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Priceline London: Save hundreds on hotels in England

You can stay in top hotels but pay a fraction of the list price, stay in a better area or at a better star level you wouldn't normally be able to afford. How? Using the 'Name your own price website' called Priceline. Sounds scary? It's not.

What's it all about?

It’s all about the website Priceline, a website that sells hotel rooms in a totally unique way:

You 'bid' for a hotel room at a price you think is fair - and you can get one for far below even the cheapest prices elsewhere.

You find out instantly if you've 'won' or not.

How much cheaper?

Often as much as 50 percent off the list price

What's the catch?

You don't know the name of the hotel you're bidding on until you've booked it. You know its facilities, its location down to a couple of blocks, and some traveller reviews. But not the exact name.

Now if that sounds scary and complicated then it isn't - this guide will explain everything in a way that's easy to understand and thousand of people use this technique for the first time every day.

Ok - so what's the basic idea?

It's a system that works well for everyone.

In just a second we'll run through in detail how Priceline works but the basic idea is that you bid instantly for your room. "I wanna stay in this area, on those dates, in a four star hotel," you say... "and I wanna pay £10 a night!" Well £10 is likely not to be accepted but that's ok: it's cost you nothing to bid. A more realistic price might be £50 a night, and that may well be accepted. You find out instantly if you've 'won' a hotel or not. I'll tell you in a second how to work out what a realistic price is.

So why do the hotels use the site?

Imagine you’re a top quality hotel, but for some reason you’ve got lots of rooms empty for a certain period. Empty rooms means no profit, so want to reduce the price to entice more people in. After all, having anyone in a room is better than it lying empty: whoever gets the room might spend money in the bar, or on room service etc etc. Ok?

But… you’re a top quality hotel and people come to you because you’re exclusive and expensive.

If people KNOW you’re selling rooms for 50 percent off they may view you as less exclusive. And it would annoy your regular guests who in general don’t mind paying very high prices… but DO mind if they think they’re being conned into paying more than the ‘going rate.’

What do you do? You sell the room cheaply, but you do it anonymously. The only person who knows you’ve sold it for a bargain is the person who’s bought it.

The important thing to get your head around is that, as a customer, you're not going to know the exact name of the hotel you're staying in until after you've paid. If this isn't for you you could try other ways to get great hotel deals - but sacrificing this knowledge can save you heaps of cash.

Ok, so you don't know the hotel's name on Priceline... what do you know?

Well, first off, they only sell hotels that are good quality, in decent areas. There's no need to worry about them being unsavory or unsafe. With this in mind you'll also know before you commit to anything:

How many stars the hotel has;
The general area the hotel's in;
The dates you want to stay and the type of room you’ll get;
But not the hotel’s precise name or the precise street it’s on – not until you’ve booked it.

What am I likely to end up with?

Hotels come and go from priceline all the time - it depends on how many rooms they're not selling. So any site that comprehensively offers you a list of the hotels you might end up with isn’t telling the truth.

However, hotels especially active in London priceline have been the Thistle, Hilton, and Marriott chains. A glance at their websites to see the sort of hotels being offered through priceline: remember you may very well not get that exact same hotel.

There’s no ‘best’ time to bid; hotels release their rooms onto priceline at different periods so you can’t predict when the cheapest deals will be around. Sometimes it's months before your trip, sometimes days or even hours.

So how exactly do I do it?

Step one: Research: Make sure you have the price to beat

If you’ve already looked at my guide to getting cheap hotels you already know what a good price to pay for a good hotel in London is. If you haven’t got time to check out the full guide do a quick search on Expedia and Orbitz – this will get you a benchmark price. There’s no point paying more than that benchmark price for a similar star level of hotel! The aim of this game is to get a better deal than the one on offer openly to everyone. Write that benchmark figure down in big letters! Do not pay more than that number!

Step two: Prepare to bid

Make sure you’re on your name your own price page on priceline – you don’t want their travel agent pages: other companies are more competitive for that. They actually make this pretty difficult to find as you can't link directly to it but go to their home page and look for 'bid now on hotels' or 'name your own price for deeper discounts' sections.

Next fill in the city you’re going to and the dates you need a hotel for.

The third page is where it gets exciting. You have to choose:

One or more areas – there are 10 to choose from in London;
The star level of hotel you want to stay in. And;
How much you want to pay for it.

Now obviously the first two are relatively easy. The hard bit is working out how much – or how little – you can pay for it.

Clearly the ideal situation would be to find the smartest part of town and bid $1 for a 5* hotel, and then $2 etc etc until you ‘win’ the hotel. Sadly, they’re wise to this strategy – and so they limit you to ONE BID per day… though as I’ll explain in a minute there are a few crafty ways round this.

Step three: A brief detour

So – pause for a second and head over to Hotwire.

