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Tags: Deal or No Deal / New Orleans Hotels / Priceline / Renaissance Hotels / → All Tags

A Not So Jazzy Deal: Marriott and Harrah's New Orleans Casino Getaway

The Renaissance Arts Hotel in New Orleans is offering what their breathless press release describes as "the ultimate casino getaway." Using a promotional booking code available on the Marriott site, you can book a room Thursdays through Sundays from now until August 21, 2010.

The deal, such as it is, includes a $10 Harrah's Casino voucher (two whole antes!), $15 a night parking (discounted!), and "rates from $89-$339 per room, per night." We think you can tell from our tone that this isn't going to go well.

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Tags: Hotel Video Tours / Chicago Hotels / Music Hotels / Priceline / → All Tags

$99 And Crossed Fingers Got Us This Room At Chicago's Hotel Sax

Where: 333 North Dearborn [map], Chicago, IL, United States, 60610

When we needed a quickie place to crash for a night in Chicago while still attempting to enjoy our evening by avoiding the super cheapie motels, we naturally turned to a name-your-own-price deal. After great success with our hotel in Berlin before, we opted for Priceline and came out of the negotiations with a 4-star hotel in the River North neighborhood for $80 a night, or $99 including taxes and fees. It was the Hotel Sax, formerly the House of Blues Hotel since it's located directly next to the House of Blues club.

All snuggled into room 1433, on the 14th floor facing down onto the Chicago River, the House of Blues, and directly up at the architecturally stunning Marina City towers, we reveled in the free wifi and spacious bathroom, unlike what we're used to back in New York. For a bigger look at what $99 and a little last-minute planning scored us at the Sax, check out our room video above and stay tuned for tomorrow's full gallery and review.

Tags: Priceline / Hotel Booking Websites / Hotel Deals / → All Tags

Priceline's New Tool Speaks To The Google Maps-Addicted Masses

Can we just say that it's about frickin' time that Priceline, who's been somewhat ahead of the curve since touting their ahead-of-the-curveness through William Shatner, finally gathers their huge amount of hotel data to produce a spiffy map view of their hotels and current rates.

The new tool, unveiled just before the Fourth, features mapped-out and color-coded price quotes from hotels in cities from good old NYC all the way to Sharm El Sheikh. If you've used Google Maps before, this system will be second-nature to you. And if you're headed for a popular destination, the three search scales will majorly help narrow it down: by price range, by star rating, and by guest rating.

We've already had far too much fun using this thing to attempt finding $100-and-under hotels in Venice for this summer's Biennale art festival, and just from looking at the map we see it's possible in several areas of the city — or we could splurge to stay at the 4-star palace that is the Boscolo Bellini for $166 a night. Nonetheless, we're super impressed with it and wouldn't be surprised if the map functions ends up as a Priceline widget in the future.

Tags: HotelChatter Reader Deals / Thanksgiving Hotels / Expedia / Priceline / Quikbook / → All Tags

The Days Before Thanksgiving for Under $200 in New York

The Days Before Thanksgiving in NYC
$195 or less

Yesterday we rounded up some hotel choices to watch the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. But as it turns out, we need a place to crash three days before Turkey Day. (Turns out our relatives won't be around to host us in Jersey.) And since we're all about finding deals, we searched a few different places to see what we could find. This is what we came up with:

Expedia
· The Paramount Hotel: $129. Sure this is a ghost of Ian Schrager's boutique hotel heydey but it did get a redesign and rooms are going for $129 a night. One thing to note: availability of renovated rooms is limited so Expedia might be selling off the older ones. Renovated rooms were for sale on Paramount's website at $209 a night. A further price "chop" was found on Priceline for $124.

Priceline
· Four Points by Sheraton Soho: $195 This hotel just opened in the beginning of September and was asking for rates around the $400 mark. But now you can get a double bed, free internet and flat screen TV for under $200.

Quikbook
· Thompson LES: $170. Quikbook has fast become our go-to site for Thompson Hotel bookings. The site is offering room stays at the newest Thompson property for $170 a night until November 30th. It was a no-brainer, we booked it.

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Have a hotel deal you think we should consider?  Or have a destination and date where you want us to check for hotel rooms and rates for you?  No guarantees on either, but you can try your luck by hitting us here: tips@hotelchatter.com. Please include "For Reader Deals" in the subject heading.

[Photo: Vicki's Nature]

Tags: Priceline / Hotel Booking Sites / Hotel Booking Tips / Hotel News / → All Tags

Priceline, William Shatner Chop Cancellation and Change Fees

Priceline has begun to cut out the cancellation and change fees for any "published price" reservation. These are reservations where you can pick a specific hotel to stay at rather than go through the blind booking process.

