Determine Your Priceline Starting Bid Amount

If you are using the Priceline Name Your Own Price feature for hotel reservations, there is a danger that you may bid more than you need to. Follow these steps to determine how much to bid and ensure you do not pay any more than you need to for a hotel reservation.

  1. Find Out The Market Rate: The purpose of using Priceline is to save money. Why else would anyone book a hotel without knowing the location, brand and amenities? The first step to determine your Priceline starting bid amount is to determine the maximum you will pay. Check competitor sites such as Hotwire and other travel sites for similar hotels and travel dates. You can also check out the Priceline Forum to view actual Priceline winning bids and Hotwire purchases from Forum members.

  2. Determine Your Maximum Number of Rebids: Use the Instant Rebidding Technique to determine the number of Priceline bids you can make without having to wait the required 24 hour period. This step is absolutely critical. If you do not know how to instantly rebid on Priceline, you should learn the Instant Rebidding Technique before going any further.

  3. Calculate First Bid Amount: I use this foruma:

          First Bid = Market Rate - ($5 x Max Number of Rebids)

    You can substitude $5 by any amount you want, but I find $5 works best. Now you are ready to go ahead and place your first bid for a hotel with Priceline's Name Your Own Price.

  4. Increment Your Bid Amount and Submit Rebid: Assuming your first bid was not sucessful, increment your bid by $5 (or whatever you used in the formula to determine your first bid.

  5. Repeat The Above Step Until You Have No More Bids: Eventually, one of two thing will happen. One - your bid will be accepted. Two - you will run out of bids with none of your bids accepted. That is okay. Remember that in the first step, you already found out what you would pay for a room elsewhere. If none of your Priceline bids were accepted, time to book your room at a different site.

Hypothetical Example

Suppose I want to book a 5 star hotel in Las Vegas on a particular travel date. This section walks you through an example using the above steps.

  1. Find Out The Market Rate: Since this is just a hypothetical example, I am going to say that the market rate is $100 per night for a 5-star hotel. If I were actually reserving a room, I would check out several sites including Hotwire and the Hotwire & Priceline Forum to determine the best deal I could get for a 5 star hotel elsewhere.

  2. Determine Your Maximum Number of Rebids: Using the Instant Rebidding Technique, I learn that I can make 9 bids in Las Vegas without having to wait the required 24 hour period.

  3. Calculate First Bid Amount: The Forumla is:
          First Bid = Market Rate - ($5 x Max Number of Rebids)

    In my example,
          First Bid = $100 - ($5 x 9)
          First Bid = $55

    I am now ready to place my first bid for a hotel on Hotwire using a price of $55. This might seem low, but remember, I have 8 more bids if this one is not successful. In fact, I prefer to have my first bid rejected as it serves as a way of letting me know I'm not offering up too high a price on my very first bid.

  4. Increment Your Bid Amount and Submit Rebid: If the first bid at $55 was rejected, it is now time to rebid and offer $60.

  5. Repeat The Above Step Until You Have No More Bids: I will use $65 for my 3rd bid, $70 for my 4th bid, ... , and $95 on my very last bid. Hopefully somewhere along the line, one of my bids was accepted. If I get to $95 and none of my bids were accepted, I abandon Priceline and reserve my hotel room at the site that was offering a 5 star hotel for $100.

This is a technique I've been using for sometime now and it works flawlessly. Since I determine in advance of bidding (a) the price elsewhere and (b) the number of instant rebids I can do, I am able to determine a starting bid price and work my way up to my maximum bid. This approach guarantees that I never pay more than I have to. It is sometimes the case that Priceline isn't any cheaper than other websites. This is rare but occasionally I exhaust all my bids and still come up with nothing. In these cases, I simply move on to another website to make my reservation.

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