Agoda or Trivago booking sites

Agoda and Booking.com are corporate siblings; you will notice the similar appearance. However they appear to operate somewhat independently so I check both. Agoda comes from Asia which may give some extra exposure there. As for cancellation policies, if the website doesn't clearly spell out the rules, don't use it.
Trivago searches other sites so cancellation rules have to be found through its links. It started in Germany and Expedia is a major shareholder.

Thanks for the clarification !

Trivago has been around since 2005 so it's not that recent. It is partially owned by Expedia and partially publicly owned. My husband swears by it but I usually go directly to the hotels to make my bookings. However, last year, he found us rooms at Hotel d'Aubusson in Paris for significantly less than I was finding at the hotel's website and booking.com. He found the price on Trivago but the booking when we made it was done through hotels.com.

I don't know about you, but I find the Trivago TV ads so annoying that I wouldn't consider using their service! I've always been happy with Booking.com. I understand it's owned by Hotels.com, and I had a really bad experience with the latter, but Booking.com is A-OK as far as I'm concerned.

The Trivago ads don't bother me but I am more of a booking.com user. Most of these online booking sites are owned by either Priceline or Expedia and it is just a matter of personal preference. As of today, the Priceline companies are Booking.com, Priceline.com, Agoda.com, Kayak.com, Cheapflights.com, Rentalcars.com, momondo.com or OpenTable.com and the Expedia companies are Trivago.com, travelocity.com, hotels.com, hotwire.com, Orbitz.com, carrentals.com, Venere.com and a bunch of others. As soon as a smaller company develops any kind of market, it gets bought by one of the biggies.

I recently had a bad experience with Agoda and I recommend always booking directly with a hotel to avoid getting taken advantage of. My situation: a small local hotel would not let me make any changes to a reservation well in advance of check in and charged me huge and predatory "change fees" for attempts at change and cancellation. They want me to pay $625 for a hotel reservation that I never used and handled responsibly. The hotel blames Agoda, and Agoda blames the hotel. If you book directly, you won't get caught in this "he said, she said" scenario. Worst of all, Agoda will not defend me and continues to put the responsibility for the poorly run hotel on me.

Please know if you are booking with these sites but are booking a small independent hotel or B&B, there might be saving by calling directly. Also, it might say that they are full on booking.com etc but not if you call directly.

Booking.com charges 15% in most cases to the hotel and they can usually give you a cheaper alternative or price if you contact them directly.

We own a small motel and this is the case for us.

Also, when we get down to only a few rooms and know that we will get full (busy season) we turn off all our availability with those sites so we don't have to give them the 15% and get full on our own.

Just book directly with the hotel you choose.

Count me in! I can't stand the Trivago spokesman. I won't even look at their site. Who thought a guy who hadn't shaved in two days was good idea?
That aside...I've been very happy with Bookings.com. Though they do lie when they state "only 2 rooms left at this price". My daughter learned that from some of their employees.

I believe I used Agoda a couple of years ago. As I recall, my credit card was billed at the time of reservation. We cancelled and the money was eventually returned but it took a while. I know booking.com offers the option "pay at hotel" but I don't remember a choice with Agoda. Do I have this right? I wasn't crazy about my account being charged months in advance.

Thanks.We ended up booking directly with the hotel. Except for a hotel in Lourdes, France as the rate was a lot lower in Expedia.

Another vote for doing research on booking.com or other sites, but booking directly with the hotel. You usually always get a better price.