This one sounds obvious, but most people aren’t aware that there are sites that exist solely to allow people to post how much they paid on priceline for hotels in specific areas. These sites allow you to view accepted priceline bids for a city and also get advice on how to proceed after being rejected (i.e. by what amount your bid should increase).

You can use this information as a starting point in deciding what to bid. After all, if you know what Priceline has accepted before, you can be fairly sure they’ll accept it again in a similar situation.

These sites are free, and they are normally organized by city and state. Here are a couple of the best:

http://www.betterbidding.com/(Hotwire and Priceline)
http://biddingfortravel.yuku.com/

Let’s start with the basics of priceline’s Name Your Own Price system. First, you select your city and your dates of travel, then select a zone within that city (Close to Airport, etc.) and a star rating for your hotel (1-4 star hotels). You then submit your bid. Normally if they reject you, you have to wait three days to bid again at a higher price, unless you significantly change your bid - in our case, by adding zones to the previous bid.

The clever part of this bidding method lies in selecting a second zone that does not contain the star level hotel you’ve selected. It sounds odd, I know, but I think an example will clear things up.

Let’s assume we’re looking for a four star hotel in Dallas. We select a zone - “Galleria - Dallas North”. We submit a bid of $50/night for a 4-star hotel in this zone. If they accept the offer, you do your “I got a deal” dance and enjoy your trip. If, however, they reject you, you are given the chance to re-bid by adding another nearby zone. So, cleverly, you add a zone that doesn’t have any four star hotels and raise your bid by $5 (for example).

You see what’s happening? You’re really just bidding on the same zone as before. After all, you’re only bidding on four star hotels and the zone you just added to your bid has no four star hotels. So, you’re ensuring that your bid is just applying to your first zone. The second zone is just a dummy zone.

How do you know what star-level hotels are in each zone, you say? It’s easy, just open a new browser window and go to the first page in the bid process, that lists zones and star levels (you’re not restarting the process again, you’re just using this new browser window to help you find information). Check the box beside a zone, and the list of star ratings at the bottom of the page will be grayed out for star-levels not contained in that zone. Pick one of the zones that doesn’t contain your star level hotel. This should be your dummy zone. You can repeat this process for as many dummy zones as are present.

If you get stuck or I’ve not made this clear, visit the forums I’ve listed above. They have people to help you through the bidding process, and even have descriptions of more advanced methods of bidding. You should get what you need there…