<p>I’ve mentioned this website before. I read about it on CC and I am just so excited this week by the great Priceline deals I got, I have to toot BFT’s horn.</p>
<p>BFT is dedicated to strategy for getting the best possible deals on Priceline.
There is a formal Bidding Assistance Form and when submitted correctly, the administrators givie you a bidding strategy. The admins insist you follow all the BFT rules— it takes a while to read through the FAQ-- but if you do it right, the advice is priceless.</p>
<p>Here are the deals I got this week (per night): $70 at Hyatt Regency Cambridge, $75 at Hyatt Regency Crystal City, and $70 at Doubletree Guest Suites Boston. All those hotels were about $200/night regular rate, if not more.</p>
<p>I figure I saved about $700 in hotel bills, which more than pays for my transcontinental airfare.</p>
<p>I agree. I use this site all the time and then go to Priceline for bidding. I am in Detroit more than I want to be and I nearly always get a 3 or 4 star hotel in Troy, MI for $50. Sometimes I get the Embassy Suites - which for $50 even includes a full cooked breakfast and 3 free drinks at the bar! They have to lose money for that.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t use Priceline for something that far away. I don’t even know if you can make a bid that far ahead, but even if you could too much stuff could change in the meantime. These bids are charged to your credit card right then and there and they are not refundable under (basically) any circumstances.</p>
<p>There are two sites. One is biddingfortravel.com and the other is priceline.com. Bidding for travel is a forum that people who use priceline go to to record their winning bids and other information. Priceline is a little tricky. I always use the “Name your price” feature. When you place your bid you do not know what hotel you will be staying at. You also may have no say in what sort of bed arrangement it has. You only know if it’s a 4 star, 3 star or whatever, and a general geographic area. Also, you can only bid once per sitting. (Then you have to wait - is it 72 hours? - before you can bid again. There are a couple of tricks to get around this but too complicated for here.) Bids are non refundable and you pay the moment the bid is accepted. So, to use Priceline you have to be flexible and willing to take a little risk. Bidding for travel can give you SOME clue as to what hotels you might end up in. For instance, let’s say I want to bid for a room in Troy MI. I see that Priceline has 4, 3, 2.5, and 2 star hotels available. If I want to know what hotel am I likely to end up in if I bid for a 4 star I could go to bidding for travel and see what other people got for their bids. You can also see what price people are paying so you have some idea how to bid. There is a link directly from bidding for travel to priceline, which they ask that you use. Sorry - this is a really brief explanation of a system which is a little complicated. Bidding for travel has the best instructions (and caveats!).</p>