Priceline Canada – Victoria and Vancouver Island

February 1st, 2012
Priceline Victoria BC - Downtown

Priceline Victoria BC - Downtown

Priceline Canada

As a resident of Victoria, BC, I travel up and down Vancouver Island quite often, but I don’t use Priceline all that often.  Usually when I travel on the Island (my backyard), I am camping and as as far as I know, Priceline doesn’t do “Name Your Own Campsite” ;-) or I have a particular spot that I like to stay at.  [For visitors to Parksville, the Beach Club is awesome for so many reasons.]  Yes, poor Priceline gets neglected up here in Canada from this self-proclaimed Guru.

However, I am actively involved in several different travel communities online and quite often offer people advice on where to stay and what to visit here in Victoria and throughout Vancouver Island and the Pacific Northwest.  Thought it would be a good idea explore Priceline Canada, and in particular what you can find here on Vancouver Island.

Priceline in Victoria

This is a good place to start since Victoria is not only the capital of British Columbia but also the largest and most visited city on Vancouver Island.  Many visitors want to spend a few days in Victoria, and Priceline is absolutely perfect for snagging a deal in the Garden City.  Priceline divides Victoria up into 3 different bidding zones:

  • Downtown:  This is where most people stay, and generally, this is where you want to stay.  Victoria’s downtown is small but sadly, the Priceline bidding zone is not.  In fact, you would be very disappointed to get a hotel in Vic West, Esquimalt or the Gorge area.  These areas certainly aren’t within walking distance to any of the tourist attractions centred around the Inner Harbour.  It is well worth it to try and identify your hotel using the Priceline Victoria hotel list before bidding.  Hint:  bid on 4 stars or better and you’ll be in the desired area of Victoria around the Parliament Buildings and Empress Hotel.
  • Langford:  Not exactly the tourism mecca of Victoria, Langford does boast 1 nice resort:  The Westin Hotel at Bear Mountain.  Beyond this, there is little reason to stay in Langford unless you need to be near the highway for a roadtrip.  It’s worth noting that the Westin at Bear Mountain has not been reported as a Priceline hotel in Victoria.
  • Victoria Airport:  This area contains the famed Butchart Gardens as well as the airport, but aside from this attraction, there are a few nice things to see and do in this area.  The Brentwood Bay Inn is a must-see in the summer… the pool and spa is amazing and the temperature is typically 5 degrees warmer than downtown Victoria.

For all known Priceline Canada hotels in Victoria, visit the Victoria Priceline hotel list.

Not a lot of Vancouver Island hotels on Priceline have been reported outside of Victoria.  This is not a major surprise since most of these towns are small (less than 100,000 residents).  Here are some accommodation tips on the places I frequent often:

  • Parksville and Tofino:  Two of my favorite spots on Vancouver Island.  Both have beautiful beaches, great resorts, and unfortunately, not a lot of availability on Priceline’s Name Your Own Price.  I have yet to see any NYOP for Tofino, and my favorite hotel in Parksville (the Beach Club) is not on Priceline that I know of.
  • Campbell River, Courtney, Comox:  Each of these towns are quite small.  This area is technically the middle of Vancouver Island but for most, it’s considered quite far north.  If you’re going skiing in the winter, I’d skip these towns all together and stay on Mount Washington.  Of the 3 towns, Campbell River’s Painter’s Lodge is one of the most popular resorts.
  • Duncan and Nanaimo:  No Priceline hotels have been reported on the Priceline Forum but Priceline does offer NYOP hotels in these cities.

My Recommendations: Priceline works best in cities where there are lots of hotels and therefore lots of competition, and (usually) lots of excess inventory.  Victoria is one of those cities where a good deal can be snagged, but if you’re bidding on Priceline Canada for a Victoria hotel, stick to the 4 star or better hotels to avoid getting a hotel in the far outer reaches of what Priceline considers “downtown”.  As for the rest of Vancouver Island, my 2 favorite spots on the Island (Parksville and Tofino) are duds as far as Priceline goes.

Have you used Priceline to bid on a hotel on Vancouver Island?  Why not submit your winning bid details to the Priceline Canada Forum?

