Dear Priceline – Ciao, Baby . . .

Or how Express Deals and the Killing of Name Your Own Price led to our breakup

My dear, Priceline, I think we’re done. Finished. Kaput. Without Name Your Own Price, my heart no longer goes pitter pat for you.

I hate the split, since my travel journalism career began with a story about how to bid on opaque sites in 2007 for the Los Angeles Times. Although my bulletin board resources are now defunct, www.betterbidding.com still exists to help travelers using Priceline and Hotwire.

For many years, Hotwire and Priceline helped me score deals on rental cars and hotels. I stayed in 4-star hotels in Maui frequently using Priceline’s “Name Your Own Price” (“NYOP”). So I was saddened when Priceline axed “NYOP” for hotels around 2020. It had killed NYOP for flights in 2016 and for rental cars in 2018.

Of course, Priceline isn’t the same company I wrote about in 2007. Now it’s part of Booking Holdings, which also owns Booking.com, Kayak, RentalCars.com, OpenTable, etc. No doubt some high mucky muck at Booking Holdings decided to kill NYOP. It would rather travelers use Express Deals so that Priceline could name the price.

And that’s why we’re breaking up. Because I learned the hard way that Express Hotels isn’t the same as NYOP.

My Denver Dilemma

I decided to try booking an Express Deal because all my Kayak searches kept leading me toward booking through either Priceline or Booking.com (both also owned by Booking Holdings).

When I found an Express Deal for $147 for my one night stay in downtown Denver to attend the Outdoor Retailer trade show at the Colorado Convention Center, I booked it. After all, the hotel was allegedly in downtown Denver. And before booking, I had checked and found that the Staybridge Suites and Holiday Inn Express were both located in downtown Denver, less than a mile from the convention center. I was puzzled about the Radisson Hotel because it seemed to be in Central Denver, but I thought I must be looking at the map wrong. After all, Priceline clearly listed the deal as downtown Denver.

So I hit the button and booked it. And, of course, I wound up booked into the Radisson, the one hotel not actually located in downtown Denver. Within 30 seconds of seeing the hotel, I contacted Priceline to cancel because I felt I had been misled.

But by phone, Priceline advised the booking was not cancelable. At that point I realized that Express Deals is basically Name Your Own Price without allowing me to name my own price.

Back when Priceline was my best friend for scoring 4-star hotels at a fraction of the price, I knew that the location of a hotel encompassed a very broad area. I accepted that, because I was naming my own price and saving buckets of money.

But now I was stuck with a hotel in the wrong location to attend a trade show in downtown Denver. I didn’t want to rent a car so only a hotel within walking distance of the convention center would work. Now I looked more closely at the map for my Express Deal. And I realized that the location of my “deal” was only in the general downtown area, and not necessarily downtown near the convention center. I would need to either rent a car or spend a lot of money taking Uber or Lyft downtown.

Seeking Help via Twitter

So I turned to another trusted travel friend, Twitter, and Priceline quickly DM’d me. I have to commend Priceline for its attentive Twitter team.

But Priceline’s Twitter team DM’d me that the only way I could cancel my booking would be if the hotel agreed to do so. Since I had booked on a weekend, I had to wait until the following Monday and reach out to the Radisson Denver Central. I explained to a kind representative in the Radisson’s sales department that I would ordinarily love to stay at the Radisson but that I believed I was booking a downtown Denver hotel within walking distance of the Colorado Convention Center. She understood and canceled my reservation.

I then tweeted back to Priceline that the hotel had agreed to cancel my reservation. They researched it and saw that my hotel reservation had been canceled. So Priceline refunded my non-refundable booking.

After canceling my reservation I booked the Element Hotel in east downtown Denver using points. But I kept searching for an alternative option, and I was very intrigued with a new hotel in downtown Denver called The Slate (a Hilton Tapestry Collection hotel), which is a very short walk away from the Colorado Convention Center.

I blame myself for my breakup with Priceline because I had failed to carefully research Express Deals. For some reason, I thought Express Deals were less opaque than NYOP was. I was dead wrong.

As for being able to cancel a non-cancelable, nonrefundable booking, I got lucky. And note that I didn’t play the reporter card at all. I approached the issue as a consumer. I was very polite when I reached out to Priceline via Twitter after a disappointing phone conversation with customer service (and I may have been less than polite on that call).

I was equally respectful when I asked the hotel to cancel. Erica, the Radisson representative who helped me, had no obligation to help me out. But I got lucky. Now I want to stay at the Radisson Central Denver on a future visit, when I don’t need to stay downtown, because I know how nice its staff must be.

Tips for Using Priceline and Hotwire

It helps to hedge your bets by using bulletin board sites like BettingBidding.com, which offers research on what hotel you may get through Hotwire or in an Express Deal. The site also offers an occasional coupon for additional savings. But this site isn’t the same as BiddingForTravel.com was. Nevertheless, it offers links to BiddingHelper, HotelsRevealed and HiddenHotelFinder. One way to at least narrow down the hotel you may get on a Priceline Express deal is to do a search for the area where you want to stay, then study the deal, paying attention to the Star Rating, Amenities, Type of Room and Location. But again, as I stated before, the location will be a wide swath on Priceline’s map. If you’ll have a rental car, it’s easier to be flexible about the exact location. In my case, I didn’t have that flexibility. Tonight I noticed when I searched for a hotel on Hotwire, it showed clearly that the hotel might be in Downtown Denver – Central.

And so “Ciao for Now, Priceline”

I emailed Priceline’s PR department to let them know I was writing a blog post about my experience. I hope they will comment on this post.

But for now, I think Priceline and I are through – unless I book a hotel, where I know its name, price and location up front — like a Kayak booking.

But, Priceline, my old friend, if you bring Name Your Own Price back for hotels and rental cars, I might give us another chance.