When it comes to most things, hotels included, it has to be said that Amsterdam is an expensive city. That said, with the right knowledge, a bit of patience and some research, there are some real bargains to be found online.
The three best sources for deals your Destination Experts are aware of are:
- Priceline (PL) and their “Name your own price” (NYOP) option. At the time of writing (Apr 2014) people are getting rooms in top quality, central hotels for as little as $100 per night plus tax and admin charges, usually around $15. Through eBay many people are often picking up double rooms in 5* hotels, including breakfast, for around €100 (approx $135) per night.
- Various auctions. Rooms are sold on eBay as well as a couple of Dutch sites.
- Blind booking. Hotwire, Lastminute and Priceline all have offereings.
This article covers all three options. Most of it is dedicated to PL NYOP as that is generally felt to offer the very best deals. It also requires a bit more explanation and understanding than the various eBay auctions or blind booking.
Priceline "Name your own price" (PL NYOP)
Priceline Corporation (Nasdaq PCLN) are one of the world's largest online travel organisations along with Expedia, who count Tripadvisor amongst their offerings, and Travelocity. They run regular hotel portals, as do the other organisations, where hotel rooms can be purchased online. Their currently unique offering is NYOP.
It must be stressed that is up to you to do your own research and there will always be an element of risk in your bidding as the picture constantly changes. This article can do no more than get you started.
Links
The sites you will need to use are:
For research:
There are a number of sites around discussing Priceline options. Experience has shown that the Better Bidding site is generally the most user friendly of them. It also holds a lot of valuable information. The site will encourage you to use their own links to Priceline as this generates some revenue for them. For non USA based users this is difficult. For those based in the USA it is a way of supporting a very useful site.
For bidding: (If not going through the above link)
There used to be a priceline.co.uk site but they have now ditched that and you can register easily on the .com site now no matter which country you are in.
Once you access the Priceline site select the ´Name Your Own Price´ option. It should also be noted that Priceline also acts are a regular hotel portal in the same manner as a site such as Expedia. The remainder of this article deals specifically with the ´Name Your Own Price´ option.
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Restrictions:
It is important that you go into this process with your eyes open. Before proceeding you should be aware of the following:
- You are unable to choose a specific hotel. Only the star rating and the general area. Usually, with research, you can make a good guess on which hotel you will end up in but there are no guarantees.
- Bookings are for double or twin rooms only, without breakfast. Whilst hotels often will make allowances for extras, such as a third bed in the room, after booking there is no guarantee of this.
- Payment must be made in full at the time of a bid being accepted. This is before you know the hotel you are in. There are no cancellations, changes to booked dates or refunds allowed.
If you cannot accept the restrictions listed above Priceline is not for you. An alternative is to try picking up a bargain on eBay as detailed further down this article. If neither of these suit, you may instead be better using one of the reservations portals such as www.expedia.com or www.booking.com.
How long in advance to start bidding:
There is no easy answer to this. In the end it is down to personal preference. For the reasons outlined above, you must be certain of your dates before you bid. Some people prefer to book many months in advance. This has the advantage of giving you plenty of time to work your way up slowly whilst bidding and the comfort of knowing early that your hotel is 'in the bag'. Others prefer to leave it until a week or two before travelling so that they are more sure of their dates and that their money is not tied up for all those months beforehand. Recent experience indicates that prices, particularly at weekends in peak seasons, tend to increase if the booking is left to later.
Priceline hotels in Amsterdam .
The list of hotels that you are likely to get can be found here: http://www.betterbidding.com/index.ph...
Please note that whilst the sites administrators endeavour to keep it up to date Priceline can and will make changes. It is generally very accurate but not comprehensive. Priceline changd their Amsterdam zones quite extensively last year meaning that there are many more and you can narrow areas down more effectively now.
Those who have looked at the list for Amsterdam will have seen that there are no one or two star hotels. Also the choice of three star properties is limited. The real bargains are therefore in the four and five star category.
This section concentrates on the hotels in:
Zone 6 - Canal Belt East - Plantage
Zone 11 - Jordaan - Canal Belt West - Ann Frank House
Zone 12 - Museum Quarter - Vondelpark
Zone 15- Royal Palace - Central Station - Dam Square
Zones 15, 11, 12 & 6 are the areas where most visitors will wish to stay with 15 and 11 being probably the most central. All of these properties are good quality, well respected hotels. As long as you restrict your bidding to these zones, you will find a hotel in a central area. Amsterdam is a small city, so all the main sights are easily reached from any of the other hotels. If a central location is important to you by requesting 4* in this area you are pretty well guaranteed to get a centrally located hotel. If you bid in one of the other zones you risk ending up in an anonymous suburb.
