How to search Priceline for flights

Priceline sells flights like any other agency. The famous bid-for-your-own-price mechanism is long gone from flights, though opaque discounts still exist on hotels and cars.

What Priceline is good at

• Bundles. Same logic as Expedia: flight plus hotel or car hides the hotel rate and lowers the total.
• Opaque hotel and car rates. You see the star rating and the neighbourhood, not the brand, until you have paid. The discount is real and the trade is that you cannot change your mind.

What to watch for

Do not use Priceline as your only search. It shares an owner with Kayak, and Kayak searches Priceline along with everyone else, so the sibling is strictly the better starting point.

Opaque bookings are usually non-refundable by design. That is the deal you are making, and it is a bad deal on anything you might need to move.

Use it like this

1. Use it for the hotel or car, not the flight. That is where the opaque discount is.
2. If you do search flights, use the filters to exclude long layovers before comparing prices, because the cheapest result is often the worst routing.
3. Never book an opaque rate for dates you might need to move. They are final.
4. Cross-check anything you find here on Kayak, which searches Priceline anyway.

Verdict

Useful for a hotel you do not care about the name of. For flights, search Kayak instead and buy from the airline.

Common questions

Who owns Priceline?

Booking Holdings.

Does Priceline sell tickets directly?

Yes. It is an online travel agency, so the ticket contract is with them rather than the airline.