceline counter-offered with if I wanted to continue to bid that day without changing my date or stars or change my date or star rating. As I wanted the hotel for tomorrow night, changing the date was not an option.

My sister also really wanted to stay in a 5* property so for me changing the star rating was also not an option.

In the end, after a little persistence it all paid off! I managed to get the Westin Palace for less than the counter-bid price and for about half of the retail price!

PS. I mentioned above that the last rebid zone was not technically my last rebid zone. That is because had that bid failed I could have ticked two rebid zones plus the Northeast Milan zone when making the next bid. For example, I could have ticked Assago Forum + Historic Centre (Duomo) + Northeast Milan and 5*. That would have tricked Priceline into letting me bid again within the 24 hour period because even though I had placed bids for Assago Forum + Northeast Milan and for Historic Centre (Duomo) + Northeast Milan, I had not placed a bid for all 3 at once.

If you have any questions about rebid zones, please feel free to ask them in the comments field below and I will reply as soon as I can.

Taking advantage of hotels' best rate guarantee

Most hotels have on their website words to the effect of a best price guarantee, being that if you find a rate for the same room and dates at the hotel via another website that they will beat that price.

Each of them of course come with terms and conditions as to how to make this work and it would seem from reading some of them that perhaps the guarantee is not as iron-clad as it may have originally seemed.

Starwood Best Rate Guarantee

That said, however, I have had some luck with the Starwood Best Rate Guarantee for a booking made last year. My sister was travelling to Europe and I had helped her book most of her travel and accommodation. She had fallen in love with the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, Austria and decided that was where she wanted to stay.

We looked online and saw that a hotel selling website had a double room with breakfast for the rate of 482 euros. We also noted that there was a 10 euro cancellation fee if the room was cancelled any time up to one week before the reserved dates.

We then looked at the Hotel Bristol website and saw that it had a rate of 310 euros per night (so 620 euros for the entire 2 night stay).

In order to secure the cheap rate in case it disappeared before the Best Rate Guarantee claim was assessed, I booked it on the website where we initially saw it.

The Best Rate Guarantee link at the Hotel Bristol website redirected me to the Starwood Best Rate Guarantee website which contains all the information you need about making a claim. It can be accessed at: http://www.starwoodhotels.com/bestrate/index.html

Claims have to be made either before making a booking or if you have already made a booking through the hotel itself then within 24 hours of that booking.

In the case of the Starwwood Best Rate Guarantee, if your claim is successful then you have the choice of either:

1. an additional 10% off the Competing Rate per room per night; or
2. 2000 Starwood Preferred Guests Starpoints per room per stay.

In this case, we elected for the 10% off the competing rate and we got exactly that. In order to secure the rate, once the claim was approved, all we had to do was book it via the Hotel Bristol's website and email the confirmation number. There was no need to pay all of it in advance or anything either.

So we managed to save money even factoring in the cancellation fee we had to pay to the initial website that we booked with and it didn't involve laborious paperwork either- just a simple form with contact details and the competing rate and site.

How about you? Have you taken advantage of any Best Rate Guarantees for hotel bookings either through the hotels themselves or through booking sites?

Priceline Name Your Own Price for beginners

As promised, I am going to give you a quick run-down of how to use Priceline's Name Your Own Price ("NYOP") feature.

Firstly, go to www.priceline.com

On the "Hotels" tab, type in the city you are going to. In the example below, I've used Paris. As you will see - once you start typing the city, it will bring up a drop-down menu to select the city you are looking for.

Enter your dates and how many rooms and select "Search Hotels".

You will then be taken to a page which shows that the search is processing that looks something like this:

Once the search results are in, select the "Name Your Own Price" tab and you will see a page like the one below:

You will then need to select the area(s) of the city that you are interested in (by clicking in the tick-box). In this example, I have selected the first area shown, being Montparnasse. As you can see below:

Having done that, we see that there are no 5* properties available via Name Your Own Price - this is because the 5* option is greyed out and unable to be selected as you can see in the image above:

That being so, I will select 4* which means that it will only match my price with inventory matching

both the area of Montparnasse and being a 4* hotel. NOTE: if I were to select a 3* hotel it would look at both 3 and 4 * properties for a match. It will always look for a higher rated hotel but never for a lower rated one than you have selected.

I will then enter the price that I am bidding (note that this is not the total price that I would pay if I were successful as there are Priceline fees that are added on top. These will be shown on the following screen once I proceed and confirm the correctness of the details of the request). Here, I have gone for the extremely unrealistic US$40 per night.

Note that there is even a warning in red that the bid has very low chance of being successful - don't worry about this - even when you can be near the mark of the right bidding range you can see this. Don't let it deter you or make you bid higher than you intended to start out.

Once the desired price and the traveller's name have been entered, click on "Preview Offer" to see what the total cost would be if the offer is accepted:

On the same page, you are also able to choose whether you would like travel insurance and are asked to initial that you understand the T&Cs:

Once you have done that you will be asked to provide credit card details. "We're Ready To Get Your Hotel Room" and the request for payment information does not mean that your offer has been accepted. Priceline takes the credit card details before checking your offer against its inventory so that it can charge you immediately if you are successful:

Once you have done that and clicked on "Book Now" you will see a screen that looks something like this:

If your offer is rejected, as this one was (I changed it to $10 per night to be absolutely sure it would be so I didn't get charged but so that I could show you the process), you will see a screen like this:

If your bid is accepted you will see a screen and receive an email to the email address you provided to Priceline with the confirmation of both your successful bid and the name and address of your hotel.
So that's a quick run-down of how to use Priceline. There are more tips and tricks to it, which I will provide to you in another post.

Have any of you used Priceline Name Your Own Price? Have you had any success? What sorts of deals did you get?