Comments on: Nighthacker: How to find the perfect hotel room online

By: Surm

Surm — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:55:14 +0000

Great post.

We travel with kids and usually prefer apartments. Wotif.com allows searching for apartments (1-bedroom, 2-bedroom etc) but I found it to be a difficult task with other search engines. With HotelsCombined.com, I select “Kitchenette” and that results are apartments most of the time. Wego.com does not have that option.

Some chains (Meriton, Mirvac, Accor) guarantee bookings made on their websites are to be the cheapest. They also have flexible rates that can be cancelled. When making travel plans, I make a flexible booking a few months ahead. That gives me the option of cancelling the booking and snatching up a cheapr, pre-paid rate offered close to the actual traveling date.

By: roshodgekiss

roshodgekiss — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:39:26 +0000

Good point, I’ve been using Google Maps for finding the location of specific hotels. Especially with Asian addresses being so lax (eg. no street numbers), user-contributed locations on GM are by far more accurate than taking the hotel’s word for it, or simply guessing where a hotel is on a five kilometre stretch of road.

By: Dean

Dean — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:17:20 +0000

One more tool I might suggest into the mix is Google Earth. It is useful to have a look at the motel’s statement “only as short walk from…” or “Ten minutes from…”

By: roshodgekiss

roshodgekiss — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:33:40 +0000

Thanks, Fenn, well that’s for taking my AirAsia review idea – beat me by a country mile

By: Fenn

Fenn — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:27:26 +0000

Drat, you stole my blog post idea!

But yes, you’re absolutely right, TripAdvisor is, without doubt, the best way to find hotels that are actually decent and not just what has the highest profit margin for the agents.

I have also noticed that the price difference between the resellers seems to be (bizarrely) high, in that you can sometimes pay 50% less on one site vs another (this makes no sense to me).

Excellent advice here – all who read should heed!

Cheers!

Fenn.

By: roshodgekiss

roshodgekiss — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:39:30 +0000

You make some great points here, especially regards payment upfront vs. leaving a security deposit. I find that hostel booking sites in particular simply take a deposit (~10%), which is much kinder to the wallet if you change your mind. For example, if you miss the cancellation / amendment deadline on some booking sites, the penalty can be 50% of the room rate or more!

Keep in mind that when booking through Australian travel businesses, you may be covered by the Travel Compensation Fund – http://www.tcf.org.au . This means that you can be compensated if you book through a participating company that consequently goes under.

Good luck with your future bookings!

By: young_dazza

young_dazza — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:20:35 +0000

Great article. I fully agree that tripadvisor is your first stop when researching which hotel. Its invaluable! Thanks for the tip about Wego etc – great sites!!
Another thing to consider when buying accommodation online is that some sites (such as hotelclub, expedia) require payment upfront, and can have very harsh cancellation policies. Where as others (eg venere, ratestogo) require you to put down your credit card as security, but you actually pay when you get to the hotel.
After having purchased a gift vouchers online and having the companies go bust before I could use them (yes it happened on two different occasions, and these were very professional, popular websites!), I strongly prefer not paying upfront, just in case the website goes bust before your holiday. (imagine 7 nights at 300/night – thats a LOT of money to lose).