Best Strategies to Bid in Priceline - How to Rebid with Priceline's Bid System



Posted: Sunday, December 02, 2007

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http://www.the-dream.ws

If you still don't know the system that Priceline has in place and you are from America, means you are really losing a great opportunity to find very cheap flights. Even if the system normally does not allow you to save us much as with SkyAuction, where prices start from $1 and then users begin bidding, here the way it works can also let you get some good deals.

Priceline's system is not a way in which you compete with other users. You simply act on your own. Airlines give them highly discounted tickets (planning to fill the expected average empty places). What Priceline does is to hide the cost of this tickets and it lets you bid for them. What it means is that you will place your offer, and if this offer is under the minimum that they have set, it simply will not be accepted, but if it is above or equal to this minimum you will get the flight for that price.

It sound very easy. Simply keep rebidding until you find the exact price for which they allow you to get the flight. Well, it's not. The problem is that to avoid this from happening and to let users the possibility to bid too high and win money in this way, they have set a policy in which you are not allowed to bid again until 72 hours have gone by. This normally makes the offer no longer exist, as many other users are trying there and the tickets get sold.

The perfect strategy to mend that does not really exist but it is a way that works pretty good and the engine does not detect that you are bidding again. There are two ways to make that. The first one will use what is called Alternative Airports. This means, you  normally have an airport of preference, either for departure and arrival, because it is nearer to the place you live or to the destination of your holiday.

But there exist many alternative airports surrounding this ones where some flights also arrive, so a good option is to bid first for the airport you prefer and, if it does not work, then bid for an alternative airport at your destination. Then bid for an alternative airport at the place you depart from, and finally you get the chance to bid for the both alternative airports. Of course if it exists more than one alternative airport you have even more possibilities.

The other way to do it is to combine the strategy mentioned before with a change of dates or time of flight. Of course you will need to be flexible to do that, but if you select the same route and you change the dates or time of the flight, you will have again lots of possibilities to keep bidding, specially if you combine it with alternative airports. Almost probably, you will have access to at least 10 or 20 chances doing it in this way, and you won't have to wait for the 72 hours to go by.

Native from Spain but living currently in Sweden, Dani Alonso has spent his last years gaining insight on the travel industry, specially around transportation, which he firmly believes is the most tricky business on the topic. His area of expertise is in Europe and South Pacific, with a strong passion for New Zealand. He runs himself a personal internet-based business called Travel to Europe, and Free Hotels, where he provides trip planning services to worldwide travelers, trying to always provide the neutral point of view that travel agencies have nowadays left behind.

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