Priceline.com elimates the guesswork
By AIMEE PHIPPS
After a recent family gathering, my parents and I traded stories about all of the nonsense we encountered among our relatives. My mom shared her story on her trails of finding my grandma a flight to Florida in order to abandon the frigid temperatures and mounds of snow that don’t seem to move out of Chicago. As her description of my grandma combing over every minute detail of her itinerary (straight down to almost reviewing the rules and regulation caption with a magnifying glass) filled my imagination, I teased her that maybe she should have booked grandma’s trip on Priceline.com. We all roared with laughter at what my grandma would say to naming her own price on a red eye flight and how paranoid she’d certainly be, not knowing just what airline she was paying to fly.
What has become a family quip, has been notoriously advertised as a way to save up to 70 percent on travel from air and hotel packages, rental cars, and cruises. Name your own price you say? How is it possible? Just for the fun of it I decided to explore the Priceline Web site.
Say you are planning a spring break trip to the beach in Florida. Their system allows you to search for a hotel in any city, based on what area or "neighborhood" you wish to stay. That way you are sure to be close to everything you came to see and do. With access to more than 9,000 name brand hotels around the world, you can narrow your search even further by specifying whether you are looking for the most economical or luxurious accommodations, based on Priceline’s five star rating. Next, name the price you are willing to pay for the respective accommodations. If your price is accepted, you will be provided with the exact itinerary you selected.
As with other online travel sites, Priceline offers airline tickets on major airlines, car rentals, cruises and vacation packages. Those with the most flexibility in terms of when they are planning to travel, appear to receive the lowest fares. If you can leave on your spring break trip any weekend in April, Priceline will help you find the lowest fares based on availability.
Or, if your travel plans are set in stone and you can only fly at 6 p.m. on April 16, Priceline now partners with LowestFare.com to meet your needs. While you aren’t able to take advantage of the Name Your Own Price feature with a more rigid schedule, you will still benefit from their Best Price Guarantee. Priceline will pay you 100 percent of the difference if you find a better price for the same package somewhere else.
Priceline Vacation Packages work the same way. You can search by theme (i.e. "Casino" or "Beach and Sun") or price. Then you are presented with the best available price for the selected trip.
Looking for a weekend getaway? Priceline offers Weekender Deals with Thursday through Saturday departures, arriving back Sunday through Tuesday. You choose the hotel you want to stay at and a time frame when you can leave, and Priceline gets to work to find you the perfect deal.
Finally, Priceline has a unique Travel Guides section, which allows you to search by city, and in some cases, narrow your search to a specific area, for instance Chicago’s Gold Coast. From there, you can explore everything from fine dining options to golf courses and nightlife.
So, the next time you want a distraction at work, pull up the information on your destination of choice. You can view facts about the city, right down to the population and the yearly crime rates to the most current weather conditions. It’s almost as therapeutic as the beachfront background picture you have saved to your desktop!
