Priceline (the parent company of
booking.com) recently introduced a new feature to their offer: the Express Deals.
These are hotels for which you cannot see the name before you book, but only a brief description and the area where they are located. The advantage is that the rates are discounted up to 45% of the normal price (so that's why do not show the name before purchase, so that the usual commercial policy of that hotels is not affected).
However, with a little bit of time and effort you can make a pretty good guess on which hotel they're referring to. If you need any help with that, leave a comment and we will try to help.
Only once you make the purchase, you will be shown the full details of the hotel. This much like Hotwire's
Hot Rate hotels or lastminute.com's
Top Secret Hotels.
For bookings until February 4, 2013, you have a Priceline promo code for additional 10% discount off Express Deals.
Check this banner to see the Priceline discount code and search your hotel (you will leave this blog and be taken to Priceline's website):
The discount code is to be applied in the payment window, in the "Summary of charges" section, just below the hotel details (see print-screen below):
Let's see an example and how you can make an educated guess on which is the hotel behind the Priceline Express Deal. We were looking for a hotel in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for 2 nights over the week-end 10-12 May 2012.
After we made the regular search, we selected this central hotel which has the following description:
Notice that you are provided with four important elements:
- it is a 4-star hotel;
- the guest rating (8 out of 10);
- a map with the area where the hotel is located;
- the facilities of the hotel (restaurant, business center and fitness center)
With this information available, return to the usual search form of Priceline, where they show the name and full details of hotels:
In the search results, filter by "Star rating" and choose only the 4-star hotels:
Then, filter by hotel facilities (we know the selected Express Deal has a fitness center and a business center):
Now, we are left with 21 hotels and have two more cards to play: the guest rating, which is 8, and the area.
Let's start with the guest rating: browse through the list of 21 hotels to see which one has an 8 rating. We did that and it seems that no hotel had that exact rating. So we looked again to see which one has around 8 rating and we found: the Park Plaza Victoria Amsterdam (7.8), Ramada Apollo Amsterdam Centre (8.1) and NH Amsterdam Centre (7.9).
Now, all we are left with is the area. Look in the top right corner of the Priceline window and you will see the button "Show Map View". Click that button and you will be shown the following:
Zoom in on the map until this map is comparable with the previous one, where the area of the hotel is indicated. You will notice 7 hotels from this map which correspond with the highlighted area from the previous map:
Slightly point with the mouse over each one of the 7 hotels on the map, to see their name and compare these with the 3 hotels which have an approximately 8 rating. You will see that only the Park Plaza Victoria Amsterdam is among those 7 hotels.
Thus, at the end of this challenging process, we have a pretty good guess (not absolute certainty, mind you) that the Express Deal is the Park Plaza Victoria Amsterdam. The regular price of the double room for this hotel is 450$ for that week-end:
With the Express Deals, you get the same room at only 266$ (that's 40% cheaper).