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Payless Car Rental SFO :-(

January 19th, 2012

I got a great deal on a car rental out of SFO.  Even though this site is focused on building a better bidding Priceline community, (oh, and Hotwire), I always check out the competition because at the end of the day, this site is really about saving money when travelling.

One tip I always do is check out the Canadian and US versions of sites particularly for car rentals.  Prices can vary widely so it pays to check both site.

For my recent trip to San Francisco, I needed a car rental so I did the regular checking of rates on Priceline and Hotwire, as well as a few other sites.  I found the best deal on Expecia.ca (not Expedia.com).  For a rental car from SFO, the price was only an amazing $11 per day.  Wow, what a deal, so I thought.  As the saying goes, buyer beware.

First, I got to SFO quite lite because of a connecting flight that was delayed in Seattle.  I arrived at SFO around 11 p.m., took the AirTrain to the car rental building, where I discovered my first disappointment in going with Payless Car Rental — that Payless is offsite and you had to wait for their shuttle.  Called for the shuttle only to learn that their office closed at 10:00 p.m., one hour earlier.

Stuck in San Francisco without a car, I walked up to Thrifty Car Rental and explained the situation to them.  They were happy to rent me a car but it was going to cost me $50 for the night.  Bummer.  But I was tired and so I paid the $50 so I could get to my hotel and the meeting I had to go to the next day.

The next day, I returned my Thrifty Rental Car and called the shuttle to pick up my prepaid Payless Rental car which I would use for the remaining duration of my trip.  In total, this took about 1.5 to 2 hours of my time… had to return the Thrifty car, call the shuttle, wait for the shuttle, take the shuttle (about 10 minutes away from the airport), and do the Payless paperwork.  What a complete waste of time.

So Payless was nice enough to honor my reservation “this time only”, implying that they’re doing me a favor by giving me my car rental even though I didn’t show up to pick it up the next day.  Then came the nickle and diming.  I got upsold on additional insurance (which I chose to purchase), but to have an additional driver (I was traveling with my business partner) was an extra $10 per day.  Grrr…

In the end, I don’t think I saved very much money going with Payless Car Rental.  It caused me a lot of time and frustration.  Lesson learned:  Don’t always go with the cheapest.  More specifically, at least in the SFO airport, avoid Payless or any other off-site car rental agencies.

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Priceline vs. Hotwire Hotel Ratings

December 19th, 2011

Anyone who travels has probably stayed at a hotel that didn’t quite meet their expectations.  You book a hotel online based on some photos but when you get there, the hotel looks better in photos than in real life.  When people purchase hotels on Hotwire or Priceline, there is a tendency to blame Hotwire or Priceline, and therefore assume one of these companies inflates their ratings.  Anecdotally, I hear this more often about Hotwire than Priceline and I wanted to find out.  Does Hotwire or Priceline tend to be a little more generous in their ratings of hotels?  Since I capture Hotwire and Priceline winning bids on the Hotwire & Priceline Forum, I thought it would be interesting to crunch some number to find out.

Methodology

When people report Hotwire or Priceline winning bids, I post this data to the forum, but I also capture it in a database.  Each time someone reports a win, I review it for accuracy and try my best to match it to a hotel listed on TripAdvisor.  I also record the TripAdvisor URL of their main page for each hotel.  Since I started this process, I was able to extract from my database 420 hotels that were reported as showing up on both Priceline and Hotwire.

It is worth noting that Priceline has a class of hotels called “Resorts”.  A resort hotel is based on more than just the quality of the hotel, but Priceline looks at the facilities and amenities at the hotel.  E.g., a hotel with a spa, fitness centre, multiple food and beverage choices would be considered a ‘resort’.  A resort could be lower end or higher end.  Since Hotwire doesn’t have resorts, I removed these from the dataset.  This left me with 399 hotels to analyze.

Findings

The first thing I wanted to do was look at how many of the hotels were rated the same, how many had higher ratings on Hotwire and how many on Priceline.

