Providence Hotels at 30-70% Off – Step-By-Step Priceline Bidding Guide
Providence Hotels October 13th, 2008
I’ve already posted Priceline Bidding Rules and Bidding Strategies in a previous post. In this post, I’ll list step-by-step how to bid for hotels in each specific area in Providence that will save you 30-70% off regular prices.
Note: If you don’t want to spend time on learning how to bid on priceline, please click here to see our picks on cheap but great hotels in the Providence area, and/or click here to read about hotwire deals.
(Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee all the steps to be 100% accurate, especially since the priceline site can change at anytime.)
____________________________________________________________________________________
First, open Priceline Bidding Page in a New Browser by Clicking Button Below:
Then, Enter “Providence,RI” into the field “city or airport”, specify your “check-in” and “check-out” dates”, and the number of hotel rooms you need, then click the “name your own price now” button. Then continue with detailed bidding processes below.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Bidding For Hotels in Downtown Providence
1) Determine a bidding range for 4-star hotels in this area, then decide on your initial bid amount. (See this post for a how-to.)
2) Go to the priceline page we opened. Click to check-mark the “Providence Downtown” area, and click to select “4-star Deluxe” hotel rating. Then enter your initial bid in the “Name Your Own Price” field. (Ignore the “retail price” stated by priceline – chances are you’ll be paying a lot less than that.) Continue through the rest of the self-explanatory bidding process.
3) If your bid is accepted, congratulations! If it is rejected, close the priceline browser and click the “Start Priceline Browser” button at the top of this post, and bid again as follows. (Note: we advise closing and reopening the browser after each bid, as sometimes some of the checkboxes would be greyed out otherwise.)
4) This time, select both “Providence Downtown” AND “East Providence – Seekonk” areas, then select “4-star Deluxe” hotels, raise your bid by $5-$10, and bid again. Note that by doing so, you will NOT end up with a hotel in East Providence, because the highest star-rated hotel in East Providence is only 2 and a half but you’ve selected a minimal star-rating of “4-star Deluxe”. So, essentially, we’re still bidding on 4-star hotels in the Downtown Providence area. But by also selecting the East Providence area, we’ve “changed” our bidding criteria which allows us to bid again immediately instead of having to wait 24 hours before rebidding with the exact same criteria. We could do this with other areas in Providence because none of them has 4-star hotels either – you’ll see this unfold below.
5) If your bid is accepted, congratulations! If it is rejected, close and reopen the priceline browser again. This time bid on areas “Providence Downtown” and “Cranston – Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD)”, and “4-star Deluxe” hotels, again raising your bid by another $5-$10.
6) If your bid is not accepted, continue with the following bids in the same manner as above, raising your bid by $5-10 with each bid, until your bid is accepted (reminder: close and reopen the browser after a bid is rejected before rebidding):
Areas “Providence Downtown” and “Coventry – West Warwick”, “4-star Deluxe” hotel
Areas “Providence Downtown” and “Coventry – West Warwick” and “Cranston – Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD)” (3 areas), “4-star Deluxe” hotel
Areas “Providence Downtown” and “Coventry – West Warwick” and “East Providence – Seekonk ” (3 areas), “4-star Deluxe” hotel
All 4 areas, “4-star Deluxe” hotel
7) If after all the bids above you still get rejected, you have two choices. If you insist on getting a 4-star hotel, then wait 24 hours and repeat all the bids above (of course you won’t be starting again with your initial bid – you’ll need to continue raising the bid from where you left off the day before). However, if you can live with a 3 1/2 star hotel, we could keep on bidding right now. You will need to establish a new bidding range and initial bid, this time for 3 1/2 star hotels in the Downtown Providence area. Noting that none of the other areas in Providence has anything as high as 3 1/2 stars, we can bid as follows until a bid is accepted (reminder: close and reopen the browser after a bid is rejected before rebidding):
“Providence Downtown” area only, 3 1/2-star
Areas “Providence Downtown” and “East Providence – Seekonk “, 3 1/2-star
Areas “Providence Downtown” and ”Cranston – Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD)”, 3 1/2-star
