How to Find a Cheap Hotel in Washington DC
Finding a reasonable priced hotel in Washington DC can be very difficult. However, often many hotels have empty rooms and they are actually willing to negotiate prices at reduced rates to fill their rooms. Websites such as priceline.com and hotwire.com rely on this and help you get the best price. However, it can still be difficult to get the absolute best price. This article provides some steps to negotiate the best deal for a hotel in Washington DC.
First, you need to identify the hotels you want to stay at in Washington DC. The list of hotels and their regions can be found here: http://biddingfortravel.yuku.com/topic/34644/t/WASHINGTON DC-HOTEL-LIST.html. Identify the specific hotel you want to stay at, the star rating it has, and the priceline.com region it is in. Write that down.
Check the hotel website to determine what the normal rate for a room is on those dates. Use this as a guide for starting a bid. Your bid should start out at about 50% of the normal rate.
Identify the other priceline.com regions that have ONLY LOWER star rating hotels than the one you want to stay at and write the names of those regions down. The number of consecutive bids you can now make is equivalent to the number of regions that only have LOWER star rating hotels + 1. These are considered “rebidding zones”.
Go to http://www.priceline.com and select the option to bid for a hotel in Washington DC and select the dates you want to stay.
On your first bid, select the region the hotel is in with the star rating for that hotel, and use the starting bid you identified in an earlier step.
If the bid fails, add $5 to $10 to the bid, and then select one of the other regions from your “rebidding zones”. This guarantees that you will not get a hotel in this new selected region and only the hotels in the region you want at your star rating are being considered.
Repeat previous step until the bid is accepted, or the number of “rebidding zones” runs out. If the number of “rebidding zones” runs out, try again when the priceline timeout expires. The number of bids you can perform is one plus the number of “rebidding zones” you identified.
• This technique works best when going for 4 or 5 star or Resort class hotels.
• Make sure you ONLY select “rebidding zones” that only have hotels with a LOWER star rating than the hotel you want. Otherwise, you may accidentally get a hotel in the region you do not want.
• If your “rebidding zones” run out, use a second priceline account from a spouse or family member to continue bidding the same day until the hotel you want accepts the bid.
• NEVER lower your star rating when doing a rebid. This will bring in additional hotels you do not want.
