by Dave Stanford

Created on: June 09, 2009   Last Updated: March 23, 2011

There are so many websites available online now that give us the option to get the best possible deal on hotels in places all over the world. Perhaps the best of these websites is Priceline.com, but there are some quick tips you can follow to get the best possible deal using this website.

Priceline allows you two options when searching for hotels and these are:

1) Hotel search - This will search for hotels in the area you want to stay and give you a list of available hotels and prices.

2) Name your own price - This is where you can save some serious money as you name your price for a hotel giving you a great discount.

With the normal hotel search a list of specific hotels is displayed and you can select your hotel and price which is presented. This allows you to pick which hotel you want and then book it online via Priceline. This is a similar option used by other websites such as Travelocity and Expedia.

Name your own price is a bit different as you select a hotel class, such as 4 star, in a certain zone of the city you want to stay in. You won't know the hotel until your bid is accepted. You will just know the hotel star class and zone and if you follow these guidelines then you will always get a high class hotel in the area you want.

The most important thing you need to know when bidding is what hotels are in each zone and the star class of each hotel. By using another website such as biddingfortravel.com you can get a list of hotels in each city and the star class for each hotel.

This website will show you something like:

City A

Zone 1:

4 Star

Hotel Uno

Hotel Dos

3 Star

Hotel Four

Hotel Five

Zone 2:

2 Star

Hotel Six

Notice that the website lists two zones and in each zone it lists all possible classes of hotels with the hotel name (substitute uno, dos, with a real hotel name). In Zone 2 above we only see a 2 star hotel listed, which means there is no other class of hotel available in that zone. This is the information you can use when making your bid on Priceline.

You select the "Name Your Own Price" option in Priceline, enter the city and then select the zone you want to stay in. There will be a map to show you where the hotels are located. Then select the hotel class, but only select 4 star.

For your bid amount there are 2 things you can do:

1) Enter a price that is close to 40-50% of the normal website price (Typically $55 is a good starting price)

2) Check biddingfortravel.com and see what bids values were recently accepted on Priceline. (Users will

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