What are the best hotel booking sites?

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jackyleunght2002

392 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3339369 4-Feb-2025 22:59

I will go to the 3rd party website and check their prices. trivago, hotel etc etc. I even use the airnz hotel booking website

then once I found the one i like, goto their official check their pricing as well.

I often checked, and the prices on the official website are equal to those listed by Trivago.

If I used Airnz, I can get airpoints?

Jacky

duckDecoy

896 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#3339476 5-Feb-2025 10:04

Senecio:

None of them are inherently bad if you replace the phrase "booking site" with "searching site". Booking.com, Trivago, Tripadvisor etc... are all great sites to cast your net wide and see what is available in the city you want to stay on the dates you intend to travel. Once I've done that I always contact the hotel directly to make a booking. I've never paid more than the best price quoted on any of those sites and often pay less or get free extras thrown in.

And as pointed out above, having a booking that is direct with the service provider rather than through a 3rd party gives a piece of mind if you need to cancel or change that booking.

We used booking.com for lots of stuff on a recent trip to America, and discovered that if you have an issue you need to deal with Booking.com rather than the car rental / hotel themselves, but they don't make that obvious in the booking details they send you (it is there, but definitely not well telegraphed). Caught us out a couple of times when the place we were booked with had issues, Booking.com doesn't let you deal direct you have to deal with Booking.com to let them try and sort it which is incredibly inefficient and in our case took HOURS to resolve.

cheeryking

12 posts

Geek

#3339484 5-Feb-2025 10:33

Depends on what hotels are you looking to book.

I have a close friend works as a travel advisor based in NZ and they have booking portals directly linked to the hotel chain/group. Mid/high end tier properties/hotels often come with extra perks such as USD100 property credit, room upgrades, early/late check out etc. No extra fees, pay at hotel and it's considered booking direct so you still get your hotel loyalty points.

Pretty handy for the hotel stays or special occasions without being a frequent guest locked to a chain, but enjoy all the frequent guests perks.

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