priceline.com? has announced that it is offering automatic Pricedrop Protection for all airline tickets and Priceline Vacation Packages as part of a special Spring travel promotion that applies to all bookings made through to 1 June 2009.  The new promotion, which is free to consumers, is ground-breaking because it makes priceline.com the only major online travel agency to offer no booking fees and automatic Pricedrop Protection on its published-price airfares and vacation packages. Priceline.com was the first major online travel agency to eliminate booking fees on published-price domestic and international airfares in 2007 and does not charge booking fees on its vacation packages or rental cars. In 2008, priceline.com reduced its booking fees on published-price hotel rooms to help consumers obtain bottom-line prices that are lower than the prices they would find at any other major online travel agency.

The new promotion broadens priceline.com’s low-price leadership position among the major online travel agencies and will help budget-conscious Americans who want to take a vacation this year. “We believe the online travel agency landscape has become confusing for consumers, with different booking sites offering some promotional benefits, but not others,” said priceline.com’s President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffery H. Boyd. “Priceline.com decided to eliminate the confusion by combining all of the best promotional elements currently in the market into a simple, one-stop solution for travelers. The priceline.com brand is known for having the best deals among online travel agencies. We believe this new promotion further strengthens that brand message.”

For full details and terms and conditions on priceline.com’s new Pricedrop Protection service, visit www.priceline.com.

The Spring travel promotion features:

  * Automatic Pricedrop Protection for airline tickets. This feature guarantees that customers will get the best priceline.com price for their flights. It also provides important peace of mind for customers who want to book their tickets early and still be protected if ticket prices fall later. Priceline.com’s automatic Pricedrop Protection applies to published-price and Name Your Own Price? airline tickets. Here’s how it works: If you book a priceline.com airline ticket and another customer subsequently books the same ticket at a lower published fare, priceline.com will automatically send you a check for the difference, from $1 up to a maximum of $300 per ticket. Checks will be processed within 30 days of the completion of your trip.

  * Automatic Pricedrop Protection for Priceline Vacation Packages. This feature guarantees that customers will get the best priceline.com price for their vacation packages. If you book a priceline.com vacation package and another customer subsequently books the same package at a lower price prior to departure, priceline.com will automatically send you a check for the difference, from $1 up to a maximum of $600 per package involving a hotel component, and up to $300 for air and rental car packages. Checks will be processed within 30 days of the completion of your trip.
  * No booking fees on priceline.com’s published-price airline tickets, rental cars and vacation package services. Don’t know if another online travel agency is charging you booking fees? The solution is easy - Come to priceline.com where you know you won’t be charged booking fees on your airline tickets, rental cars and vacation packages. And that means you’ll save.

Priceline.com also offers a broad suite of trip-planning features, called Inside Track, that helps travelers track historic and current prices for the trips they want to take, and even be alerted should prices change in the future. Some of the features of Inside Track include:

  * Fare Trend Analysis. Customers will see whether fares for their desired trip have gone up or down recently - and by what percent. Click on the links to see examples for trips from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
  * Fare Trend Charting. Inside Track creates an easy to follow graph showing last year’s and this year’s weekly price trends for a specific trip. Click on the link to see a sample chart for a Philadelphia to Chicago trip.
  * Individual Market-Specific Best Days To Fly Calendar - Fares can vary dramatically depending on travel dates. For a specific trip, customers can select a month and Inside Track will show them day-by-day round-trip and one-way fare comparisons. This feature, one of priceline.com’s most popular during the holidays, has been enhanced to focus on any trip and time frame a customer chooses. Click on the link to see a sample calendar for a trip from Atlanta to Dallas.
  * Price Drop Alerts. Customers who put their favorite trips into their personalized Priceline traveler profile will receive e-mail alerts when fares drop for specific travel dates they’ve searched. The alerts contain the departure and return dates, the old price, the new price and the percentage savings. Customers also receive alerts when the overall price for a ticket drops.
  * Latest Flight Price Trends From Around The Country. This feature tracks and shows flight price trends to and from different destinations around the country.

  * Sample Fares To Destinations Around the World. - Using an interactive map of the U.S., customers can click on a highlighted city or choose from a drop-down menu of hundreds more cities. Inside Track will instantly display a collection of recent fares from that city to other destinations around the U.S. - and around the world.

As always, priceline.com customers looking for a particular trip will be presented with an easily searchable grid of different published-price fares from all the leading network airlines, as well as regional and low-cost airlines such as JetBlue.
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