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I have used this method and recently have saved hundreds of dollars on hotels for interviewing. Feel free to ignore this if you are a sucker who likes to pay too much for a hotel room. ;-) It's easy and will have you staying at the Hilton for the price of Motel 6. This works best for large cities. Note this is a lot of reading, but it isn't very hard.
First I go to http://www.betterbidding.com Here people post what they get on Priceline and Hotwire. Go to the state you are interested in and get a feel for how much people are paying.
Now go to Hotwire http://www.hotwire.com and check what you can get in the area you are interested in for the star level you want. This will be your maximum bid for Priceline (because you can go to Hotwire and get it for sure.)
The way Priceline works is that you "name your own price" and specify the area and star level, but you don't know the hotel. Priceline requires that you wait 24 hours before placing the same exact bid, but will allow you to bid again if you change something... dates, zone, minimum star rating. Often your travel dates are firm and can't be changed, which leaves us with changing zones and/or minimum star ratings. If your bid is rejected, you can often add a zone that does NOT offer that star level or higher (ie- add a zone that ONLY offers lower star ratings) and bid once again, raising your bid by a slight amount.
So you can effectively re-bid and thus raise your bid in small increments and get the best price.
For example…assume city XYZ has a downtown zone and a subburb zone. You bid 4* downtown at $50 and are turned down, and are told you can bid again if you change something. IF the subburb ONLY offers 3* Hotels and BELOW, you can add the subburbzone (so you are now bidding on downtown AND subburb) and once again bid for 4*. This will allow you to raise your bid and try again, essentially only bidding downtown, since the subburb doesn't have any hotels that fit your star level criteria.
OK…got that? This re-bid idea is an important concept…
Now go to Priceline (use the link on betterbidding.com so they get a cut!) Type in the City and dates. The city will be divided into geographic zones. Check each zone individually and write down the star level in each one. MAKE SURE THAT ONLY ONE ZONE IS SELECTED WHEN DETERMINING THE NUMBER OF STARS IN EACH ZONE.
Now figure out your bidding strategy. You should determine how many re-bids you get and figure out where to start bidding and by what increments you should go up. For example the area you want is going for about $60 and Hotwire has it for $75 and you have 3 re-bids, then you should bid $60, $65 and $70…if you are rejected then just buy from Hotwire. GOOD LUCK and don't forget to post your winning bids to http://betterbidding.com
PS. I don't have any affiliation with these companies...I just use them