The two sites are quite similar - they're both centered round this idea of "you don't know where you're staying until you've paid" except that on Hotwire you don’t have to bid; prices there are fixed. There's slightly less range on Hotwire and prices are generally a whisker more expensive than Priceline's lowest possible rates.

But Hotwire offers you crucial information which will help you decide how much to bid on Priceline. Also, using Hotwire is an excellent alternative to Priceline for people who can't be bothered with all the hassle of priceline. At any rate, it's a good indicator for Priceline come what may, because it shows the sort of prices hotels are willing to sell rooms for anonymously. So, on hotwire, search by the star rating you want, in the area you want, on the dates you want. Unlike in priceline, you'll see a basic rundown of hotel facilities etc, but not the name. Choose one that looks nice and note the price.

If it's amazing you can book it there and then, or you could try and beat that price on priceline.

Step four: prepare to bid

Ok, I know this is all a bit confusing to start with but if you're happy so far and really want to get the most magnificent deal possible then it might be time to take the plunge and think about preparing to bid.

Back at Priceline you get ready to enter a bid. It costs nothing to bid, and if you bid too low and it's rejected then you're charged nothing at all.

Before you actually do bid though, here are a few points to guide you.

Tips for bidding

Enter your bid about 15 percent below Hotwire's price. This is a good point to start off with, and is accepted most, but not all of the time. Occasionally prices get unpredictable.

Think carefully about what areas you'd be willing to stay in. If you click them, you might end up being there. In particular, for London I'd recommend avoiding the London Docklands area for most people. There's nothing wrong with it and it's perfectly pleasant, but it's a little far from the center of town and aimed at businessmen: as such it's dead in the evenings.

If you're willing to stay in more than one area, then add your second, third, fourth choices in one at a time. If you're willing to stay in more than one star level then add these in one at a time too. Why? Remember: You can't bid $30 for a room, have it rejected and immediately come back with an offer of $31, then $32, then $33 etc until it's accepted. There's a 24 hour lockout after the first bid is rejected. UNLESS YOU ALSO CHANGE ANOTHER OF YOUR CRITERIA AS WELL. So if you added an extra area of town and upped the offer, you get a second bid. Or if you add an extra star category you're willing to stay in, you get a second bid.

So: if you want a five star or four star hotel, bid only for 5 star initially. If your offer is rejected you can widen the search to include four stars, getting yourself an immediate extra bid. You see Priceline will allow you an extra bid if you move DOWN the star chain. But if you bid for a three star, that actually also bids for 4, or 5 star as well.

If you’re interested in more than one area: in both Kensington AND Bloomsbury, say, bid for your first choice ONLY first time round. If you then add Bloomsbury you’re allowed another bid. This will repeat the search of all hotels in BOTH Bloomsury and Kensington. You can use this flexibility to make a low first bid - it may just get accepted.

Now if you're interested in learning more about this - and it does take a bit of head-scratching to figure out - now its the time to check out my priceline advanced tips page – which will help you get the very lowest price possible. It details the way this bid strategy of adding one thing at a time works, and means you can have around six attempts to get a hotel room at a decent price instead of just one.

Priceline works best for a maximum of two people sharing one room. It’s more difficult but not impossible to find bargains if there are more than two of you. Certainly worth a try still, especially as it costs nothing to bid.

Finally note that you can’t change your hotel, or travel hotel dates after you’ve bid sucessfully.

Step five: What next?

If your bid’s accepted: Congratulations!

Once it's accepted, there's no going back: you're committed to this hotel. It's at the acceptance stage that your credit card is charged; once this happens, you cannot cancel.

If priceline comes back with a counteroffer:

Sometimes, you’ll get an email from priceline saying that you hadn’t quite bid enough, but if you just offered $x more then they would accept it. Don’t accept it straight away! It means that there are hotels available in the zones you want for the price you want. It will offer you a free extra chance to bid. Split the difference between what you just bid and what the counteroffer is: you rarely need to go as high as the counteroffer to get your bid accepted! Go on, give it a try!

If none of this takes your fancy and you definitely want a cheaper room you still have plenty of options:

Hotwire really is worth a punt if you don't care exactly which hotel you stay in but want to know its facilities beforehand.

If you'd rather book more conventionally, it’s time to consider my budget hotel guide.

If your bid’s rejected:

Rats! As discussed earlier, you can’t only a few more dollars to your offer price, at least, not for 24 hours. But you can:

Add areas of London one at a time to allow extra bids. If you do this, you should also raise your offer price slightly to give you a realistic chance of getting a hotel in your first choice zone as well as your second choice zone
Or drop a star rating to allow an extra bid
You could wait 24 hours and try again with a slightly higher bid
Or you could try the big hotel discounters, making sure you get the best deal from them too
And if you have saved loads of money, remember to buy me a beer to say thank you! (there's a link on the left)