Gary BUTTERWORTH Online

STRATFORD, NJ, USA

In addition to last week being my grandmom’s 90th birthday, it also marked six months since I returned to the (part-time) workforce.

You probably know by now that I spend every Wednesday night in DC, while we pay a woman to take care of my grandmother in NJ.

As I’ve said a million times, work hiring me back was a blessing, and it makes my life SO much better.

But every week I do have one concern that needs to be addressed–where do I sleep?!

Well, I bounce around.

Some weeks, I mooch a night on a friend’s couch. Others, I stay in one of DC’s youth hostels. (Photo on right.)

And, in a pinch, I have my top secret undisclosed location.

But the first thing I always try to do is “Name My Own Price” on Priceline.

How does it work?

With Priceline, you enter a city, a neighborhood within the city, a star level, the dates of your stay, and the maximum you’re willing to pay. Then, you enter your credit card number. If any hotel that meets your criteria is willing to accept your bid, you automatically buy the room. Within five minutes, your card is charged, and then you find out what hotel you have.

The advantage to the hotel is that they can fill excess rooms without looking desperate, and they can still quote high rates to people who are dead-set on staying at that specific hotel. The advantage to you is that you can get some incredible deals if you’re willing to be just a little bit flexible.

The downside is that you don’t know what you’re getting until after you’ve paid for it, and you can’t cancel if you’re not happy with the hotel. But this has never been a problem for me. I’ve attempted to book on Priceline about 40 times, and I’ve been successful 17 times.

I don’t have a single complaint.

My deals

The Priceline rate is essentially a secret, and hotels adjust it frequently as the demand for rooms changes. You never really know which hotels are available on Priceline, nor do you know the minimum bid they are willing to accept at any given time.

Here are the rooms I’ve managed to snag on Priceline, along with my bid amount (does not include tax):

• Best Western, S Capitol St, $84 and $46
  The lowest-quality hotel I’ve had yet, but still more than adequate. Although their non-Priceline rates of $150+ per night seem awful high for such an ordinary hotel.

• Residence Inn by Marriott, Thomas Circle, $67 and $59
  
  (This room is pretty typical of all of the Residence Inns I’ve stayed in. By and large, they are my favorite hotels–they are new, big, comfy, and they come with a free hot breakfast.)

• Residence Inn by Marriott, Capitol Hill, 333 E SW $60
  As I said above, Residence Inns are usually my favorite hotels, but this one is the best of the best for me. It is only about a 10 minute walk from my office and they gave me a 2-room suite!

• Residence Inn by Marriott, Dupont Circle, $55

• Courtyard by Marriott, Capitol Hill/Navy Yard SE, $46, $56, $56, $56

• Courtyard by Marriott, Convention Center, 900Fnw, $57 and $57
  This hotel is great because room service is provided by the Gordon Biersch microbrewery downstairs! It’s not cheap, but they have some of the best beer and sandwiches I’ve ever had!

• Georgetown University Conference Center by Marriott, $58
  
  This was a nice hotel, with incredibly comfortable mattresses. But the location on the G’town campus is fairly isolated from the rest of DC.
  

• Doubletree Washington, RI Ave, $51

• Churchill Hotel, Dupont Circle, $53
  This hotel was finishing renovations when I stayed there. There wasn’t enough hot water and the remotes for the new flat-screen TVs hadn’t arrived yet. However, the hotel itself was nice enough that this ranks as a slight disappointment, and not anything close to a horror story.

As you can tell by the number of Marriott properties on the list, you usually get high-quality rooms. In fact, several times I have gone to the hotel website to see that the room I got on Priceline for $50 retails for about $350 a night!

Observations

I’ve been Pricelining DC for about six months now, so I’m starting to notice a few trends:

*Naturally, prices are lower when there are fewer people in town. Between Thanksgiving and New Years (low times for both vacation and business travel), I was getting a sub-$50 room almost every week. In the spring, rooms were much hard to come by.

*I’m an independent contractor, so I can write off my hotels on my taxes as a business expense. Priceline keeps good records of your purchases, which makes this easy.

*Priceline is very stingy when it comes to giving out stars. I once had a brand new, two-room suite in a Marriott hotel that Priceline only awarded 2.5 stars.

*Despite the reputation of Southeast DC, all of the Priceline hotels in SE seem to be in the stadium district. They are all brand new and very nice (with the possible exception of the Best Western, which is the lowest quality hotel I’ve encountered on Priceline. It’s more than acceptable to me, but it’s utilitarian and nothing luxurious).

*The “Convention Center,” “Dupont Circle,” and “White House” neighborhoods all just about guarantee you a hotel accessible by the DC Metro (subway). Some of the other neighborhoods may be Metro accessible, but it’s not a given.

*I would avoid selecting the “DC Suburbs – Northeast Area” neighborhood. I just don’t trust the hotels on New York Avenue.

*I’ve only ever used Priceline’s “Name Your Own Price” feature for hotels, but I know people who have had luck using it for airline tickets and rental cars, too.

*I haven’t found any particular strategy about when to bid. Sometimes, I get a room a week in advance; sometimes, I don’t get a room until 9pm the night of my stay.

*I’ve also had positive Priceline experiences in Boston, MA, and Pittsburgh, PA.

*Even with Priceline, rooms can sometimes be expensive. As I noted, I only manage to get a room less than half the time (although, I will admit than I am cheaper than many people when it comes to booking hotel rooms. If I bid higher, I would probably succeed more often. For me, though, I just don’t see the logic in spending hundreds of dollars on a room that I’m only going to spend a few hours in. Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate a nice, luxurious hotel room. But it has to be reasonably priced. I chose Priceline over the hostels to treat myself, but I don’t want to splurge TOO much.)

I guess this post was kind of gushy. I just can’t help it; I really like Priceline!

Lastly, for absolutely no reason, here is a picture of me at work:

(Thursday was my first day working of work on a show I’ve never done before, so a colleague took this cell phone pic for posterity. lol)

Filed under: Life, Posts with Pictures, Travel, Washington, DC/Silver Spring, MD Tagged: | hotels, priceline