How do I priceline when I need a room to accommodate my 2 rug rats and a husband? Anyone know? Or is hotwire better?

Am considering a trip to NY to see Bruce or OH is - I've seen him too many times to remember, but I do fancy a trip to NYC!

Helpful suggestions please........

Priceline only guarantees occupancy of 2 adults in a room - you can chance it in the hope you might get two queen's, but there's no guarantee's. In NYC, I'm not sure I'd risk it, since the room's are usually on the small side.

Hotwire WILL let you specify two kids, so that's probably your best option....

Thanks for the info G77.
Much appreciated!

I'd rather do priceline.com. Just put 4 people (2 adults-2 kids) and they will give you 2 beds for sure. You can see which hotels you will get in Priceline.com before you make selections and payment. In hotwire, you will select from prices and will know the hotel AFTER you pay (which you cannot do a refund in case you don't like the hotel). Unless you like surprises, you're better off with knowing the hotel you're going into so you can still see the reviews from trip advisors.

You're thinking of the named hotel part of priceline - I believe the OP was referring to the Name your own price section, where you can't specify the number of people and you only find out the hotel when your bid has been successful...

Yep, you're right. I'm thinking about the named hotel part. With family in tow, I wouldn't risk getting a hotel or a place you don't know. Your "dream" vacation might end-up as "nightmare" because of the hotel that you got. It happened to me in hotwire.com: paid for a "3 1/2 stars" but got the surprise of my life (wouldn't even consider the "hotel" as "2 stars")!! Learned my lesson the hard way..

Yep you were right, I was thinking of the bidding part, trying to keep costs down. But I guess if you put a silly price into priceline and ask for 2 rooms, it may still work out cheaper. Anyone have any experience of this?
Thanks!

Unlikely to work out cheaper - the bids that priceline will accept are said to be around 15% cheaper than hotwire, you'd need them to be considerably cheaper than that for it to be more cost effective.

Check out this site for tips www.biddingfortravel.com

Having worked in several hotels and although 3rd party website may guarantee something such as number of beds, to the hotels these are still just requests most of the time.

3rd party sites cause so many issues for hotel employees.

I've used Priceline I think 3 times.....twice in the Montreal area and once in Vermont...it worked out all the times with no surprises. The Vermont trip was for the 4 of us and we indicated it was for 2 adults/2 children and then phoned the hotel later to confirm no extra costs for the children. I think we bid $50 US at first it got rejected and then we bid $65 (including all taxes) and added some feature we wanted and got a Marriott hotel that worked out well. I think the regular rate was something like $119 + tax. My thoughts are you would use Priceline in the 3 or 4 star places and not the 1 or 2 star places (which could be dumps or in dodgy areas).

I've also thought about using their car rental feature...any experiences with that?

Hi all ,
we used pricline on our reccie in August for the 4 of us ,got the Marriot Harbourside and the Westin NS .Each hotel gave us a large room with 2 Queen size beds and harbour views to boot.
Maybe we were just lucky but i will use them again next year.
Arty & Family