...grab a piece of paper, find a pen or pencil, and determine precisely how many bids we can place without waiting 24 hours to bid again!

For this tutorial, we are going to check how many Priceline bids we could place for a 4-star hotel in New York City by adding new areas to our request. If, however, you're not interested in bidding for a 4-star hotel, Priceline does offer some New York City Hotels from $75!

Got your #2 pencil ready? Let's begin...

Step 1: Visit Priceline.com

Click on the hotel tab, enter the "city or airport" information, and choose your check-in/check-out dates. Click on the "Name Your Own Price" link, followed by the "bid now" button.

Step 2: Select Each Zone Separately

I know, I know, the screenshot below shows 'Step 1' as "[choosing] where you want to stay." Just by virtue of reading this, you are already one step ahead of the game, so this is step 2 for us! ;)

The trick here is to determine which zones have 4-star hotels and which do not, so always begin by selecting the first zone and only the first zone.

As you can see, after we toggled the first zone - Brooklyn - all of the star levels became active and clickable except for the option to choose a "4-Star Deluxe" hotel. This means that Priceline offers no 4-star hotels in the 'Brooklyn area!'

I hope you are jotting this down! :)

You can now add the next zone - Central Park South - and see whether or not Priceline offers 4-star hotels in that zone.

Though you can leave Brooklyn checked, given that we know there are no 4-star hotels in that zone, I recommend that you untoggle it to be safe. There's nothing worse than to transcribe all the zones without 4-star hotels on the aforementioned sheet of paper, only to find that you missed one and end up somewhere you didn't want to be; been there, done that. :)

Continue to check each zone one at a time and write down which zones have 4-star hotels.

Step 3: Know Your (Rebid) Zones!

Stop! Put your #2 pencils down!

How many zones do not have 4-star hotels for which you can bid?

There are five(5) Priceline zones in New York City that do not have 4-star hotels:

• Brooklyn
• Chelsea Area
• Long Island City
• Madison Square Garden - Convention Area
• Upper East Side

So what, right? Here's where it gets good!

Assume you are about to place a Priceline hotel bid for a 4-star hotel in New York City in, say, Times Square (Times Square - Theatre District). Further assume that you searched our database for winning Priceline bids for New York City and decided to start your bidding at $110/night, which is currently the lowest bid that Priceline has accepted from our members.

Priceline rejects your $110/night bid. Now what?

Now you add any of the 5 zones we determined to not have a 4-star hotel and increase your bid ever-so-slightly! Given that you changed your itinerary by adding an area that was not included in the initial bid for Times Square, Priceline will let you bid again without waiting 24-hours!

So Priceline rejects your $110/night bid - fine! Add 'Brooklyn' zone and bid $115/night (or another increment of your choosing; more on this in future tutorials). Rejected? Add 'Chelsea Area' and fire again. What? Rejected again? Add 'Long Island City' and fire again!

What? Rejected again? No problem! You have two more rebid zones!

Well, actually, you can fire a lot more rebids at Priceline for this itinerary without the wait, but we'll save that class for next time...