I was an early adopter of the Priceline Name Your Own Price (NYOP) for hotels. The deals that i got made me a huge fan for many years. For example, a Five star e suite in downtown San Francisco for $US99, a Saturday night Chicago stay for $79 on a baseball game night and a beautiful Conrad Singapore four star stay during the Marathon, 500 metres from the start line for at least 66% off any rate I could find! Sure I did not get loyalty points for those stays but the price difference was worthwhile.
View from Conrad Hotel room facing the Fountain of Wealth
I used Priceline NYOP for car hire a few times but one single airline ticket as I could never get a deal that made sense Pricewise especially when all of their flights were indirect.
The world has changed and pricing systems by travel providers have become more competitive and inventory in those non recessionary times seems to be rarely unfilled. I use Priceline only occasionally. I must admit I prefer booking a hotel I know in the exact location I want for much the same price and which gives me loyalty points!
Priceline dropped airline ticket Name Your Own Pricing for airline tickets in 2016 and is now following with ceasing Name Your Own Price car hire. Instead they are offering Express cars which will display car prices across multiple companies. I have tested their car hire booking engine out and was surprised to find I got savings each time of between 1 and 4% over my usual car hire aggregators. On a multiple day booking, this could be worthwhile.
Priceline have promised they won’t be dropping NYOP Hotels. I wonder how long they will last with that promise? I might try for this year’s Singapore Marathon and see what I get!
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