One of my favorite travel sites is Priceline. Priceline is a website that helps users purchase hotels, airfare & rental cars at a discount price. Over the years I’ve saved a decent amount of money using this website.
When selecting a flight you have two options for booking. The first option is that you can see the flight times and choose from there. If you book this route you can choose your carrier and the exact times that you want to leave and return. Rental car bookings are basically the same way.
If you want to roll the dice you can use a feature on Priceline called Name Your Own Price (NYOP). The NYOP feature is pretty cool. You put in a bid for a flight or a rental car. If a company accepts that bid, you are billed for that price. I have saw bids that were 30 – 40% cheaper than the listed rates. I actually saved $54 on a flight from Atlanta – Chicago by naming my own price. The only thing with the NYOP deal is that you don’t know the carrier or flight times until after you have made your purchase. That could be a problem for some travelers if they have to be at their destination at a certain time. Using NYOP with rental cars, you don’t know the rental company until you bid as well.
When booking a hotel on Priceline you have the same two options that are mentioned above along with another one. The third option is called Express Deals. Express Deals give you a discount price. The name of the hotel is hidden until you book it. They do list the star rating and the amenities though . If you are trying to get a deal this is the way to go.
Have any of you used Priceline before? I would like to know if you scored a deal using NYOP.
