Numerous strategies exist for obtaining substantial discounts on airline tickets and lodging. We offer a tonne of advice on how to find the best deals on airfare and accommodations.
Priceline Express Deals are another option. With these extra-special—and occasionally extra-cheap—discounts, Priceline, a relatively new player in the inexpensive airfare and hotel booking market, has raised the bar. It is important to be aware of a few important factors before making a reservation. Learn more about Priceline Express Deals and how they may help you save hundreds of dollars by reading on. Let’s first discuss what these offers are and how Priceline can provide such low costs.
What Do Priceline Express Offers?
This box alerting you to an “Express Deal” is probably what you’ve seen if you frequently browse Priceline for travel or lodging. When you look for a hotel or travel deal on Priceline, Priceline Express Deals may appear. For instance, this Priceline Express ticket bargain offer is $141 less expensive than the subsequent Priceline flight that goes to Europe.
What You Should Know About Flight Deals on Priceline Express
“This is too good to be true,” is presumably what’s on your mind. Fortunately, Priceline simplifies the explanation of why these airline fares are lower (we’ll talk about hotel discounts later).
Regarding Express Deals, there are a few important things to remember.
- Compared to nearly all other airfare, Express Deals are unique. When making a reservation with Express Deals, a list of potential airlines will appear. It is only known the airline you will be flying with after you have booked. Similar to the Hopper Secret Fare is this flight discount service: Only once you book the ticket is the airline displayed.
- Rest assured, though; these are not low-cost airlines but rather significant worldwide airlines. This option usually appears on flights that are more popular internationally; it is less likely to see it on domestic or less-traveled routes.
- It is not possible to see the entire itinerary of an Express Deal before purchasing. This indicates that only broad temporal information—such as “evening takeoff” or “morning takeoff”—is provided before a transaction is made, as the image below illustrates.
- Select the offer to view additional information about your itinerary; the majority of flights are either nonstop or one-stop. Once the ticket is purchased, the precise departure and return timings become available.
- Verify that you understand the limitations and have read the fine print: There are no changes or refunds for Express Deal flights. Express Deals are not covered by Priceline’s 24-hour cancellation policy, in contrast to regular flights that are purchased through the site.
- Although every Express Deal is unique, some will come with a complimentary carry-on bag and priority seat selection. Most other low-cost flight options are in basic economy and don’t allow you to choose your seat. The Express Deal may offer you more for a few hundred bucks less! How Can I Make Use of an Express Flight Deal?
How to Use an Express Flight Deal?
- Go to Priceline Express and enter your preferred departure city, destination, and travel dates to get started.
- The Priceline search results page will have a blue box labeled “Express Deals” if there is one available for that route. Click “Select” for more information on the Express Deal.
- Priceline advises you that once you make a reservation, the flight information becomes available. Additionally, they list several reliable airlines, one of which is the one you’ll be using for this promotion. Additionally, you will receive an estimate of the flight’s departure and arrival times as well as its return time. For instance, the aforementioned package has takeoffs and returns at night and midday, respectively.
- This flight is either nonstop or one-stop, with a maximum layover of three hours, as can be seen if we click “Select” to view more information about this Express Deal. Recall that once you make a reservation, you will see all of these facts.
- Click the green “Continue” button to provide your billing and personal information if all of that sounds good to you and you’re ready to reserve your inexpensive flight. There may be additional luggage fees, but taxes and fees are included in the Express Deal price.
- Following your confirmation and submission, Priceline will launch a new window with all of the information on your ticket, including the airline you’ll be traveling with and the precise departure and return timings.
How to “Surmise” on an Express Flight on Priceline
How to “guess” the airline that a Priceline Express Deal will be on is one of the most common queries we receive. It’s not as hard as you would think to put your investigative abilities to use! Consider the following Express Deal, for instance. This flight is operated by Air Canada, Alaska, Lufthansa, United, or American, as far as we know. It’s also a night flight, as far as we know. This arrangement allows us to observe that takeoff has zero or one-stop and occurs between 3 PM and 11 PM.
With this information, what can we do? Use it to narrow down the alternatives for other flights that appear on Priceline! We would limit your takeoff time filter to times after 3 PM, pick only the airlines that are offered as part of the Express Deal, and choose one or zero stops in the stop filter. Next, examine the remaining flights in the search results; this should give you a decent indication of the potential flights that this “hidden” flight might be.
We would most likely be traveling on Lufthansa in this scenario, with one stop at a different hub in Europe. Even though you might not get it exactly right every time, you can improve your estimation of which flight the Express Deal might be by narrowing the search results.
Priceline Express Hotel Deals: What About Them?
Are you willing to stay at the majority of well-regarded, affordably-priced hotels? Would you be willing to make a hotel reservation even if you didn’t know the hotel’s name beforehand? Perhaps this is what you need.
In exchange for a sizable discount, Priceline Express Hotel also provides Express Deals on lodging. Go to the Express Hotel Deals page on Priceline to start your search. Enter the dates and location of your trip.
This is where your search results for Express Deals will be filtered (you can also enable this filter while searching for hotels on Priceline in general). Similar to a general search, you may use the filters on the right-hand side to look for specific amenities, price ranges, guest ratings, star ratings, and more. You will see the following for every Express Deal:
- Star Rating (out of five stars)
- General location
- Amenities included
- Guest rating
- Price and discount off the normal rate
How to Use Priceline Express Hotel
Are you having trouble deciding which hotel an Express Deal would be for? These are a few pointers. A list of amenities and a map of the property will appear when you click on the Express Deal.
As an illustration, we can determine that this Express Deal hotel is:
- In the map’s blue region
- Free parking, a pool, a fitness center, and an airport shuttle are all provided by this 4-star hotel with a 9+ guest rating.
- consists of one of the seven hotel brands.
- It was just reserved for $129 by someone.
Take this information and do some research if you’re a sleuth trying to hazard a guess.
Open a new tab and use the same dates, location, and guest count as you would for a standard Priceline hotel search. After you’ve completed that, go one step further and configure these precise same filters and parameters.
Here, we would limit our search to 4-star hotels exclusively with 9+ guest ratings and only the facilities mentioned. When you reload the Priceline hotel search result page, a list of hotels with the same criteria will appear. This should provide you with at least a few suggestions for potential hotels.
Are you ready to go one step further? Examine the cost. Check to see if any of the deals listed under “mystery hotel” on Priceline Express Deals match the ones you typically see on your results page. Further hints as to which hotel it might be might be found in the way the hotel describes the available rooms.
Once more, you never know if your guess will be accurate, but that’s the risk associated with a Priceline Express Deal. It would be best if you made your reservations at the hotel of your choice rather than accepting stays at the potential hotels.
Important Things to Think About When Purchasing Deals on Priceline Express
Here are some considerations to make before you reserve a hotel or flight through Express Deals:
- Priceline Express Deals are not negotiable or refundable. This can be a deal-breaker, particularly during COVID-19 when hotels and airlines waive fees for changes and cancellations made directly with the provider and give free cancellations up to one day before check-in.
- Priceline states that there are no frequent flyer points awarded for Express Deal trips. But as of yet, we are unable to verify this. We believe this is largely reliant on the aircraft you are operating. You can usually still accrue mileage on non-Express Deal tickets that you book through Priceline or any other online travel agency website.
- There’s no surefire way to predict which airline or hotel you’ll fly with, even though you can “guess” which one you’ll receive. It’s probably worthwhile to reserve the hotel or airfare directly if the mystery isn’t your thing.