Bidding:
Before placing a bid you must first register and provide your credit card details.
You are first prompted to select an area, the number of rooms you want and a hotel category, you then put in a bid. You will then be presented with a total price including tax and administration charges before you submit your final acceptance. Typically a bid for one night at $80 will attract $15 additional costs but it can vary.When you place a bid one of four things will happen.
- Your bid will be accepted, your credit card charged for the full amount of your stay, you are then told which hotel you are in.
- Your bid is rejected outright.
- A counter offer is made.
- You are told that you will be allowed an immediate rebid if you increase your offer to $$
In the case of a bid being accepted there is not a lot more to say. Well done, enjoy your stay.
If your bid has been rejected you can re-bid 24 hours later. You can also re-bid straight away if you change your criteria. A common trick to allow you to re-bid straight away is to add a criteria that you know will not be met. Say for example that you have been rejected for a 5* in the Museum Quarter´ area, ou could re-bid if you added Zone 7 (Diemen) and you would be safe in the knowledge that Priceline has no 5* hotels in that area.
If a counter offer is made or if you are invited to increase your bid you can choose to accept or to reject the offer and re-bid. The strategies are discussed at length on the research sites given above. In general you can get a price somewhere between your initial bid and the re-bid offer.
Recent Bids:
The Amsterdam forum maintains two threads with winning bids. They are long running threads thus it is better to take guidance from the last few pages where more recent wins are recorded:
In addition to those it is always worth checking the ´Priceline - Other Countries´ forum on http://www.betterbidding.com.
The main thing you should learn from the above links is the importance of doing your research in advance. In general the best advice is to bid low and work your way up from there.
Auctions:
This method of getting a bargain hotel in Amsterdam particularly useful for those who insist on knowing which specific hotel they are booking, who are looking for a hotel in an area not served by PL NYOP or for whom the option of a package including breakfast is considered worth the extra cost.
For those of you who can manage German this is the most complete list:
For those of you who can manage Dutch there are some incredible bargains to be had here but be VERY aware of the restrictions.
For those who can't manage either language a limited number of the offers can be found in English via Cultbay:
Alternatively, just go into eBay and do a search such as "Amsterdam Hotel".
Caveats:
Read the conditions. On hotelkamerveiling.nl these are always in Dutch and on cultbay.com usually but not always in German.
Rooms are subject to availability. Having used cultbay.com a few times, at least two of which were at busy/full hotels I don't think this is too much of an issue. You may however have trouble in Amsterdam in September whilst the IBC conference is on. With hotelkamerveiling.nl it is a different story. Rooms can often be booked only five days in advance, there are hefty weekend surcharges and often they simply aren't available.You cannot just buy. You must put a bid in and wait until the auction concludes.
Once you have won an auction and paid you usually receive a voucher by email. This is then valid for six months or a year. With eBay wins you then contact the hotel direct, giving them the voucher number, to make the booking. With hotelkamerveiling.nl you have to use the link (and the availability offered) on the auction site.
The stays are for a fixed number of days. Do not expect to be able to contact the hotel and ask for additional days at the same price.
The bidding strategy you follow is up to you. This author has, from experience, developed the habit of pitching a bit at the lower end of, but not the lowest price of the range.
eBay is clever enough not to bid this straight away. Up to the amount you specify you will have the highest bid but it will only be one step higher than the second highest. Say, for example, you did place a bid of €80 on a room. If the highest other bid was €70 you would only actually have to pay €71 once you have won the auction. With hotelkamerveiling.nl you pay what you bid.
Blind Booking:
With Blind Booking you know the general area the hotel is in, the star level, the availability and what price you will pay in advance. The drawback is that you do not know which actual hotel unitl after your booking is confirmed. For Hotwire, with the help of the Betterbidding forum, you can ofter have a good idea of which hotel you will get but nothing is guaranteed.
There are three sights we know of whereyou can blind book.
BE VERY AWARE that with blind booking rooms cannot be cancelled or changed after booking. If you decide you don't like the hotel you have been allocated you are stuck with it.
