My friend is a Priceline-guru and did her research on hotel bargaining websites to find the best time to place a bid on Priceline. I've never really been familiar with this process--I usually do a general Expedia search for a hotel and that's about it.
A New York Times article published about a week ago explains this hotel bargaining web process and compares different sites such as Priceline, Hotwire, Skyauction (had never heard of it) and LuxuryLink.
Basically, these sites allow travelers to "blindly" bid on hotels with information about their pricepoint, preferred star-rating and arrival/departure dates. After checking with websites like BetterBidding.com, users are offered multiple hotel options, however the name and amenity details of the hotels are not shown until after travelers commit and pay.
This can be nerve-racking for many travelers, myself included. There's something about knowing the hotel I'm about to shell out cash for, even if it is at a discounted rate. On the other hand, perhaps it is worth to risk to save hundreds of dollars on luxurious hotel deals.
Would you take the risk for a deal?
No comments:
Post a Comment