How to hack Priceline for incredible savings on hotels worldwide

What if you do not travel enough to take advantage of hotel loyalty programs and the savings and benefits that come with them? You shouldn’t feel left out because this simple hack is just as awesome. This method will not get you any special benefits but it can give you huge savings on your hotel stays. Something that no hotel membership can offer. Forget your Trivagos and Expedias. THIS is the real deal.

Express Deals

When you search for a hotel in Priceline, you will see an Express Deals button at the top of the search results. Express Deals are special offers between 5% to 70% off on selected hotels that you can book without knowing the actual name of the hotel. The idea is that you will only know the hotel’s name after booking and making your payment. But what if I tell you that you can find out the name of the hotel in an Express Deal even before booking?

In this article, we will look at hotels in Dubai for a 3-nights stay from 12-15 May 2020. Start by entering the city and dates to see the results page. For this example, let’s change the currency to SGD but you can change it to anything you want.

Do not click on Express Deals.

Let’s also look for a 5-star hotel specifically in the prestigious Palm Jumeirah area in Dubai. As you scroll down a little further, you will see an option to filter the results by the hotel’s neighbourhood and star level.

Click on Palm Jumeirah and 5 Stars.

This narrows down your results to only 18 hotels. As you browse the results, you will see an Express Deal like the image below. Look for the following “clues” and remember them:

Find out the hotel’s name

With those 3 clues, finding the hotel name is fairly easy. It gets harder when you search for hotels in a dense neighbourhood with a lot more properties. In this example, Fairmont The Palm is the only hotel that matches the clues perfectly. Note that the “was” price, customer rating and total reviews are usually rounded to make things more “fun” for you.

How to book

You may go back to the Express Deal to complete the booking and enjoy the 31% discount. But smart travellers do not stop here. By clicking through Rakuten, you will get 8% cashback on top of the above savings! Remember to close all Priceline windows on your device before clicking through.

If you are new to Rakuten, sign up through this link to get an extra US$10 after your first spending. Cashback earned through Rakuten can be transferred to your PayPal account, which can then be transferred to your local bank account.