  • The vast majority – 303 hotels (75.9%) – had the same star rating on both sites
  • 71 hotels (17.8%) had a higher rating on Hotwire
  • 25 hotels (6.3%) had a higher rating on Priceline

I also looked at averages:

  • Hotwire’s average hotel rating was 3.68 stars
  • Priceline’s average hotel rating was 3.615 stars

How much of a variance:  This is an important one.  Is there a big gap between ratings or not?  Most times, the variance was only 1/2 star but in some cases the gap was much wider:

  • 71 hotels (17.8%) had a higher rating on Hotwire than Priceline.  Of these, 59 of them were only a half star higher but 12 were rated a full star higher on Hotwire than Priceline.
  • 25 hotels (6.3%) had a higher rating on Priceline that Hotwire.  Of these, 23 of them were only a half star higher, and just 2 were rated a full star higher on Priceline that Hotwire.

Conclusion

Most of the time, ratings are the same on Hotwire and Priceline, but it does appear that Hotwire has a slightly more generous rating system than Priceline.  Afterall, 17.8% of hotels had a higher rating on Hotwire than Priceline.  The gap between ratings is not huge — 1/2 star in all but 3% of hotels where the gap was a full star different.

it is worth noting that the numbers above are based on data from users, and in all likelihood, there are errors in the data.  This isn’t by any means intended to be a statistical research study on hotel ratings.  Just me pulling a few numbers off a database, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity about Hotwire vs. Priceline’s hotel ratings.

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Hotwire Pricing Errors = Great Savings

November 27th, 2011

HotwireHotwire has, in recent months, made a few pricing errors that if, found, can result in huge savings on travel.

In the Hotwire forum on HotelDealsRevealed, a few users have reported pricing errors on Hotwire.  What exactly is a pricing error?  Typically a pricing error is when a mistake is made on the price of a hotel, often due to keystroke errors that  make their way into the system and show up on Hotwire (as well as other sites such as Priceline).  These are rare but do happen from time to time.

Examples include:  La Quinta hotels for $13 per night.   See this forum post for details.  Another example is the Westin hotel in Fort Lauderdale going for $33 per night, which typically goes for around $100/night.  After all this is a great 4-star resort in one of America’s best beach destinations.

Are these mistakes?  Truth is, nobody knows for sure.  Maybe they’re just insane pricing created to generate a lot of buzz.  It works — afterall I’m blogging about these deals.  Regardless of whether they are actual errors or just insanely low prices, these deals do not usually last long.  They are snapped up quickly, and thanks to social media, the deals proliferate quickly.

Are these mistakes honored?  In most cases, yes.  I’ve read about similar mistakes on other websites such as FlyerTalk and the consensus seems to be that these travel reservation systems will honor the lower price.

Hotwire messed up on this one

Hotwire messed up on this one

One thing I would recommend:  If you see a pricing error, snatch it up quickly.  Then, call the hotel or airline to confirm your reservation.  Make notes about who when you called and who you talked to so that if a problem occurs, you have some recourse.

Once you have done so, why not help fellow travellers by sharing the deal on HotelDealsRevealed.com’s Hotwire forum.  As we’ve seen in the past, people who share their Hotwire (or Priceline) purchase details with a community helps all of us.

Have you ever seen a pricing error?

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Priceline & Hotwire Hotel List Changes

October 29th, 2011

Thanks to a software developer friend, I added some changes to the Hotwire and Priceline hotel lists.  As you probably know, HotelDealsRevealed is a great way to get help when bidding for travel, and in particular, hotels.  For Priceline, the hotel lists are particularly helpful when trying to figure out what hotel you might get.  For Hotwire, it is the same thing except that we list the amenities as well.  This makes bidding better because you can essentially identify your hotel before bidding.

One of the problems with similar sites like BetterBidding and BiddingForTravel is that while they have similar lists, the lists are old.  In fact, many of the hotels on those lists have closed down or are not active on Priceline and Hotwire.  In other words, they are no longer relevant.  One of the changes I’ve made to HDR’s lists is a field called “Last Reported”.  This lets users know the last time a particular hotel was found on Hotwire or Priceline.

