Priceline Announces the Addition of 150,000 Hotel Freebies, Tripling the Size of Its Popular New Service

NORWALK, Conn., March 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN) today announced the launch of a major expansion to its popular Hotel Freebies, a free service on priceline.com www.priceline.com/freebies that lets future hotel guests "mine" priceline.com's extensive global database of published-price hotels for all kinds of valuable hotel freebies like free nights, free breakfast, free parking, room discounts and upgrades.  Priceline also announced the addition of a new hotel freebie category – free Internet access.

More than 150,000 freebies have been added to Priceline's Hotel Freebies, bringing the total number of goodies to more than 200,000.  "Priceline.com hotel customers now have two compelling ways to save money," said Tim Gordon, Priceline Senior Vice President, Hotels.  "They have Priceline's Name Your Own Price® hotel service with savings of up to 60%.  Or, if they prefer to choose a specific hotel, they can mine our Hotel Freebies service to find the hotel that has the particular freebies they want.  Either way, travelers save money on their hotel reservations."

Also today, Priceline announced the results of a survey which found that:

• The top 10 cities with the most hotel freebies are: Houston (807 freebies), Paris (803 freebies), San Antonio (774 freebies), Istanbul (694 freebies), Rome (645 freebies), Atlanta (634 freebies), San Diego (483 freebies), Miami (479 freebies), Thira, Greece (458 freebies) and Indianapolis (451 freebies).

• The top 5 freebies most offered by hotels are: #1 Free Parking, #2 Free Internet, #3 Room discounts, typically 10% or more, #4 Free Breakfast and #5 Hotel Extras, which include special a variety of hotel-specific value-added perks.

• The top 5 freebies among hotel guests, based on actual searches of Priceline's Hotel Freebies database are: #1 Free nights, #2 Room discounts, #3 Free breakfast, #4 Free Internet access and #5 Free parking.

Hotel Freebies provides freebies prospectors with two easy ways to uncover valuable hotel extras:

• Freebie Filter.  Choose a specific type of freebie and the service will retrieve all of the hotels in priceline.com's global hotels database that are offering that particular freebie.  Freebie types include Free Internet Access, Free Parking, Room Upgrades, Instant Discounts, Free Nights, Resort Credits, Spa Credits, Hotel Extras, Golf Credits and Free Breakfast.  The hotel listings include an availability calendar that shows the travel dates when specific freebies are most likely to be available and when travelers can find the lowest prices.  

• City Filter.  Type in a city name.  The freebies service will retrieve the hotels in that city that are offering any type of freebie.  Freebies will be listed along with the lowest room rate found by a Priceline customer in a recent search.  Once you've chosen a city, it's also easy to more finely filter the list by looking for a specific type of freebie.

Once you've settled on a hotel choice, the hotel, along with its freebies, can be easily reserved with a few mouse clicks.

About The Priceline Group of Companies

The Priceline Group of Companies (Nasdaq: PCLN) is a leader in global online hotel reservations, with over 150,000 participating hotels worldwide and 92.8 million room nights booked in 2010.  The Group is composed of four primary brands – Booking.com, priceline.com, Agoda.com and TravelJigsaw. The Priceline Group provides online travel services in Europe, North America, South America, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and Africa.

Based in Amsterdam, Booking.com is a leading international online hotel reservation service operating in 99 countries in 41 languages.  Booking.com offers its customers access to over 120,000 participating hotels worldwide.  In the U.S., priceline.com gives leisure travelers multiple ways to save on their airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, vacation packages and cruises. In addition to getting compelling published prices, travelers can take advantage of priceline.com's famous Name Your Own Price® service, which can deliver the lowest prices available. Priceline.com also operates the following travel websites: Travelweb.com, Lowestfare.com, RentalCars.com and BreezeNet.com. Singapore-based Agoda.com is an Asian online hotel reservation service that offers hotel rooms around the world and is available in 32 languages.  With headquarters in Manchester, UK, TravelJigsaw is a multinational car hire service, offering its reservation services in more than 4,000 locations in 115 countries.  Customer support is provided in 20 languages.

SOURCE Priceline.com