My love/hate relationship with Priceline.com
This post has nothing to do with internet marketing other than it might teach some lessons on user experience and choice.
I travel quite a bit and am a little cheap but like to stay in nice hotels - my solution for a long time has been Priceline.com. I get to select an area in the city I am visiting and then a star level and then choose my own price.
Through some experimentation I have found that if you look daily starting about 2 weeks before a trip you can often get the price you want at the star level and location you want within about 3 days. Waiting until the last minute actually seems to cause the price to go up a little.
So I am in Chicago every other weekend it seems and I have gotten into the routine of using Priceline to stay on Michigan Avenue close to my destination. Just counted and I have now stayed 15 times in the last year and never paid more than $69 a night for my hotel choices - typically getting Hilton and Hyatt type hotels.
Anyway over time, I have found some hotels that just dont work for me - my aircard is in a dead spot or the fitness room is crap or they want $18 for me to workout or they dont have a desk or in one instance the star level was just wrong. I have also found some hotels that are perfect for what I am looking for - maybe free wifi or closer to my destination or really nice free workour facilities.
Now I realize that I am not the typical priceline user since I tend to stay in the same area repeatedly and thus see a larger sample than the normal user.
Some suggestions I have for Priceline to improve their service:
Allow me to establish criteria I want - Free Wifi, Free Workout Room (maybe even a star level on workout room), Only a king bed, indoor pool, etc. If I am bringing my kids, I require 2 double beds and probably an indoor pool, if it is me and my wife on a weekend getaway I want a king… Right now I get stuck with what I get stuck with - and since I am paying a low rate, the hotels have no incentive to accomodate my change request. This variability keeps me from using Priceline on certain trips and almost certainly has first time users left unsatisfied so that they will not return. In most instances, if i have certain requirements I am happy to pay a little more to get what I need. A bargain room that does not meet my needs is a bad customer experience. Ultimately it means that I cant use Priceline when I would…
Allow a radius request around an address - In the spring I am ok with being a mile away from where I am going and walking - it is actually a nice thing. In the dead of winter, I end up taking a $10 cab ride to and from the hotel - with a radius search I might prefer to spend that $20 a day on lodging but be very close to my destination. As it is now, I can spend more and still be a good distance away - so I have no incentive to spend more - allow me to target especially in the big cities like DC, NY, Chicago, Miami etc…
Allow users to opt out of getting a hotel ever again - I was getting a consistent great rate on 3.5 stars hotels (which are usually suite hotels like Hilton Garden or Embassy) until one time I got a hotel that was at the extreme edge of the zone, was 80+ years old, the rooms reaked of smoke, the workout facilities were rusty, the room temparture was a choice of 60 or 80, it was off the beaten path and had no cab stand etc etc… A really bad experience in what had at one time been a 4 star hotel but was now categorized as a 3.5 stars - my rating would have been 2 stars. So in essence a single bad experience in a star level I was getting excellent value out of has forced me to remove that zone and star level from my bidding because I would not want to risk getting that experience again. If they allowed users to proactively opt out and provide some reasoning, they might be able to better filter. Sure they get paid either way, but one bad experience is probably enough to prevent an average user from returning. Maybe you have already lost the first few customers, but no reason to continue the cycle by not allowing some sort of filtering.
If Priceline would allow the user a little more control - they would get even more of my business. As it stands now, I cannot use them on trips with the kids, or even romantic weekend getaways with my wife, it is not an option for family vacations, or anything at all where I am overseas. So I typically end up paying 2-3x what I would have paid on priceline to get what I want. I am ok with that, but I would love to pay priceline a premium over the lowest possible rate to get what I am looking for.
Imagine that i could get the same room by pure random chance like I frequently do for $70 a night, but because I have specific needs (wife travelling with me and we want a king) I am happy paying $85 to know I will get what I want. Priceline gets much larger margins (that room is often available for $70 - now they are just charging more for it) and has much happier customers who will use them over and over again. Their hotel partners are probably also more pleased because they have fewer disgruntled guests and more guests in general because people now feel more comfortable using priceline knowing they have some control over what they will get…
May 17th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
You are a retard man, I have been in the hotel business for 15 years - the only reason you are even getting a great rate like that is because you are willing to take whatever room they have available. Stop being such a cheap azz.
May 30th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
On a related travel note, if you’re at SMX Advanced this week, I’d LOVE to meet you. You can find me at the keyword research artistry panel, day 1 - they were nice enough to give me a spot :).
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:31 am
I have found the same thing every time I go to Boston. I thought I was just crazy, so it’s good to see I’m not the only one…
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I think the reason Priceline is able to give such great rates is because they don’t have any add-ons or incentives. Do you notice a trend (you get a better hotel in an off-season) to the rooms you book?
It would be great if they could offer a few ‘upgrades’- for instance, would you pay $5 extra/night to have your choice of wifi, bed, gym, etc?
July 19th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
I don’t know what you’re paying with Priceline, but I’ve had MUCH better luck with Hotwire. I go to Chicago pretty frequently, too, and I can nearly always get a 4-5* place downtown for under $100/night. Hotwire shows you the amenities, but the real trick is to use a site that “decodes” the offering - like the one below:
http://www.betterbidding.com/index.php?s=cf5006195a3954d37ae751c1fe8fdfbe&showforum=441
I’ve never had any surprises this way, and you’ll usually get a chance to upgrade for $20-30/night at check-in if you want to avoid getting the smallest/noisiest/etc room in the house. In May/June this year, I managed to get the Hotel Felix for $90/night and the Palmer House Hilton for $84. The executive floor upgrade for the Palmer House was another $29/night and came with free breakfast, soft drinks, and nightly receptions with appetizers. At $115 or so, it was still WAAAY below their rate on every other site for that night.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:21 am
I have only used Priceline twice, but have been very impressed with the results on both occasions - that said, I do my research first and try and see what the recent winning bids were.
As a new user, I resisted the temptation for a long time, not wanting to get burned, but so far so good and I would use them (or perhaps try Hotwire) again.
You do make many good points though, perhaps Priceline are listening.
March 30th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Priceline caution. Watch out when making a reservation through Priceline, and I’m not talking about a bidding price. When you include a car rental reservation to an airline reservation through Priceline. The car rental becomes no refundable. The supposedly ‘best price’ Priceline gave me a car rental that was twice the price of another rental car company and refuses to modify or refund the rental cost. Now I understand the government restrictions on airline reservations and their policies, but when does a reservation agent have a right to set such a policy. If you go to their sight to ask the question about rental car changes, it only addresses the reservations made with the best price bidding. No caution is printed on your confirmation about rental car policies, only airline restrictions. I couldn’t even get a supervisor on the phone when I called to complain. They just sit on you and fall behind the “that’s our policy”. They have a contract page which I/you initial and there is a line that says same at the end of the paragraph talking about airline restrictions. I see the comments on the airlines and say, OK I know what this is about and I skim down thru the rest of the Important Message. Who ever heard about a car reservation being non-refundable or changeable 30 days before you are even going to use it?
March 16th, 2012 at 6:08 pm
xbox information…
Everyone, except me, really wants to turned into a millionaire. I want to be a billionaire….