Priceline Travel Hacks Work For International Hotels Too

May 15, 2009 at 4:47 PM | by Omri | 1 Comment

Priceline's in the news this morning for their new Bring-A-Friend bonus, where you get $100 in Priceline credit when you book two or more hotel rooms at the same time for the same trip. We also know that many of you are going to Europe this summer, and we've even gotten a question from someone about using Priceline to book international hotels. So off we go.

The formal and informal rules for booking international hotels - the bidding process and the tricks that you can use to beat it - are basically the same as for domestic hotels. You put in the price, the star-level, and the locations that you're willing to accept.

Priceline spits out whether or not they managed to get you a room at that rate. If your bid fails you get to bid again, but you have to either reduce the star level or add another acceptable location. You can't just increase your price, which is the incentive to get you to bid higher initially.

You can use the same tricks to do an endrun around this limitation that you'd use for domestic hotels. One of the easiest is to know what hotels with what star ratings are within what regions. That way if your bid for a 5-star hotel fails you can add a nearby region that doesn't have any 5-stars and increase your price. That essentially allows you to rebid just by raising your price, which is what Priceline wants to avoid. Bidding For Travel maintains hotel lists sorted by region, and they have plenty of international lists.

Another other way to fine tune your bid is to check the lowest price that's worked for other bidders. Better Bidding provides forums where people post successful and unsuccessful bids, and they have an international hotels subforum. The subforum focuses mainly on Canada and Mexico, but there's a healthy "Other Countries" thread as well.

Related Stories:
· Are You Going to Europe This Summer [Jaunted]
· Priceline coverage [Jaunted]

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