Name-your-price hotel bookings however are still iron-clad reservations meaning no refunds, no cancellations and no changes at all.

Additionally, the company said they would lower the booking fees on published-price reservations too. But Travel Weekly says be careful:

Because Priceline lumps hotel taxes and service fees together when displaying prices, the consumer cannot tell how much lower the booking fee is.

Dropping fees and charges is good to hear but just remember to always read the fine print when making any sort of reservation to see just what the cancellation or change policy is.

Tags: HOWTO / Indianapolis Hotels / Priceline / Hotel Deals / → All Tags

HOWTO: Score a Hotel Deal on Priceline

Over at About.com's Budget Travel site there's an excellent rundown on how to score a hotel deal through Priceline. The writer wanted to stay in downtown Indianapolis for a sporting event but didn't want to pay the $140 a night he was seeing on the usual booking sites. So he checked the message boards, went to Priceline, and scored a deal for $60.47 after fees and taxes. He doesn't say which hotel he scored, but judging by what's on the BiddingForTravel board, it was the Omni Severin or the downtown Hyatt Indianapolis.

We have had our own frequent success with this method, scoring cut-rate deals on leftover rooms at Hotel President in Kansas City, Millennium St. Louis, and the Omni Shoreham in Washington, D.C. We also managed a bargain all-inclusive deal in the Bahamas by visiting the message boards before hitting Hotwire. As we showed last year, it's even possible to score an under-$200 room in Manhattan if you do it right.

If you're the type that doesn't mind paying list price for the satisfaction of knowing which hotel you're sleeping in for the night, then never mind. But if the general location and star level matter more than which chain's logo is on the building, you can save a bundle this way.

Tags: Priceline / Kayak / Virgin America / → All Tags

Where Web Travel Titans in Norwalk Put Up Their Out of Town Visitors

A HotelChatter Exclusive

If this hotel maven had not grown up in Norwalk, in Fairfield County, Connecticut, she may have never noticed that three pioneering travel companies call her one-time hometown home.

Virgin Atlantic's U.S. headquarters are based in this coastal town of nearly 90,000. Priceline and Kayak have their main offices in Norwalk, too.

Despite an influx of corporate offices over the years, Fairfield County remains more a bedroom community than commerce or, for that matter, leisure-travel central, with hotel selections far and few between.

Just where do these travel concerns, which collectively book hundreds if not thousands of people in hotels around the world every single day, put up their guests when they come to town?

Their answers after the jump.

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Tags: HOWTO / Hotel Deals / Priceline / Hotwire / New York City Hotels / → All Tags

HOWTO: Get a Hotel in Manhattan For Under $200

Sure, Priceline and Hotwire work great when you want to find a deal in the Bahamas or get a chain hotel room in bizcity, USA, but what about in the high-occupancy alternate universe known as New York City? Twice in past years we've gotten a room there for less than $150 through one of these services, but as demand has risen and supply has only slightly nudged up, how's it looking now?

Not all that bad, actually, assuming there's not some convention going on and it's not a holiday weekend. When we surfed over to the NYC message board at Bidding for Travel, here are some of the recent Priceline deals people have posted. All are total nightly rates with taxes and fees:

Hilton (midtown west) $174
Grand Hyatt (midtown east) $167
Paramount (midtown west) $195
Sheraton (midtown west--pictured here) $125
Hudson Hotel (Central Park) $181
Le Parker Meridien (upper midtown) $191

Some look at that whole bidding process as a game with a great payoff, but others find it too time-consuming and daunting. If you're in the latter camp, go to Hotwire and see what's on offer. If you do some sleuthing on BetterBidding.com, you'll often get a pretty clear idea of what hotels are hidden behind the descriptions.

When we pulled up next weekend (April 13-15), we found 18 hotels on offer, but most of them in the $200 to $300 range. The obvious deal was a 4-star hotel in midtown east for $175 (plus tax and fees). We didn't dig into the listing to figure out which one that is, but the likely culprits, based on previous transactions posted, are not a bad bunch: Grand Hyatt, W New York, Omni Berkshire, and Inter-Continental the Barclay. Your mileage may vary, but any one of those would be a bargain at that price.

There are drawbacks of course. You pay in advance, without knowing the hotel, so you've got to be sure you'll get to your destination on time. If you want a specific place and a specific experience, doing it this way is risky. If you just need a reliable hotel at a good price, however, do some sleuthing. You can grab a room that the hotel would rather part with at a discount than leave empty and make nothing. Everybody wins.

[Photo: dunkindoughnuts]]

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· HOWTO: Scam Luxury Hotels [HotelChatter]