Priceline’s Express Deals are popular among travelers for offering hotel discounts of up to 60% off. To get that price, however, customers have to sacrifice a pretty important detail: they won’t know exactly which hotel they’re booking before they pay.
According to a TikTok creator who says she formerly worked for the online travel agency, there is a “hack” that lets travelers get the discount without going in completely blind.
In a recent TikTok that has gotten over 32,5000 views, New Orleans, Louisiana woman Ariel (@arieltusa) reveals what the Priceline hack is, saying she just used it for one of her upcoming trips.
“Secret travel hack: booking an Express Deal hotel on Priceline,” she wrote on the video’s text overlay.
“I used to work at Priceline before I was laid off in 2024, so I don’t care about telling you this,” she says. “I am using it to plan a trip.”
According to Ariel, the first thing to know is that travelers are most likely to get the best price when they use the Priceline app.
“This isn’t even a hack,” she says. “But you’re gonna get the best [price] on their app.”
The actual hack, she says, is in Priceline’s Express Deals. She explains that if customers select this option, Priceline shows them a discounted rate and a few possible hotels, without revealing exactly which one they will get before checkout.
“They don’t want to tell you what the hotel is,” she says. “It’s to preserve the hotel’s ability to have a better price on their own website.”
But according to Ariel, there is a clue hidden in the listing.
“When it says, ‘This is your room,’ and it’s like ‘This might not be your exact room,’ it might not be your exact room, but it is going to be a picture of the hotel you will get,” she explains.
So, Ariel says, all travelers need to do is take a screenshot of that room photo and run it through a reverse Google image search.
“And now you know what hotel,” she says.
The reason a customer might want to know which hotel they are booking before paying is not just a matter of preference.
Some travelers have expressed disappointment in the past over the type of experience Priceline seemed to offer versus what they actually ended up getting. “They gave me a basic [expletive] small room for the price of a suite at a casino hotel,” one Yelp reviewer wrote.
An Express Deal is also non-refundable and non-changeable, according to the company’s terms and conditions.
Having said that, the hack Ariel shared isn’t foolproof. It can work well if Priceline uses a photo that the hotel also uses in its own marketing materials, or one that is clearly associated with that property online.
She isn’t the only one pointing this out, either. In a 2022 post on r/YouShouldKnow, one Reddit user mentioned a tool that appears to exist for this exact purpose. It’s an extension for Google Chrome called TripChipper, per their post.
According to them, the tool “predicts with very high accuracy the name of the hotel” behind a Priceline Express Deal. They added that it saved them from booking a “crummy” option on a recent trip to San Francisco. Instead, they say they ended up booking a “sweet five star resort.”
In the comments, some viewers said they have used other clues to figure out which hotel is hiding behind a Priceline Express Deal.
“Just look at the ratings (ex. 300+ 4.5 star and neighborhood) and look at the hotels with the same ratings,” one wrote. “So far, I’m 100% with my guesses.”
Another commenter claimed the hack Ariel shared no longer works, however.
“I used to do this for years. But it doesn’t work as reliably as it once did,” they wrote. “I think they know people do this. I see far more generic photos not of the actual hotel these days.”
A third commenter suggested a different technique.
“When you find out which hotel it is, call them and book direct,” they wrote. “You get better service booking direct and the points that come with it.”
But not everyone agrees that booking direct is best.
“Except the Priceline Hot Deals are almost always cheaper than booking direct with the hotel in my experience,” one wrote.
Priceline and Ariel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
@arieltusa #travelhack #cheaphotels ♬ original sound – Ariel 💖