Hotel List For Priceline Vegas

Hotel List For Priceline Vegas

I’ve also added a couple of other cool features. First, there is a link to hotel reviews by TripAdvisor. Second, I’ve added comments for certain hotels. These comments are based on Hotwire and Priceline forum members. Examples include: resort fees, parking costs, hotel complaints, Priceline tips, etc.

Accessing the hotel lists has not changed.  In order to search for a city / state (we have Canada and US), simply start at the hotel search page.

The idea for these changes came from a forum member, TimMcG, who used to be a fan of BiddingForTravel but found that because that site was very old, many of the hotels on their Priceline list were out of date and effectively useless.  Thanks for the suggestion, Tim.  I’m always looking for suggestions and site improvements. If there is any suggestions, I would love to hear what you have to say. Share your thoughts on the forum.

Hotwire Hotel List for Las Vegas

Hotwire Hotel List for Las Vegas

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Better Bidding on Vegas 5-Star Hotels Using Priceline

October 3rd, 2011

Priceline Vegas Strip NorthPriceline has a feature called “Hotel Bidding Alert” where you can receive emails from Priceline whenever winning bids for hotels are accepted on Priceline that match your criteria.  For example, you can specify the city and bidding zone, ceiling price, and hotel class (star level) and receive emails daily from Priceline for winning bids that match your criteria.

I’m a huge fan of Las Vegas, and I wanted to test out the Hotel Bidding Alert emails to see how they compared to the winning bids reported on the Priceline Vegas Forum.  I set up 3 different bidding alerts, one for each area in Las Vegas that has a 5-star hotel:  Strip North, Strip Vicinity North – Condo, and Strip Vicinity South.  My objective was to find out roughly how much 5-star hotels were going for in each of these zones, with the intention that this information would help people become better at bidding on Priceline.

Here is what I found:

Strip Vicinity South:  This is the cheapest of the 3 zones for 5-star hotels.  The average price for a 5-star hotel per night was just under $100 (very cheap), with rates as low as $83 per night.  This zone has three 5-star hotels, Vdara, Cosmopolitan, and Aria.  Vdara is very nice, but it is actually tucked away behind the Bellagio and the Aria, and does not have a casino.  This is less desired of the 3 hotels with 5-star status in this zone, and odds are that you will get this hotel if bidding on 5-star hotels in this zone.  If you don’t mind a bit of a walk to the Strip and a hotel without a casino, you can save a lot of money.

Strip Vicinity North – Condo:  This zone only has one 5-star hotel — The Trump Hotel.  It is a gorgeous hotel, but like the Vdara, it too is off the Strip and doesn’t have a casino.  The average price for this zone was around $120 per night, roughly $20 more than the Vdara in Strip Vicinity South.  Given the choice between the Trump and the Vdara, I would choose Vdara.  In my opinion, avoid bidding in this zone if you’re looking for a 5-star hotel in Vegas.

Strip North:  This is the coveted Priceline bidding zone for 5-star hotels in Las Vegas.  This area is home to the following 5-star hotels:  Palazzo, Venetian, and Wynn.  Each of these hotels is right on the Stirp, has a casino, and is absolutely amazing.  If you can afford it, this is the zone you want to bid for a hotel on Priceline.  Surprisingly, the average price for a 5-star hotel in this zone was $125/night.  Not bad.  In fact, I’ve seen the Venetian go for as low as $108 per night.

Overall, it is very evident that Priceline is a very, very inexpensive way to get a great Vegas hotel.  You are better off bidding on a hotel in the Strip North if you want a good deal for a hotel directly on the Strip, and if budget is your concern, Strip Vicinity South is a good low cost alternative (but be prepared to get the Vdara).  Happy bidding!

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Most Popular Hotwire & Priceline Forums

August 24th, 2011

This website is just coming up on its 2-year anniversary. Many thanks to the thousands of contributors who have posted in the various Priceline and Hotwire forums, as well as the tens of thousands each month who use the site.

