Priceline

     Using Priceline is a great way to stretch your vacation dollars. I never pay more than 60 bucks for a hotel and I have stayed in some pretty nice hotels ie the Hyatt.Priceline uses an opaque bidding system. You can use it for all sorts of travel reservations. Let's go through the procedure for booking a hotel room. This means you pick the area of a particular city that you would like to stay in, then you select your star level of hotel and then place your bid. Sounds easy right? Well there's more...way more to it if you want to get the most bang for your buck like I do.
First off you're going to bookmark the http://cruise-travel-review.com site because you may need to refer back here .

First time bid

     Next go to the priceline site through the link on this site. Fill out the form for hotel stay ie city, date- then  click on name your own price. A screen will come up and asks you to fill in the neighbourhood you want. If you are unfamiliar with the area that you will stay in then click on them each and you will see a map of the area.
     Once you have selected your area you can pick your star level. For example a Holiday Inn is usually a 2.5 star hotel
Then you enter the price you are willing to pay-do not start at the top price you are willing to pay. Try to start your bidding as far ahead as possible. Days that is, not months although I have bid as far as 8  months ahead.

How much to bid?

     This is the question everyone asks. There is  no short answer for this because hotel rates are based on supply and demand. So if there is a big convention in the city you are bidding on the successful bid will be much higher than if occupancy is expected to be low.

Permutation bidding

-the key to living large on a shoestring budget

     This is where you can save a whole pile of green like me.
     Ok the first thing you need to know for this type of bidding is which neighborhoods in your selected city DO NOT have the star level you are looking for. Some neighborhoods will have 1 and 2 star hotels but not 3 or 4 star hotels. These are called free rebid zones.These are areas you can add to your bid so that you can bid more than once in a day. Because thee are no 4 star hotels you will not be given a hotel in these areas. Priceline will bump you up a star level but not down so no worries. Unless they suddenly add a 2 star hotel in that area. I have never had that happen though but it is a remote possibility.
     Be sure to use different combinations every time and you could increase your number of daily allowed bids from 2 up to 20! depending how many free rebid zones you have.

Please feel free to contact us with any priceline bidding questions.