Travel Hotel Booking Sites – The holidays are coming and the world is slowly healing from travel restrictions. Some of us long for the opportunity to travel again. Yet when you search for the best hotels in [insert destination here], you’re faced with an explosion of information.
As you click through each website and platform, you suddenly won’t be able to move on to the next step. How do you compare? Which platform is best for what? And what is safe?
Travel Hotel Booking Sites
In this article, we want to compare nine popular hotel booking sites to see the pros and cons of each site and provide you with the knowledge to make the best decision in booking the best hotel deals for yourself!
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There are three types of online hotel platforms: online travel agency (OTA); aggregators/metasearch engines; and direct hotel booking sites, websites from the hotel chain itself. In this article, we will focus on two categories of hotel booking platforms.
Online travel agencies are websites that provide a platform for all things related to travel. They can range from flight booking to hotel booking to booking tickets to tourist attractions. There is often overlap in what kind of services they offer and some OTA platforms offer bundles (Agoda has flight and hotel bundles; KKday has hotel and attraction packages etc.)
The pros about OTAs, in general, are that they are direct intermediaries between you and your hotel chain. This means transactions are much easier to make as all you have to do is use their platform to checkout instead of being redirected. They tend to offer membership perks that allow you to save on accommodation costs through deals, discount codes, reward nights and more.
Disadvantages of OTAs are that they usually only provide one price on that platform and it’s usually their fixed price, which can be a hassle if your priority is to find the best price in the market for that particular room. . They may not even have hotels or rooms on their platform, which can be deceiving if you’ve got that dream room you’ve been wanting if you search on another site.
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Aggregators, or metasearch engines, are websites that compare hotel deals from different OTAs and direct booking websites to show you which is the lowest price or best deal. What they have in common with OTAs is the details they provide about hotel information. Examples of aggregators are Trivago, Skyscanner, TripAdvisor, Kayak, HotelsCombined and Google.
The pros of aggregators, in general, are that they are not limited to one platform’s pricing, making it easier for you to compare prices between different locations. They do not restrict OTAs to rooms available only through direct booking from the hotel website.
The disadvantage of aggregators is that they redirect you to another website. Further prolonging the transaction process (except hotel-affiliated). Since their business model is different, they don’t have any membership/rewards perks and incentives like direct bookings from OTAs or hotels.
Since there isn’t much difference between aggregators other than the amount of information provided for a hotel or which OTA/hotel websites they’re pulling to get the best price, we won’t compare them in the article.
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We use Hotel G as a control variable to show the different cost structures between each OTA and price through direct booking. The room we will be booking is a “Good Queen Room” for two from Hotel G for the weekend (Check-in: 25 June Sat; Check-out: 26 June, Sun). Breakfast not included. Prices vary from hotel to hotel when it comes to different platforms and note that different platforms may have lower prices than others compared to the price shown here.
Agoda’s homepage has a minimalistic search design that allows you to search according to your travel requirements. If you’re a solo traveler looking for something on your own, Agoda lets you save up to 12% per booking.
Agoda’s bundle deals make Agoda an attractive website if you want to save more on big-ticket expenses like airfare and accommodation, freeing up your spending to enjoy your destinations more. Agoda also has excellent price-match guarantees, as if you find a cheaper rate on another website they will match the price for the same room and condition.
Available filter options include a secret deal list to view highly discounted hotels and insider deals. You can enjoy hidden deals which are not visible in search engine unless logged in. That means if any aggregate website shows Agoda as the best value for money for that hotel, you better believe they have more discounts up their sleeves for members. Agoda offers Tiered Membership (AgodaVIP) packages as you book more for travel services using their platform. Each membership provides you with up to 25% of the highest tier VIP deals.
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Many of the available rooms offer the flexibility to pay now or later with a free cancellation policy. You can also find hotels that don’t require a credit card to book. Essential features like cleanliness, location, value for money, facilities and service are also rated by users.
If you’re the kind of person who likes to stay at well-known hotel chains like Ibis, Hilton, Carlton, Conrad, Westin and more, AccorPlus offers great promotional rates for free if you sign up as a member.
AccorPLus offers all its members a 10% discount on hotel rates on top of their already low prices compared to other hotels; Hot deals range from 50% to 50% off. A night’s stay at Fairmont Hotel Singapore over the weekend (since they don’t have Hotel G) costs S$5526 on all other platforms but S$447.20 on AccorPlus without the membership discount.
You can enjoy up to 50% off dining and 15% off drinks when you book a hotel at over 1,400 restaurants worldwide, providing the best package for dining and stay!
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If you’re planning to stay at a non-chain hotel, or a smaller chain that isn’t generally known due to cheaper hotel rates or a different experience, AccorPlus may not be the best platform to use.
AccorPlus offers all its members a 10% discount on hotel rates on top of their already low prices compared to other hotels; Hot deals range from 50% to 50% off. A night’s stay at Fairmont Hotel Singapore over the weekend (since they don’t have Hotel G) costs S$5526 on all other platforms but S$447.20 on AccorPlus without the membership discount.
Trip.com is owned by a Chinese company named cTrip and has the largest number of users in China. As Chinese middle-class tourism grows rapidly, trip.com accommodates their needs by providing a huge variety of accommodation options with more than 1,200,000 hotels in more than 200 countries. This target audience of Chinese tourists visits more often and they are more competitive in price rates for accommodation in Asia, especially in China.
Trip.com has a price alert feature that notifies you via email or app if a hotel price drops below the price you set for an alert. For example, if Hotel A is currently $150 and you set a price alert to $135, trip.com will notify you that the price has dropped below $135. No other OTA platform does this.
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Their app also offers exclusive deals up to 50% off, travel reminders and automatic flight alerts.
Hotels.com and Expedia are both under the Expedia group. They offer a very intuitive platform to customize your booking. While most platforms tend to separate non-refundable options and same-room breakfast options, Expedia and Hotels.com lump them together. Both platforms provide comprehensive details about hotel and room amenities.
Expedia offers a free rewards program to earn and redeem points when you book and travel. Hotels.com, on the other hand, Hotels.com offers more exclusive incentives, such as earning one reward night for every ten nights you stay, as well as offering 10% when you register for the rewards program for free or download their app and log in.
Booking.com is the world’s oldest site for booking hotels. As it has the first mover advantage of having a more established online presence and branding than other platforms, it has the largest variety of accommodations with over 28 million listings in 200+ countries and over 50 million verified guest reviews. Booking.com, like Agoda, also has an excellent reputation for price match guarantees, as they will refund you the difference if you find a cheaper deal elsewhere.
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Booking.com also offers free cancellation, which is not common on other platforms, which is ideal for unexpected last-minute situations. They also have excellent hotel reviews because they are well known.
Klook is one of the best platforms when it comes to everything destination-related. Klook has more travel activities and
