Internet Hotel Booking Tips
Posted by Jackie Hewett on Sat 7th April 2007 at 10:49 PM, Filed in Travel Tips
When looking for and booking hotels via the internet where should you start?
My best advice is research, research and more research! If you want to be sure of getting a hotel that will meet your requirements, and at the best possible price there are a few simple things you can do.
Firstly do a general Google search on the town / area you want to stay. Once you have found a few hotels that are potentially of interest look them up on ‘http:www.tripadviser.com’. This is a site on which members of the public publish their opinions on hotels in which they have stayed.
Another site you can try is ‘http:www.igoyougo.com’ that also store images of hotel rooms downloaded from people’s phone cameras. Other sites take this a stage further:
The following are all part of http://www.hotelsbycity.com:
And
http://www.hotelchatter.com/ seems to specialise in keeping a finger on the pulse regarding what’s going up / trendy and what’s going down in the world of boutique hotels.
Of course we all have different opinions and standards, but if you view a number of different comments about a given hotel I have found, on balance, the information on tripadviser to be pretty accurate. It is worth taking note of the dates of the feedback given as of course Hotel ownership does change and hotels that were once good can go downhill surprisingly rapidly under different management or the reverse.
Once you have found a hotel you think you want to book also check out the hotel’s own website if they have one, but be careful to ensure you have found the right site, not that of an agent. I do this for two reasons. Firstly, they may have more photos on their own site (or sometime a virtual tour), and secondly you will often get a better deal / price by booking with the hotel direct rather than through an agent. Organisations like Expedia take around 30% of the price you pay (and charge you around 10% booking fee!), so if you call the hotel direct you can often bargain with them to get a price of around 25% less than you’d get it for booking through Expedia and avoid the booking fee.
That said, when recently looking for a hotel in Rome I booked through the following site: http://www.hoteltravel.com because they could get me a price that was about a third less than going direct to the 4 star hotel I was booking. I was initially wary as they seem to be based in Thailand and I could find little information about them. Being more than a little suspicious, before booking through them I checked them out with Barclaycard to be told they weren’t aware of any problems or anything negative with the company. Of course using my Barclaycard meant I’d be covered if anything went wrong anyway. So, I went ahead and booked through them. The booking was fine and the discount genuine so I would definitely use them again, but they primarily large towns and cover cities so you can’t use them for everywhere.
Once you have successfully booked on-line I’d advise you to print out and keep a copy of your on-line booking and take it with you on your trip. Most organisations do send you a confirmation email, but these do not always detail everything about your booking. Having a print out with you can save arguments when you are weary on arrival.
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