Priceline and the Name Your Own Price Thing
10 June 2007
I’m sure you’ve heard of Priceline.com and the way they do the name your own price thing. I’ve been a Priceline customer for years. I even used their grocery service back in the day. That didn’t last very long though and they are back to the core travel related services it seems.
If you go to their website it’s not to terribly different from any of the other travel sites at first blush. Air fare, hotels, rental cars and vacation packages. The difference comes when you find something you are interested in and want to buy it. This is where the name your own price thing comes into play.
Take note though, you don’t have to do the name your own price thing if you don’t want to. They have all the standard pricing listed for you no matter what you need or where you are going. So what’s the catch with the name your own price thing then? You have to be flexible. That can be a big catch if you’re picky.
Not that you’ll end up in a bad place. They have a star system where you can pick the quality of your flight or hotel so need to worry about that. You just may have to leave on a different day than you would like. If you had your heart set on staying at a specific hotel forget about that too. The good side though is that you can really save a ton of money. I know I have.
My wife and I have used Priceline on a few occasions and always with good results. The first was a trip to Calgary that we were planning. We were very flexible on the departure and arrival times and we were going to camp most of the time so we figured we’d try it for the plane tickets and for the couple of nights we wanted to be in a hotel. We saved about $1000! We couldn’t believe it. The dates were pretty good and the hotels were perfect. We were hooked to say the least.
Most recently we had an extended power outage at our home due to a severe storm. My wife was pregnant with our first child and it was going to be a hot week or so. We figured we’d put some crazy low number in Priceline for a local hotel to stay in while the power was out. We ended up staying at a 4 star hotel for $50 a night! Thank you Priceline!
The moral is don’t be intimidated by the name your own price thing. Priceline makes it easy to do for anything travel related. Be sure to try it for your next trip, hotel stay or rental car.
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