Prices can go down as you get closer to your travel date, then sharply up in the last few days. I found rates at the same hotel to be lower if I was bidding a few weeks out, higher if I was bidding more than a month away, and sometimes even higher bidding only one day in advance.

“That demand falls off towards the end of the week when hotels see that they're not going to fill their rooms, so they start decreasing the prices by Friday and Saturday, making those days the best time to book a hotel.” Another way that booking hotels differs from booking flights is flexibility.

Priceline offers two different ways to save significant amounts of money on hotels: Express Deals and Pricebreakers. You can also get special discounts when you call Priceline for cruise bookings. These are unpublished deals and not available online.

A 2022 NerdWallet study analyzed more than 2,500 hotel room rates from 2019 through the first half of 2021 and found an average of 13 percent savings for those who booked 15 days in advance as compared to those who booked four months in advance.