I’m love data, and I thought it would be interesting to look at the most popular forums on HotelDealsRevealed.  I have generated a list of the top 10 forums based on total number of posts.  Posts is a proxy for activity, and gives clues as to which forums help visitors bid better on Priceline and Hotwire.  Here are the most popular forums:

  1. Florida: This is not really a surprise.  Florida is such an awesome place to visit and is probably the most visited state in the USA.  With Disneyworld and other theme park attractions, beaches, and cruise departures, Florida is a popular place for Priceline and Hotwire users.
  2. California:   The United State’s biggest state is also a huge travel destination.  Disneyland (the original), San Diego, LA, and San Francisco are all very popular cities on the California forums.  I personally go to San Francisco a couple times a year and spent a week in Disneyland earlier this year.
  3. Nevada:  Vegas is such an awesome place, but it is even better when using Priceline (my favorite) for getting super awesome 5-star hotels for under $100 per night.  Wow!  You won’t find any better bidding on Priceline than Las Vegas.
  4. British Columbia, Canada:  This is where I life and where it all started…. me, my friends, and our many trips from Victoria to Vancouver, and along with those trips are posts to the Priceline/Hotwire forum.
  5. New York:  We all know NYC is super expensive, which is why Priceline is so awesome when you need a hotel.  You simply cannot get a better deal on Manhattan hotels than bidding on Priceline for NYC.
  6. Washington State:  This is probably a bit of a surprise to some that Washington State is in the top 10. The truth is that I live just across the border in Victoria, BC, and so me and many of my friends (who use this site) go down to Washington State fairly often… using Priceline or Hotwire of course!
  7. Ontario, Canada:  I don’t know why this is in the top 10.  Although I do live in Canada, I don’t go to Ontario often and neither does anyone I know.  Maybe there are just a lot of Priceline Canada customers?  I think it is cool that 2 Canadian provinces are included in the top 10.
  8. Hawaii:  Up in Canada, Hawaii has become a really hot winter destination spot in the last couple of years, thanks to the weak US dollar and Mexico turmoils.  This is a wonderful place to vacation, and I am excited to be heading there in March, 2012.
  9. Texas:  Very popular state among travellers.  I appreciate all the winning bids that people have submitted.
  10. New Jersey:  A few regular website users travel to New Jersey fairly often.  This has pumped up New Jersey into the top 10 most popular forums, plus the fact that many people visiting New York fly into New Jersey and need a hotel.

Any and all posts to the Priceline/Hotwire forum make a huge contribution to this community.  I would like to express my gratitude to all who have shared their hotel wins and helped to foster a community of better bidders.  If you’re reading this post, why not sign up to the forum and contribute?

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A Community Forum For Better Bidding on Priceline

August 5th, 2011
Priceline Forum

Priceline Forum

Priceline is a great travel reservation website because hotels and other travel service providers usually have excess capacity they want to sell off inexpensively. At the same time, they don’t want to diminish their brand or dilute their own prices so they use websites like Priceline and Hotwire to sell excess inventory. On Priceline, the hotel is not published until you successfully ‘bid’ on a hotel room, hence the term “Name Your Own Price”.

For the typical traveler who has some flexibility in their plans, this can work out well.  But there is a way to “beat Priceline” using the community forum at HotelDealsRevealed.com, a community of Priceline customers who share their Priceline winning bids.  This helps customers learn the name of the hotel they might win, but also the price they should bid.  The more people that participate, the better we become at bidding on Priceline.  For example, Priceline winning bids for the 5-star Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas usually go for under $100 per night.

Tens of thousands of people use HotelDealsRevealed.com each month to find out other people’s winning Priceline bids, but only a handful of people actually share their own winning bid.  This is unfortunate because it literally only takes about a minute to share your winning Priceline hotel bid using the “share” form.  Oh, and no signup is required, nor do you have to share any personal information.  It is a great way to contribute to a community of travelers by making us better bidders on Priceline.

Priceline Hotel Win Details

Priceline Hotel Win Details

On the left is a screenshot of the form Priceline customers can use to share their winning bid.  If you are signed up to the forum, your winning bid details will be posted immediately.  However, if you want to post anonymously, this can take a few hours for manual approval before it makes its way to the forum.  If you haven’t used it yet, why not give it a try and share your Priceline win.

