Bidding for a 4-star deluxe hotel in downtown Chicago on Priceline®

My family loves Chicago. There are so many great family friendly attractions in the Windy City like the Field Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, Millennium Park, the Art Institute, Navy Pier, and the Shedd Aquarium. We love to stay close to all the action downtown off of Michigan Avenue. Retail prices for nice hotels in downtown Chicago can be quite step, but thankfully Priceline® is a great option for securing excellent accommodations at an affordable price. This article demonstrates how to use BidSmartForHotels.com’s strategy generator to create a Priceline® bidding strategy for a 4-star deluxe hotel in downtown Chicago in either the Millennium Park, Loop & Grant Park Area or the North Michigan Ave – River North Area.

Example: Creating a Priceline bidding strategy for a 4-Star Deluxe hotel in downtown Chicago

Using the link presented in step one of the Strategy Generator, we open a new window to Priceline®, click on the Name Your Own Price® link, enter Chicago, IL into the city text field, enter our dates, and then click on the “bid now” button. We are then presented with a list of available bidding areas for Chicago.

Moving on to step two, we need to enter the name and maximum star level into the Bidding Generator for each and every bidding area. We start by selecting the Greater Chicago area noting that the highest star level that becomes active is the 4-Star Deluxe level in the star level list. We enter Greater Chicago into the the Area Name and select 4-Star Deluxe from Maximum Star Level and then click the Add Area button. The information for the Greater Chicago area is added to the bidding areas table. We then deselect the Greater Chicago area and click the Lincoln Park area noting that the 2½-Star Moderate-Plus level is the highest star level that becomes active. Once again we add this information into the Strategy Generator. We repeat this for each available area. Remember that you should only have one area selected at a time. After we are done, the bidding areas table looks similar to the following:

In step 3, we select our desired bidding star level of 4-Star Deluxe.

In step 4, we select our desired bidding area out of the 3 areas that offer 4-Star Deluxe hotels in downtown Chicago. For this example, we would select either the Millennium Park, Loop & Grant Park Area or the North Michigan Ave – River North Area.

In step 5, we must define our bidding range. Please remember that this is purely your decision and only place dollar amounts which our within your budget and with which you feel comfortable. It’s advisable that you research hotel prices on the internet to help you set your maximum bid. Once again, it’s your choice. If you have time before your trip, remember that it’s ok to aim low because if your bid attempts fail you can try again after waiting 24 hours and raise your range a bit.

In step 6, we select which strategy generation mode should be used. We are presented with three options: Simple (selected by default), Advanced, and Expert. The simple mode is the easiest mode to use and it will not require you to log out, but it will usually give you fewer bids. Often, this is an acceptable compromise. Choose the mode that gives you the number of bids that you feel comfortable using.

In step 7, we simply click the Generate strategy now button and we will be presented with a bidding strategy to follow. It’s as simple as that to generate a Priceline® hotel bidding strategy for a 4-Star Deluxe hotel in downtown Chicago.

We hope you found this example useful.

The bidding strategy example presented here was created using the Strategy Generator available free of charge at BidSmartForHotels.com. Happy Bidding!