Geek and Cheap

I have been a big fan of the popular web site Priceline.com for several years. If you are not familiar with the web site, it allows you to “name your own price” for hotels, flights, rental cars, etc.. I have used their site to book hotels many times and have had moderate success. I’m sure many of you have booked a hotel room on Priceline to then find out that it was a dump. If you have experienced this I have the solution for you!

It is a website/forum called BetterBidding.com. This web site is a great idea, because it allows you to search for a destination and a rating before you name your price on Priceline. Other users post successful bids and the prices that they paid so that you can get a sense of what you should try to pay and which hotel you will be awarded after bidding. The thing that Priceline does not want you to know is that they only have 3-4 hotels for each star rating in each city. With BetterBidding.com, you can see what the hotels will be in each major city and therefore know how nice of a hotel you will probably be staying in.

I’ll give you an example. My wife and I are going to a wedding in Baltimore in April and the hotels that the bride and groom suggested ranged from 189-149 per night. With BetterBidding.com and Priceline we were able to get a great historic hotel in the Inner Harbour area of Baltimore for only $73/night. I think that is great and I hope you can use these tactics to save yourself a bundle of money.

Filed under: Saving Money