Once you have found your dream hotel or the two or three hotels you like most, it gets down to find the best price.
I always start with the hotel website to get a reference point, before I scroll through two or three other booking websites. But watch out: Quite often, the indicated prices do not include taxes or even have hidden charges. Hence, before you get too excited because of an appealing price, always check the real costs at the end of the booking process.
Now let’s dig a bit deeper. Let’s start with the online booking platform Agoda. Whenever I come across a hot deal on Agoda, I enter my credit card details as well as my phone number, without pressing send though, unless you are super stoked about getting phone calls from random people of Agoda – not funny! Actually, before the COVID-19 pandemic, they tried to reach me several times, encouraging me to book immediately whilst presenting pretty nice offers. Such offers included 10% discounts, free cancellations and room up-grades. Not bad, isn’t it?
Another great platform is hotels.com. Especially the “book 10 nights and get 1 for free” deal gets me every time. I mean, let’s be real: who doesn’t love to get something for free?
Yet, hotels.com is not the one offering a great loyalty program. Discovery also makes use of additional benefits such as local experiences or a relaxing massage for free on top of a hotel booking. Despite the pricy accommodations, these offers are serious game changers.
It is important to mention that for longer stays, you might want to check the rates daily. Believe it or not but booking websites can be quite nasty and are constantly fooling you. It happened to me quite a few times where on one day, one website was cheaper than the other, and on the next day, vice versa. Evidently, this can be cumbersome! Also, make sure to use the special request field to inform the hotel in case you decide to book through different booking websites, that is, that you circumvent changing rooms.
As soon as you find the cheapest price on a booking platform, it is best to make a screenshot, send it to the hotel and ask whether it matches their system. For preferential reasons, I always directly book with the hotel, since the chance to get complementary up-grades is much higher like that.
Did I spark your interest? Here are all my previous posts/tips:
Post 1 – How you can find your dream hotel
Post 2 – Describe your dream hotel
Post 3 – Locate your dream hotel using Google Maps
Post 4 – Discover your dream hotel by searching for new openings
Post 5 – Search for your dream hotel on online hotel portals
Having worked in hotel reservations, I can definitely agree on what you said. Good advice!!!