Travel Tips

Getting the best possible deal when you bid on four-star hotels on Priceline can be complex and tricky. After doing your homework, deciding on how much to bid on these types of hotel rooms, and then placing your bid, your bid or offer may still be rejected. When this happens, you must wait 72 hours or three days for another chance to bid for that same room. If you are in this situation, would you bid again? Yes, you should!

Many Priceline customers take advantage of the loophole in Priceline’s system, commonly known as the “use of non-four-star zones” to have the immediate chance to re-bid. This sounds complicated but placing another bid on four-star hotels on Priceline is fairly easy, simple, and effective.

Understanding Priceline’s Free Re-bidding System

To understand Priceline's free re-bidding system, you must first understand how bidding on four-star hotels on Priceline works. After Priceline rejects your bid, you are still allowed to re-bid on four-star hotel rooms; however, this is only possible if you significantly change your bid. To qualify for a re-bid, you must add another area, town, or zone, change your preferred dates of stay, or change your quality requirements. Merely raising your bid is not enough to qualify for a re-bid.

Priceline hotels are rated based on quality using the standard star system. Lowest quality hotels are classified as one-star hotels while the highest are given five stars. The key to free re-bidding lies in the principle that not all zones, towns, and areas have hotels in every quality categories.

Let’s illustrate that principle. Imagine that you are searching for a four-star hotel in an area closest to the airport. You found a hotel but your bid on that hotel is rejected. You would like to bid again but this time, your bid is slightly higher than your first bid; however, Priceline does not allow that. Therefore, the next thing you have to do is locate another area in that city without any four-star hotels, increase your bid offer, and re-bid.

Adding a new area to your bid allows you to re-bid. Since the new area you’ve chosen has no four-star hotels, you are not stuck with hotels just in that area. Keep in mind that when you are using this system, you need to increase your bid with your re-bid. Otherwise, adding a new area will be useless and your new bid will just be a duplicate of your last offer. It will be rejected for sure.

Bidding for Four-star Hotels on Priceline

How do you find and bid for four-star hotels on Priceline? Here are the steps to follow:

Once you get to the page that lists all of the areas in a particular city, choose one city and click on Next.

On the next page, you can choose the four-star level from the star levels listed on the page. If the area you have selected has four-star hotels listed, click the Back button, and select another area. Find an area without four-star hotels. This will serve as the “dummy” area that you can use. Now, you may start your re-bid.

Remember that when you are using the free re-bid system, you should double-check whether your dummy area does not contain any four-star hotels because this is within your star quality range. Remember that the areas as well as the hotels in these areas may change daily, so it is important to check that your dummy area still doesn't list a four-star hotel.