Free Access
Member Only Access
Industry News

Priceline.com Launches iPhone And iPod touch App For Last-Minute Negotiating On Name-Your-Own-Price® Hotel Rooms

Thursday 29 October 2009
Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN) today announced the availability of the Hotel Negotiator App on the App Store. The app, which features The Priceline Negotiator (William Shatner), lets travelers use iPhone or iPod touch to quickly find and book last-minute hotel rooms using priceline.com’s Name Your Own Price® hotel service and save up to 50% over published hotel rates.

The Hotel Negotiator App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/. For more information and high-resolution images of the Hotel Negotiator App, visit http://www.priceline.com/iphone/media.

“Our Hotel Negotiator App is designed for travelers who are on the road or at an airport and decide at the last minute that they need a room for the night,” said priceline.com Chief Marketing Officer Brett Keller. “The app also works for travelers who prefer to make their hotel arrangements after they’ve arrived in a city and have become familiar with the geography. Hotel Negotiator lets them use their iPhone or iPod touch to quickly negotiate the price and book a room from priceline.com’s comprehensive assortment of quality hotel rooms up until 11:00 p.m. ET on the night they need the room.”

Priceline.com’s Hotel Negotiator App includes the following unique features:

  • The Priceline Negotiator. Activate the Hotel Negotiator App and The Priceline Negotiator (William Shatner) gets the whole phone vibrating as he punches his way through the screen.
  • Winning Bids recommendations. Choose a city and the Hotel Negotiator App displays multiple recent winning bids made by other priceline.com customers for hotels in different parts of the city at different star levels.
  • Shake-Down geo-locator-triggered hotel search. Shaking the device establishes the traveler’s location using location-based features and then performs a Winning Bids search for hotels in the surrounding areas.
  • One-Page checkout. A specially designed one-page checkout screen speeds users through the bidding process.
  • Instant Bid Results. Users will know instantly whether their bid is accepted. If it is, they’ll receive all the details on their hotel and its location.
  • Native iPhone navigation. Users will instantly recognize the slides and wheels that help them navigate through the Hotel Negotiator shopping and booking experience.
  • Not in the mood to negotiate? The Hotel Negotiator App also contains an option for browsing priceline.com’s broad assortment of published-price hotels for a particular city or town. Browsing can be initiated by choosing a city or by shaking the device which will bring up a selection of hotels within that specific area.

Hotel listings can be sorted by star level, price, proximity and popularity. Hotel listings include address, star level, customer reviews and satisfaction scores, zoomable maps, pictures and descriptions. All of the hotels on the list can be booked either online or by automatically calling priceline.com’s hotel booking specialists.

Travelers who need help with other trip arrangements can select another option on the Hotel Negotiator app that takes them to a priceline.com website configured for iPhone and iPod touch. There, they can check flight status and browse and book airline tickets and rental cars on a published-price or Name Your Own Price® basis.

About Priceline.com® Incorporated | Priceline.com Incorporated (Nasdaq: PCLN) www.priceline.com provides online travel services in 29 languages in over 78 countries in Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Included in the priceline.com family of companies is Booking.com, a leading international online hotel reservation service, priceline.com, a leading U.S. online travel service for value-conscious leisure travelers, and Agoda.com, an Asian online hotel reservation service. Priceline.com believes that Booking.com is Europe’s largest and fastest growing hotel reservation service, with a network of affiliated Web sites. Booking.com operates in over 70 countries in 24 languages and offers its customers access to over 71,000 participating hotels worldwide.

In the U.S., priceline.com gives customers more ways to save on their airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, vacation packages and cruises than any other Internet travel service. In addition to getting great published prices, leisure travelers can narrow their searches using priceline.com’s TripFilter advanced search technology, customize their search activity through priceline.com’s Inside Track features, create packages to save even more money, and take advantage of priceline.com’s famous Name Your Own Price® service, which can deliver the lowest prices available. Priceline.com also operates the following travel websites: Travelweb.com, Lowestfare.com, RentalCars.com and BreezeNet.com. Priceline.com also licenses its business model to certain independent and international licensees.

Contact Information

Brian Ek
Phone: 203/299-8167
Email: brian.ek@priceline.com

Company Details

Hospitality Netpriceline.com
www.priceline.com
800 Connecticut Ave.
USA - Norwalk, CT 06854-1631
Phone: (203) 299-8142
Fax: (203) 299-8903

Recent Articles

FeatureAdd to My eConnectSharePrint this page
Featured HSMAI Publication
HSMAI Travel Internet Marketing White Paper SeriesTravel Internet Marketing White Paper Series

The HSMAI Travel Internet Marketing Special Interest Group is pleased to present a ten-part series of white papers, as part of its mission to increase members' awareness and understanding of emerging issues, opportunities and trends; and, TIG Global is proud to sponsor the reports as part of its commitment to helping travel professionals drive revenue and profit online by making smart, strategic marketing decisions.

Read More »
Featured Industry Publication

How Hotel Guests Perceive the Fairness of Differential Room Pricing
When customers perceived hotel revenue management practices to be fair, they are more likely to be satisfied with the hotel and are more likely to return to that hotel in the future. In this survey of 815 people, we examined the effects of three factors on the respondents' assessment of the fairness of hotel rate policies. Those three factors were familiarity with the practice, provision of information about the practice, and the brand class of the hotel. Of those three, we found that familiarity with a pricing practice was far and away the most important factor affecting perceived fairness. The implication is that revenue managers should focus their efforts on increasing guests' familiarity with their pricing practices. (PDF Document)

View publication »
UPCOMING EVENTS
See all Industry Events »
See all HSMAI events »
See all HSMAI University events »