Fort Lauderdale Hotels on Priceline

$90 per night – Fort Lauderdale’s Westin Diplomat

I’m travelling to Fort Lauderdale and used Priceline to book my hotel stay. As a strong advocate of Priceline, I want to offer some insider tips on Fort Lauderdale Hotels on Priceline.

Better Bidding Priceline

As any savvy Priceline customer knows, there are risks involved when you book a hotel room on the site. In addition to the non-refund / non-cancellation policy, there are a few other risks you should be aware of for better bidding on Priceline:

Hotel rooms are only guaranteed to accommodate a maximum of two guests. Despite travelling with 4 people, I took a chance on this one. Since I’m not travelling for a few months, I don’t know how this will turn out. It very well may be that I get burned by this but the price I got for my stay was too good to resist.

Amenities are not guaranteed. Whenever I travel with my family, and especially my kids, having a swimming pool at a hotel is a must. Under normal circumstances, I would avoid Priceline on this very premise alone. However, in this case, I was able to ensure the likelihood of getting a hotel with a swimming pool was very high. Here’s what I did: I used the Priceline Fort Lauderdale hotel list to get a pretty good feel as to what hotel I would likely get. It was easy to narrow it down since I was bidding on a 4-star hotel in certain zones. This left me with about a half dozen candidate hotels that I would likely get (according to the list). I checked out each of these hotels on TripAdvisor and they all had pools. Thus, I was fairly confident I’d get a hotel with a pool. I took a chance and it worked. Both hotels I booked had pools. Phew.

Fort Lauderdale Priceline Bidding Zones

Although the city is fairly large and has a total of 11 Priceline bidding zones, the vast majority of visitors to Fort Lauderdale stay in 1 of 3 areas: the airport, the beach, or Hollywood.

Fort Lauderdale Airport (FLL) – I’m flying into Orlando but coming home via FLL. For any traveller who is considering Fort Lauderdale Airport as a Priceline bidding zone, chances are you’re flying in or flying out of FLL. This is not a destination area but a convenience for those flying in and out of the city.

Fort Lauderdale Beach – This is a vacationer’s epicentre of the city. The bidding zone is a long narrow strip along the beach, and wonderful for vacationers. Note though that although the zone includes the word “beach”, not all properties are immediately on the beach. You could be across the street or a half block or so away. There are a couple of “Resorts” in this zone, which I will check out when I’m there, but presumably they are quite awesome. Slightly lower in the pecking order but still great are the 4-star hotels in the beach area. A word for the wise… check out the Priceline winning bids in the Priceline Forum. Chances are if you bid on a 4-star hotel on Priceline in this zone, you’re going to get the Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Beach hotel. This is the hotel I got when I booked. Reviews of this are mixed… it seems like it’s trying very hard to be a 4 star hotel but might fall a bit short.

Hollywood – South of Ft. Lauderdale is the bidding zone on Priceline simply called Hollywood. This is a zone that has many hotels along the beach but not all (so be careful). I booked a hotel here and got the Westin Diplomat, a crazy huge hotel that looks like a lot of fun. This hotel comes up ALL THE TIME. See Priceline winning bids as well as Hotwire winning bids for Fort Lauderdale. Chances are if you bid on a 4-star hotel in the Hollywood zone, you’re going to get this hotel. I did, and I fully expected I would. There are a few other hotels in this zone but they don’t come up nearly as often.