Many thanks to the thousands who have contributed already and who continue to make HotelDealsRevealed.com a better community for Priceline bidding.

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Flying out of Bellingham Means Savings For Canadians

July 22nd, 2011

Canadians travelers are familiar with the high cost of flying. It just seems like airlines tickets are more expensive in Canada compared to flights originating out the USA. Annecdotally, for instance, whenever I plan a trip, I always search nearby US airports. I live in Victoria BC (YYJ), so my surrounding airports are: Vancouver (YVR), Seattle (SEA), and Bellingham (BLI). Recently I have become a huge fan of flying out of Bellingham and have done so now on a handful of occassions.

Anyone who lives in lower British Columbia (Vanouver, Victoria, Kelowna, etc) should consder Bellingham when flying for the many benefits it has to offer:

1. It is just across the Canada/US border, about 30 minutes from the Peace Arch Border Crossing.

2. Parking at the airport is inexpensive.

3. There are many nearby hotels that offer free parking if you spend the night, as well as shuttle service. See the Bellingham Hotwire Hotel list or Bellingham Priceline Hotel list.

4. The airport is small, meaning checkin and security is extremely quick (usually).

5. Canadians avoid expensive air fares for flights originating out of Canada, as well as high Canadian taxes on flights.

BLI, the airport code for Bellingham, is serviced by 2 airlines:

Allegient Air: Allegient Air has flights from Bellingham direct to Las Vegas. Flight prices from BLI to LAS range from $69 to $100+. I personally haven’t flown Allegient but I understand their service is good.

Alaska Air: Alaska also flies to Vegas non-stop. A tip when flying to Las Vegas: Ask if there are any first class upgrades available. For $50, you get 2 free checked bags and all the other perks of flying first class. This is the way Vegas should be done. Alaska also flies to Seattle, which can get you pretty much anywhere. In the winter and spring, Alaska also has direct flights to Honolulu (HNL). For Canadians wanting to excape the winter, you can get a direct flight to HNL for sometimes as low as $150 each way.

Many of these flights leave early in the morning. If you need to stay at a hotel in Bellingham, there are some great deals available, either through Priceline and Hotwire or through regular hotel reservation websites. I recently stayed at the Comfort Inn Baron Suites. This hotel included free shuttle and breakfast, as well as a week of complimentary parking on the hotel premise. The parking lot was full of other BC vehicles, by the way… a lot of Canadians booking Bellingham hotels on Priceline I guess.

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Priceline “Real Winning Hotel Bids”

July 16th, 2011

HotelDealsRevealed.com and other sites (BetterBidding.com and BiddingForTravel for example) are user and community based websites where people reveal their Priceline winning bids.  The purpose of these forums is to help Priceline customers (a) determine what price to bid and (b) to help users identify their hotel.  In brief, we are trying to help people become better bidding travelers.

Priceline Real Winning Bids

Priceline Real Winning Bids

This is pretty helpful.  Knowing the price others paid for a hotel reservation in a particular bidding zone and area can be useful when using Priceline.  Unfortunately, what Priceline does not show you is the date(s) of purchase and the hotel received.

The reason dates are so important is because hotel prices fluctuate wildly.  For example, weekend rates for hotels can be double or even triple mid-week rates.  So while Priceline may show recent winning hotel bids, they could be mid-week rates and you’re bidding for weekend rooms.

Priceline doesn’t reveal the name of the hotel either.  While some people don’t mind this, I personally like to try to identify my hotel (or at a minimum know what hotel I might receive).  Using Las Vegas as another example, if you bid on a 4-star hotel in the “Strip Vicinity South” zone, you might end up with the Westin Casaurina, a long 2 blocks away from the Strip. (See Priceline Las Vegas Hotels for a list of hotels).

Overall, this feature is not bad, but could be made more useful if the real hotel names and dates were displayed.  For users who want to make the most out of Priceline, check out the Priceline forum on HotelDealsRevealed.com.  A hardcore fan will also check out multiple forums such as BetterBidding and others as cross-referencing multiple sites is helpful.

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