Priceline offers a $25 new guarantee for low hotel prices

The Big Deal Hotel Price Guarantee is a new program, for people who use the Name Your Own Price hotel reservation service.  If you book a room on Priceline, you don’t have to worry about finding a better hotel deal later. 

The key is being flexible in your travel dates.  Larger cities such as Las Vegas and New York are great for using Priceline.  In cities with smaller hotel room inventory, they may not be as competitive for hotel rates.

If something better comes along anytime until before your check-in date, priceline.com will actually match the lower price; pay you $25, and give you a $50 Priceline vacation coupon (make sure you read all the fine print here).

During an internal study, Priceline compared it’s Name Your Own Price books for April 2010 against it’s competitors (i.e Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity) using identical itineraries.  The results were that over half of the priceline.com customers save more than 50% compared to their competitors’ published nightly rates. 

Note however, that published nightly rates may not always be the best I have been a big fan of Priceline for many years, and have always gotten great deals.  rate available.  It is always worth it to call the hotel directly to see if they offer a better reservation rate. 

Another strategy you can try using is to visit sites such as betterbidding.com for more information on previous Priceline hotel reservations. Betterbidding is a user driven website, where previous travellers will list how much they paid, along with information such as the name of the hotel & star level. By comparing notes and doing your homework, not only can you get a great rate but you stand a good chance of knowing where you may stay as well.  For more information, visit my next page on Las Vegas hotel reservations.