July 02, 2008: Following up on its elimination of all booking fees on published-price domestic and international airfares, priceline.com has decided to eliminate change/cancel fees on its published-price hotel reservation service.
The moves, which will lower bottom-line prices for hotel rooms reserved through priceline.com, take effect immediately.
“The fee chops announced today are expected to put millions of dollars of savings back into our hotel customers’ pockets, as we have already done with our elimination of booking fees on published-price airline tickets,” said Tim Gordon, priceline.com’s Senior Vice President, Hotels. “Priceline is working hard to keep our prices lower than Expedia.com, Travelocity and Orbitz. We believe that, once consumers check out the bottom line on their hotel bill, they will make Priceline their #1 hotel booking choice among the major online travel agencies.”
The three fee chops announced today are:
1. Priceline has permanently lowered its booking fees for all published-price hotel reservations.
2. Priceline will no longer charge a fee to cancel a published-price hotel reservation.
3. Priceline will no longer charge a fee to change a published-price hotel reservation.
Almost all other major online hotel reservation services continue to charge as much as $25 in change/cancel fees for certain reservations. Today’s fee cancellations by Priceline do not affect change or cancel rules that may be required by specific hotels.
