Priceline.com -- your best deals; please provide

I love Priceline. As long as you do a little research beforehand (biddingfortravel.com, bidontravel.com, etc...) you can get very good deals. I was in Nashville for a wedding a few weeks ago and got a 3.5 star hotel for $60 where it would have cost me $120 at regular price.

The only issue with bidding is you cannot select a specific hotel to bid on, you just bid on a specific area of the city you will be visiting. There are definitely ways to work around this so you narrow down your options. This process can easily be found on one of the aforementioned websites.

Never have bid on a flight though. The idea of not knowing exactly when your flight time will be scares me a little bit.

Ditto on biddingfortravel.com.

Make sure you understand how to use the "free re-bid" deal. Basically say you want a 4 star hotel in Chicago's Lincoln Park district. Select that and low bid and get rejected. Then add another district so that you can re-bid, but make sure the zone you add doesn't have any 4 star hotels in it. That'll keep your options limited to Lincoln Park then. For big cities, you can do this multiple times and keep upping your bid until you hit it right at the minimum.

Never used for flights, but rental cars can be found pretty cheap too.

This is exactly right. I can confirm that this process works perfectly in the Orlando area, where the 5-star and "Resort" hotels are only found in 2 of the 11 "zones". It's almost impossible to pay more than $100 for a top end Orlando resort using this system.

I've only used it to rent cars. Super-cheap $14 /day. Love it.

Ditto to what others said. Make sure you go to biddingfortravel.com first, both to read the instructions for how to optimize your bid, and to check the recent successful bids for the city you're interested in.

I've only used it for hotels, and have been uniformly happy. Typical results: $60-70 for four-star hotels in Montreal and Victoria. That being said, it depends on availability for the location and dates you're interested in. There have plenty of times when I can't get a successful bid at the level I'm willing to pay. (To me, not being able to pick my exact hotel and not having the flexibility of a refundable reservation that I can cancel means that I expect a substantial savings.)

My general rule of thumb is that if I can get a four-star hotel for less than what I'd pay at a typical lower-level Best Western or equivalent, I'll spring for it.

I use BFT all the time, as recently as yesterday when I won a 3.5* for $42 and the hotel site had it for $189. I know how to play the game for hotels but I would not take the same chances with airlines.

I've used it twice in the past month. Once for a hotel for a marathon, once for a rental car in Orlando. Both times I bid just under half of the lowest pubished price for the service I wanted, and both times my bid was accepted. Have to say that I'm a big fan of Priceline....

So, I already have a rental car reservation in Denver for next month. Would I be able to cancel it and find a cheaper one through priceline? Or will I just have to wait for another opportunity?

You guys are awesome. Thanks for the information. It's greatly appreciated!

I use Priceline for hotels and rental cars but flying is another matter. It can get pretty dicey and in one instance they actually changed flights on me the day before I was supposed to leave on a trip. Really weird stuff.

I haven't ever used it, but my friend used it to book a hotel in Vegas. The room was absolutely amazing, on the top floor of the Wynn casino, overlooking the Las Vegas strip. It had 2 plasmas, surround sound, jacuzzi tub and marble bathroom counters/floor. He paid $97 a night for three nights in a row, I saw his receipt. He said priceline called him as he was checking into another hotel, there must have been a cancellation and he was lucky enough to take advantage of it. I think I'm going to try it the next time I go to Vegas.

Big fan of Priceline for hotels. I used to always get the nice hotels in Atlanta (Marriott, Wyndam, etc.) for $40. Probably used it at least a dozen times. Haven't used it in about four or five years though. I used it once on a flight...it was ok but be prepared to get the worst departure time. I got a real good rental car deal a couple of years ago on Hotwire. These days I have three little kids and a wife so I need to know exactly where my hotel is going to be so I just wheel and deal on the phone and am able to get pretty decent deals that way.

Flagpole wrote:

You guys are awesome. Thanks for the information. It's greatly appreciated!

And you are a f u c king asshole who we all hope will die a painful death...soon!

I have used it a few times and been happy BUT I have recommended it people who got stuck in a smoking room.

That is the worst risk to me. Smokers should have to stay in barns or caves.

If you haven't already repaid your Denver car rental, you can easily cancel the reservation and try priceline.

Dan the Masters Man wrote:

If you haven't already repaid your Denver car rental, you can easily cancel the reservation and try priceline.

Or, to be precise, try Priceline and THEN (if successful) cancel your car reservation. That being said, I haven't had any luck with Priceline for car rentals -- I've always been able to find roughly equivalent deals through the usual channels.

The supposed 40 percent off on Priceline for airfare seems to be false, as my lowball bids are often rejected at much less than the forty percent discount. And then of course if they would just allow you to say that you can fly AFTER a certain time, or BEFORE a certain time on the given day, then it would be much easier to use. Say you want to fly out after a morning race. You cannot do the priceline bid because they might stick you with a six a.m. flight.