Skyauction – the upscale Priceline?
Travel Tips — By Chris on November 4, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Move over, Priceline. I have a new go-to site for hotel deals, at least when I’m looking for a resort or something a little on the luxe side: Skyauction.com.
Essentially, Skyauction works like eBay, selling primarily hotel and resort stays, flights and restaurant coupons. You can’t name your own price a la Priceline, as you have to go through the auction process. There’s a minimum bid to get started and – perhaps the hardest to stomach – a $49 per night service fee (plus a one-night $20 processing fee).
Even with these hefty surcharges, there are great deals to be had, particularly in the Caribbean. Unlike luxurylink.com – which specializes mostly in multi-night packages at top resorts – SkyAuction bids are mostly per night. So you are only paying for what you want, for as many nights as you need.
Here’s an example of the savings. I had wanted to stay at some of Grenada’s newer luxury resorts, but even a travel agent I asked couldn’t get me under $200 a night. MyMoosie on the Fodors forum – a Grenada expert, with six trips under her belt – told me to try Skyauction.
Sure enough, I won a $101 nightly rate for not a standard room, but a deluxe two-bedroom villa at Maca Bana Villas. I’m sitting in it now, and it’s sick. Think full kitchen, separate living room/dining room, laundry facilities, gigantic porch balcony, ocean view, private courtyard with outdoor hot tub. There’s definitely room here for two couples or a family – and for $157 a night, that’s a great deal (and more than half off the room’s $488 rack rate).
I haven’t tried it elsewhere. But scanning at the site right now, I’m seeing a $2 starting bid for the Royal Hideaway Playacar in Mexico (a five-star all-inclusive) and a $4 starting bid for the Viceroy in Miami (along with a ton of no-name hotels..unlike luxurylink, which usually has top tier properties, you do have to search among the chaff to find the gems. Luckily there aren’t a ton of listings).
The other thing I like about Skyauction (so far) is that you aren’t treated like a second-class citizen – which, let’s face it, can happen when US hotels figure out you are a Priceline customer. The manager acknowledged that I had a sweet deal through the site, but said it was better to work with them than to have the rooms empty. I have another Skyauction stay coming up later in my trip, so we’ll see if this attitude carries through.
This doesn’t mean that I’m giving up Priceline altogether. I’ve definitely received some great deals, especially in major US cities. But I’m going to add Skyauction to my regular search, especially if I’m looking for someplace warm and resort-y.
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6 Comments
Skyauction used to be the domain of timeshare inventory auctions for off-season dates. Great bargains, but hey off-season like Caribbean in summer and New England in winter and spring.
2009 has seen SkyAuction offer its most upscale lodging auctions. Luxury hotels like Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, and upscale chains like Westin, Fairmont, Omni, Hilton, Marriott have all dumped inventory on SkyAuction.
There are some great deals. Just be sure to check the hotel websites for multi-night stay special offers and AAA rates to know where to limit your bidding.
I watch San Francisco hotel rates closely and there have been several times this year I watched SkyAuction bids go higher than special offer room rates from the hotels.
SkyAuction is less useful for airline tickets unless you really have a good sense of what airlines sales are like. I see many airline tickets bid higher than going rates during sales.
Ric – Thanks for commenting! Yes, you are right – you need to make sure what price you are willing to spend, including the surcharges, to make the purchase worthwhile (but that’s the same strategy one should have for Priceline as well).
Enjoyed your posting on SkyAuction.com. I am a long time Priceline user and have used them nearly exclusively for past 5 or 6 years with excellent results. However, it does get annoying when some hotels give you the worst possible room in the building. I stumbled onto SkyAuction.com this past fall when my wife did not like some of the hotels offered in Italy via Priceline (Name Your Price – used betterbidding.com & biddingfortravel.com for the hotel lists that had previous winning bids). I have been scooping up some auctions this past fall and I am a little nervous on how the whole process will work out since the auctions were not directly through the hotel but via Small Luxury Hotels (slh.com). I won two this past fall @ $240 & $252 (with just the $20 processing charge, listing did not have anything about additional taxes). I booked the first auction @ Ca’Sagredo in Venice for 3 nights for $782, the best available rate I’ve seen is $1,146 (Plus Tax). I thought that was pretty good deal. I got emailed a hotel confirmation letter. Did you get one of these? The other auction that I won, I attempted to get JK Place in Florence (was rejected due to a wedding), Hotel Splendide Royal in Rome (was rejected, given no reason), and lately I am trying to get Villa Spalletti Trivelli in Rome (was told hotel didn’t reserve rooms seven months in advance and to try back in early 2010). I sent my email to try again on 1/26/2010 and haven’t heard back. I highly doubt they will grant me it because the rooms are $858 per night. Got a couple other hotels to request if I am rejected again. I also won an auction for the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans for $68 (Plus $49 for tax) which was about $40 cheaper than the online rate. The reservation process for this one was direct and much smoother. The requests for Small Luxury Hotels take a week or two for a response (rejection or confirmation). Just hope I don’t run into any issues since I’ll be in a foreign country and SkyAuction has non-existant Customer Service. I figure I’ll call the hotel two weeks before I leave to ensure I am in the system. I did that for Hotel Monteleone and everything was confirmed, leave for that trip in a few weeks. By the way like the site and bookmarked.
Matt – Thanks for posting your experience with SkyAuction. I have a friend who has booked after winning Small Hotels of the World, and she didn’t have any problems. I think it depends on what you are trying to get, as you’ve found.
I’m also a big Priceline fan, when I just want any four-star in a city. I also use Better Bidding to figure out what I’m getting. I’ve had good luck with Hotwire as well. You just have to watch the taxes.
Have you tried LuxuryLink? That’s my next frontier.
Thanks for bookmarking the site and hope to see you back, as it sounds like you go on a lot of great trips!
I haven’t tried LuxuryLink. It is on my list of web sites that I check out before booking travel. The only drawback to LuxuryLink is auctions are nonrefundable, unlike SkyAuction. For instance if your dates are not available you cannot get your money back (you do have option of selecting alternative dates though). This may not be an issue for others, but it is for me since my wife has her vacation for the following year set in stone the preceding December. I also use hotwire quite frequently too, because the hotels are easily identifiable and we sometimes take our dog along (need to know who’s pet-friendly).