How to Find Cheap Omaha Hotels Using Priceline

Priceline is known for its "Name Your Own Price Service". It acts as a third party between hotels who have unsold rooms, are willing to sell them off at discounted rates, and visitors looking for bargains who do not mind which hotel they'll be staying in. When using Priceline you get to bid for hotels, you select the neighborhood you want to stay at in the Omaha area, the star level you want for your hotel, and, finally, your bid. If Priceline sees that they have hotels that match this criteria, they tell you what your hotel is and your credit card gets charged. Lets say you want to stay in Central Omaha and that your bid is rejected. Priceline allows you to rebid after 24 hours. End of story? No.

priceline

You can rebid immediately if you change your city, date, preferred star level, or neighborhood. It is very likely that your date, city, and preferred stars are fixed. This leaves us with changing your neighborhood. Once your bid is rejected, start a new bid by clicking on the Priceline logo at the top of the screen.

PRICELINE

The Omaha area, at the time this article was written, has the following zones.

Bellevue- 2 and 1/2-Star Moderate-Plus
Central Omaha- 3-Star Upscale
Council Bluffs- 2 and 1/2-Star Moderate-Plus
Omaha Airport- 2 and 1/2-Star Moderate-Plus
Omaha Downtown- 3-Star Upscale
Southwest Omaha- 2 and 1/2-Star Moderate-Plus
West Omaha- 3-Star Upscale

You'll notice that I wrote down the highest possible stars within each zone. Let's say you want to stay in Central Omaha and your preferred star level is 3 stars. Now would be wise to go to see what type of winning bids other users got. There are a couple of websites where users post their winning bids. Simply search "Priceline bidding strategy" in Google to see these sites (they are the first two in the search results). The winning bids from these users should give you a good idea of where you should start bidding. You would also want to check standard hotel booking sites like Hotels.com to see the type of rates they offer for their highest rated star level in the Omaha area (the closer you are getting to these prices each time you bid up, the less of a deal you are getting).

Now it's time to bid again. Select Central Omaha again along with a neighborhood with a maximum star level lower than 3 stars, say, Council Bluffs. Also, select 3 stars as your preferred star level. You can now bid again for Central Omaha! Why? Because You've changed your neighborhood by adding another zone. You know you won't end up staying in Council Bluffs because your preferred star level is 3 stars and the maximum star level of Council Bluffs in only 2 and 1/2 stars. Council Bluffs is your fake zone which you use to bid again for Central Omaha. If your rebid with the Council Bluffs zone does not work, replace that fake zone with another one, say, Bellevue. Just make sure to always rebid higher or else you are wasting your rebids.

Because there are a total of 4 zones with a maximum star level of 2 and 1/2 stars, you have a total of 4 free rebids. There are way, however, to get as many as 15 immediate rebids.

How to Find Cheap Omaha Hotels Using Priceline

PRICELINE