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Priceline Launches an iPhone App That We May Actually Use

It's no secret that we love the bargain rates you can get on opaque booking sites like Hotwire and Priceline, even if it occasionally means a repeated stay at a hotel with flippant service. It's also no secret that we have been thoroughly disappointed with the iPhone apps that hotels put forth, with most of them not doing much beyond offering a mobile reservations site.

But Priceline's new Hotel Negotiator iPhone app is one that we may actually use. And it's not just because we want William Shatner on our iPhone.

Again, nothing totally new has been invented here. Basically, it's the Negotiator booking function on your iPhone. But the app does have GPS location allowing you to name your price at a hotel that's closest to your current location. It also displays the most recent average winning bid for the last three weeks for hotels in different neighborhoods at different star levels. And it's got a cool "fist bump" icon for when you want to Negotiate with Shatner.

Then again, we take our opaque booking process VERY seriously and we'd need to be able to cross-check sites like BetterBidding.com to see which hotel we might be booking. We love a good deal alright but we also like to know which hotel we'll be shacking up in.