Happy Monday! Recently, I was discussing Priceline’s “Name Your Own Price” service with a co-worker. We were interested in testing it out but wasn’t too sure what the success ratio was, especially with flights. I assume, in order to get a good price on a flight, you have to be open to taking red eyes, flying into a smaller airport, etc. All things that are totally doable if you have flexible travel plans (which most of us do not). One thing that did make us hesitant, when trying to decide whether or not to try, was how you could only bid once every 24 hours, making the booking, err guessing, process quite time consuming.
This morning, however, I came across an interesting read on USAToday.com about a new website called TheBiddingTraveler.com which takes the pain out of the “Name Your Own Price” process by automating the whole thing. Essentially, it continuously places a bid for you until you are able to get the lowest available price, without having to wait 24 hours between each bid.
Below is an overview about how it works, thanks to USA Today. Read the full article here.
Overview: Provides free strategies and an automated tool, AutoBid, for streamlining hotel bidding through Priceline’s Name Your Own Price hotel service.
Pros: Makes bidding for hotels on Priceline more intelligent, faster, easier. Facilitates submission of your low bid and automatically increases the bid incrementally until a bid is accepted or your highest bid is rejected. Enters “free rebids,” enabling you to enter the highest number of bids within Priceline’s 24-hour rules. (If a $125 four-star bid downtown was rejected, AutoBid can immediately facilitate a $130 bid for a downtown hotel when you add uptown, too, because no four-star hotels are offered uptown.) Very transparent, showing total price for lowest and highest bids; displays recently accepted bids made by others with the hotel name.
Cons: Displays of recently accepted bids sometimes irrelevant since they may be more than four months old. Some zones don’t show any recently accepted bids. No FAQs. Live Help is often offline, although site provides quick answers via e-mail to inquiries. AutoBid available only for Internet Explorer.
Takeaway: Awesome service, although no guarantee your hotel bid will be accepted. New beta version rolling out this week with side by side displays of hotels’ star ratings, retail rates and average winning bids.
Happy planning!
Tags: Bidding Traveler, Link, News, USA Today
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