Areas “Providence Downtown” and “Coventry – West Warwick”, 3 1/2-star
Areas “Providence Downtown” and “Coventry – West Warwick” and “Cranston – Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD)”, 3 1/2-star
Areas “Providence Downtown” and “Coventry – West Warwick” and ”East Providence – Seekonk “, 3 1/2-star
All 4 areas, 3 1/2-star
8 ) In the unlikely event that your bid is STILL not accepted by this point, you can either wait 24 hours and rebid for 4-star or 3 1/2-star in the Downtown Providence area by repeating the bidding processes above. OR, if you’re willing to settle for a 3-star hotel in Downtown Providence, you can rebid right away with the following (reminder: close and reopen the browser after a bid is rejected before rebidding):
“Providence Downtown” area only, 3-star
“Providence Downtown” and ”East Providence – Seekonk ” areas, 3-star (since the highest-rated hotel in East Providence is 2 1/2-star)
9) Hopefully you’ve gotten a winning bid before this point. If not, you’ll need to wait 24 hours and repeat one or more of the above bidding processes.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Bidding For a Hotel in the East Providence / Seekonk Area
Due to the fact that the highest-rated hotel in this area is only 2 1/2, there’s not a whole lot you can do in terms of changing bidding criteria to rebid multiple times in the same day. Thus bidding process is straight-forward:
“East Providence – Seekonk ” area, 2 1/2-star
“East Providence – Seekonk ” area, 2-star (or wait 24 hours and rebid at 2 1/2 star)
“East Providence – Seekonk ” area, 1-star (or wait 24 hours and rebid at 2 1/2 or 2 star)
____________________________________________________________________________________
Bidding For a Hotel in the Cranston - Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD) Area
Again, because the highest-rated hotels in this area only have 3 stars, there’s not a lot of room for changing the bidding criteria. Here’s the bidding process for this area:
“Cranston – Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD)” area only, 3-star
“Cranston – Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD)” and “East Providence – Seekonk ” areas, 3-star (since the latter doesn’t have 3-star hotels)
“Cranston – Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD)” area only, 2 1/2-star (or repeat 1st two bids for 3-star in 24 hours)
“Cranston – Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD)” area only, 2-star (or repeat bids for 3-star and/or 2 1/2-star in 24 hours)
“Cranston – Warwick – Providence Airport (PVD)” area only, 1-star (or repeat bids for 3-star and/or 2 1/2-star and/or 2-star in 24 hours)
____________________________________________________________________________________
Bidding For a Hotel in the Coventry – West Warwick Area
As for the PVD area, the highest-rated hotels in the Coventry – West Warwick area only have 3 stars. Thus the bidding process is similar:
“Coventry – West Warwick” area only, 3-star
“Coventry – West Warwick” and “East Providence – Seekonk ” areas, 3-star (since the latter doesn’t have 3-star hotels)
“Coventry – West Warwick” area only, 2 1/2-star (or repeat 1st two bids for 3-star in 24 hours)
“Coventry – West Warwick” area only, 2-star (or repeat bids for 3-star and/or 2 1/2-star in 24 hours)
“Coventry – West Warwick” area only, 1-star (or repeat bids for 3-star and/or 2 1/2-star and/or 2-star in 24 hours)
____________________________________________________________________________________
That’s all there is to it! I’d be very much obliged if you would post your winning bids, hotel names and reservation dates in the comments. This will help future visitors to determine their starting bids to save both money and time. Thank-you very much in advance for taking the time to help!
November 13th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
[...] you can use to maximize you chances of getting the lowest rate possible. *UPDATE* Please see this post for priceline hotel bidding [...]
November 13th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
[...] To get the absolute lowest prices, please check out Hotwire and Priceline (see the post on priceline bidding strategies). [...]
November 14th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
[...] you can get by bidding on priceline – that is, if you know how to bid strategically! (See this post to learn how to bid for Providence hotels on [...]
November 14th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
[...] the basic rules for bidding on priceline, and explain some of the bidding strategies. Be sure to see this other post for step-by-step bidding instructions that are specific to hotels in each area in [...]