Offer Price: $81
Taxes & Fees: $20.33
Total: $101.33
I began attempting bidding sessions for New Year's Eve on 12/08. I bid roughly weekly starting on that date. Hoping for this hotel or another in the Riverfront zone, I stuck to 3*s and this zone. Ft. Mitchell, Fairfield (Northwest), North Kings Island, and University Area were the free rebid zones I used. During this time, I had bid as low as $57 and as high as $84. My winning sequence began at $57 and increased up by $2 increments until hitting at $81.
Hotwire has this hotel (by best guess that it's the same hotel) at $87. Direct list price of this hotel is $135. Interestingly, up until about 4 days before I began bidding on Priceline, the hotel I believe to be the same on Hotwire was $81, it then popped to $106 and later $114 before dropping at some point in the last four days to $87. So I think based on this information and my experience last year, the best bet for using Priceline in a desireable area on New Year's Eve is to bid during late November before demand catches on. If no good deals are to be had, gauge pricing on Hotwire, then try again after Christmas or if you see a big drop to your price range.
Despite paying more than last year, I feel this was a good deal. Definitely something to be very happy with. Especially considering it is on New Year's Eve and was a lot of fun last year.
It is worth noting that I used permutational bidding throughout this process. With four free rebid zones, that gives you a total of 16 bid attempts. I again used http://www.ashwinpurohit.com/priceline/ and this is a big help.
I began every single bid via the PL applet (link) on this website. If you are ever doing permutational bidding, you should definitely use this because not only does it help this board, it also will speed up the process for you. This makes permutational bidding, which can otherwise be time-consuming, much faster than it would otherwise be.
