Save money on hotels with Priceline

photo of wine bottle and food on table

Priceline is one of our favorite ways to save money on hotels. They have really good rates in addition to Pricebreakers and Express Deals. They’re also a Rakuten partner as well. Well guide you through everything you need to know to get the best rate. Of course, you should always compare prices with Expedia. This is easy to do with Google.

I’ve searched for hotels all over the world and the vast majority of the time, the cheapest price is on Priceline. I find package deals tend to be better on Expedia but if I’m just booking hotels, Priceline usually edges out Expedia. If everything is equal, go with Expedia to get One Key points but Priceline usually has better prices and better cash back rates with Rakuten.

Rakuten

Rakuten is the website with the strange name that allows you to save a ton of money on all sorts of travel. For more information on Rakuten and how it works, check out our article here. If you sign up through our link, you’ll get $30 when you spend $30! What’s really nice about going through Rakuten is that you can choose any hotel on Priceline. But there are some interesting terms and conditions that you should read here. Of note is that you cannot use coupon codes except those found on Rakuten. If you do, you may void the cash back.

I always suggest that you compare the Rakuten rate with the rate you’ll get on Priceline if you go through Google. While we haven’t experimented with this yet to see if there’s a difference, it only takes a few minutes to check. Best to do this with private browser window.

While Priceline usually has the best cash back rate on Rakuten, it does change. For example, Hotels.com has 10% on select hotels right now but those are just in a few cities.

Create an account

I’ve noticed that the prices on the app or website are better when I’m logged in to my account are better than the price Google shows. So be sure to create an account and stay signed in to get the best price.

Express Deals

Priceline is famous for their express deals. The name of the hotels are hidden but it is usually pretty easy to find out what which hotel it is. There’s also coupons that they send out via the Priceline app which you should download. They send these out fairly regularly. Let’s look at an example for a hypothetical search in Pittsburgh.

Priceline has made it more difficult for people to figure out what the real hotel so they modify some of this information. In other words, some of it is accurate and some of it is not 100% accurate. What is accurate is the area of the hotel and the star rating. This right here will make it easier to narrow down what hotels it could be as there are only so many hotels with that star rating in that area. On the other hand, the price, review rating and number of reviews are rounded down.
If you click on the listing, you’ll see some the amenities that the hotel offers which will help you determine what hotel this is. For example, if you have this narrowed down to two hotels and one has a free breakfast and the other does not, it will be pretty obvious as to which one it is.
If you click on choose room, you’ll see some of the room options. Again, Priceline has gotten smart here so they won’t show you all the room types.

Armed with all of this information, you need to then look at all three star hotels in the Washington area of Pittsburgh that get a rating between 7.0 and 7.9. There’s not many so this should be pretty easy. You can filter the results to make it easier. So for this search, I narrowed I selected the Washington neighborhood, 3 stars or higher and a review of 7 or better. Then I sorted by price. There were only two hotels that matched this criteria: the SpringHill Suites and the Doubletree. Both had a 7.x rating but the SpringHill Suites had 324 reviews while the Doubletree had 410 reviews. The SpringHill Suites had a price of $84 whereas the Doubletree had a price of $94 which was discounted from the normal price of $103.

As we previously indicated, Priceline isn’t always going to show you the exact details and they do round things down. The reviews alone give it away. So instead of saying 324 reviews since that would be too easy, they say 300 reviews. The price gives it away too. $84 is not $83 but it’s close enough. But let’s say that you’re still not convinced. Let’s drill down a little more. The SpringHill Suites includes a free breakfast whereas the Doubletree does not. If you click on the rooms, SpringHill Suites includes rooms with a Studio with a sofa bed whereas Doubletree does not. This is more than enough evidence that the mystery hotel is the SpringHill Suites.

Just keep in mind that if you’re wrong, there are no refunds so you’ll want to be sure you’ve got the correct hotel.

Express coupons

As previously mentioned, if you have the Priceline app, you’ll get coupons for Express Deals. This is a great way to save even more money. You can find these deals under notifications which is on the bottom of the app. They’ll look like this:

Pricebreakers

Similar to Express deals, Pricebreakers give you a list of three hotels, so you’ll know that you’ll get at least one of them for a discounted price. You’ll have to make sure that you’d be fine with any one of those hotels. The price savings is a bit misleading as well. For example, if you were to book this deal for a 3 day stay, the final price would be $269.55. If you book the La Quinta the final price would be $281.82. So still a savings but not exactly $15.

Trying to figure out what hotel it is can be more difficult than an express deal because you’re not really given any other information. You can try to compare the room types and sometimes that will help. However, that could be tough if all three hotels have similar room types. If there’s a hotel that you wouldn’t want to stay at, I don’t think you should do this. It won’t always be the lowest priced hotel, but you should assume it is.

Conclusion

Priceline offers you a number of ways to save money on a hotel. While their prices are usually some of the best, Rakuten, Express deals, Express deal coupons and Pricebreakers allow you to save even more.

Still need help?

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