If the Vegas hotel question bothered me, San Francisco worried me to the point of denial and not wanting to think about it. I’ve been watching the rates for weeks and they’ve kept going up – but I couldn’t book anything, because I didn’t know exactly when we’d get there.
When we arrived in Vegas, I could better predict that, so thought that we’d try to leave here (Vegas) tomorrow (Tuesday). The original schedule called for us to spend two nights between Vegas and San Francisco – somewhere around Sequoia and then around San Luis Obispo. Because of the unscheduled stop in Austin and the extra nights in Albuquerque, I hoped to change that and make up a day on that leg, arriving in San Francisco on Wednesday (7/11), staying two nights.
When I checked Priceline, I freaked out – 3-stars were $200, $300, even $400 a night. 2-stars ranged from $160 to over $200. Most 1-stars were over $100. I had a half-joking backup plan to stay near the airport and take BART into the city every day – it was looking like that might be necessary.
I checked BiddingForTravel and found out there’s a convention with 30,000 attendees in San Francisco through the 12th. So I changed my stay to arrive 7/12 – we’ll keep the extra day on the road and take it at a more leisurely pace.
Rates for a 7/12 arrival were still pretty high, with 3-stars still in the $200-$300 range.
Priceline has a huge number of zones for San Francisco, ranging from the city to the airport. I wanted to stay in the city.
So I started bidding for 4-stars in the zones I really wanted, one at a time (13, 12, 9, and 3 or Union Square West, East, Moscone Center, and Fisherman’s Wharf, respectively). I started at $70, just in case there was some amazing deal out there – everything was rejected, which left my max bid at $76. I raised it to $78 and added 3.5-star as an option for those zones. Still rejected.
This was on Sunday, so I wasn’t too concerned, as I could keep bidding every 24-hours until we arrived there – which is why I started with such a lowball bid. If I got something, great, if not, try again tomorrow.
But to see if I could get something in my budget now, I kept going. I had all the zones I was willing to stay in selected and at 3.5-stars, so I started adding zones that only have 3-stars – this let me continue to raise my bid, but guaranteed I wouldn’t get an unwanted location.
When my bid got to $84, it was accepted. Two nights at the Marriott San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf – showing a rate on the Marriott website of $249 a night for those dates.
