Booking.com

I, too, use booking.com a lot; and I'm currently planning our next trip. I have found neglible price differences, no more than 10 euro/night and often not even that. One caveat about them is that they may show no availability when a hotel or inn has just not yet released rooms to them. It is worthwhile to check directly if there is a place you really want to stay.

Thanks, Roselyn. I'll keep that in mind. I just returned from a trip where I used Booking.com exclusively (no, I guess I used Priceline when we were in Sweden - that worked well too). Thanks so much for that tip.

I check the rate against the hotel website but the latter has rarely been cheaper (i.e. booking.com beats the hotel's "best rate" or "advanced rate" by a long shot most - but not all - of the time). I think I've booked using booking.com about 20+ times so far without any issues. The one thing with booking.com is you have to be really careful to read the fine print re: prepayment, cancellation, etc. Some hotels are only discounted on booking.com if you're willing to pay upfront. Some people have complaints about booking.com because they haven't read the terms of their reservation carefully - so it's really key to do so.

I have absolutely no loyalty to any one way of doing things.

I sure do check out booking.com.. and have booked some hotels via their website.. and I also have used them to find a hotel , checked the rates .. and booked directly with the hotels..
I have used many middleman agencies like Venere, Hotwire, Expedia, and hotels.com also.

Our vacations to Europe are at least 3 weeks at a time.. usually 4 .. so I have to get the best deals and I have the time to do the research.

There are a few hotels I adore.. and they are not on any other websites.. smaller family run places.. I find out about them by word of mouth on travel forums ( this and the others I go on).. I would miss out on them if I only used hotels shown on booking sites.

Yes, Pat, price is important to me too. The other thing is the cancellation policy. On the trip we just came back from, I went through Booking.com on all the hotels because I could have cancelled the day before with no penalty. My mother just turned 92, and I was unsure at the time if something would come up that would cause me to have to cancel. It worked out fine, but at least I had peace of mind knowing I could cancel and not pay.

"I check the rate against the hotel website but the latter has rarely been cheaper"

I've done that in 10 out of the 31 places I've stayed in the last 75 nights. And you are right, in most cases (most, but not rarely not), the rate on the booking website is nearly the same as on the hotel's website. However, in 2 out of 10 cases, the hotel has offered a special package not offered on the booking website. I saved over 20% vs a booking website by using the package offered on the hotel's website.

But there is another aspect that you have not observed because you only compare places shown on booking websites. Places shown on booking websites are, in general, the more expensive places in that town. By going to the town's own website, I have managed to save a third vs what I would have spent on an "equivalent" room found on the booking website.

I use booking.com to identify possibilities, then go to those options directly to book. For me, booking.com is a way to easily search for places to stay using the criteria that are important to me. Price is one of them.

I prefer booking directly with the lodging because of the direct contact. I always have questions that aren't answered online and like to establish a connection with the staff before my stay.

I haven't booked through booking.com yet, but I have used other similar resources. I was a little uncomfortable with the distance between me and the places I was considering in the final decision phase of the process.

If you use booking.com do you also need to confirm with the hotel about the reservation?

@Nance, no technically you don't have to reconfirm with the hotel, your booking.com confirmation should be enough. I generally do also email the hotel to reconfirm just in case. It only takes a minute and gives me peace of mind that I won't show up and have a hassle with the hotel. I'm sure it's rare (if at all) that booking.com's confirmations might not have been registered at a particular hotel but I can be a little 'anal' and like to have all my bases covered. That being said I must admit that I've used booking.com a lot and have never had an issue with a hotel.

Nancy - the reason I asked is that several months ago I used booking.com to reserve a room for two nights at the Ambasssador in Haarlem before our tour starts there. I've emailed them twice asking them to confirm with me. I get auto replies that they've received my email but no personal replies in return assuring me we have a room. Irritating.

@Nance - booking.com is unfortunately not set up to confirm everyone's reservation by personal e-mail (it's not in their business model to provide that kind of personal service) - they are just a middleman with a web-based platform that connects an interested person to a hotel. They will get involved if there's a real issue, but for minor things, I wouldn't count on them too much. I wouldn't even bother reconfirming. Bring your hard copy page, which guarantees your reservation, and don't worry too much about it.

Thanks Agnes. It wasn't booking.com I was emailing but the Ambassador. If they don't have our room I suppose we will be able to find one somewhere else.

Nance, if you have the booking.com confirmation (definitely bring a printed copy, not just the conf#) then it would be hotel's responsibility to find you a comparable room elsewhere if for some reason they don't have the room you reserved. I wouldn't worry about it.

For our trip this year, I had used Booking.com for quite a number of different hotels. Our plans changed frequently - I was able to change these online, but I was nervous about all my changes. I called Booking.com and got very good service confirming that I did indeed have the reservations I wanted and that the others were officially cancelled.

Thanks Nancy - I do have the original copy I made when I first made the reservation and it is in my paperwork to go!

When checking on Booking.com from time to time, I've found all the prices in a specific city to be substantially higher in price than they should be. In going on other web sites for the same city, I've found prices across the board to be much less. This is a rare situation, however it's happened a few times on Booking.com. Just beware that this may happen.

When I go into Booking.com, I will filter the rooms from the cheapest to the most expensive. Then I'll start down the list of the cheap properties looking for customer satisfaction ratings substantially higher than others in that price range. I'll also search on TripAdvisor.com to see what past customers have said about the property. I've never been disappointed in a room acquired in this manner.

If you're looking for a tent in Outer Mongolia that must be gotten to by 100 miles on a motorcycle taxi, it'd be listed on Booking.com.

You can send messages to the hotel through booking.com; you will be notified that your message has been forwarded, the hotel normally responds directly.

About pricing: I have a favorite B&B in a city, but the booking.com price was about 20% higher than the b&b's website. However, the B&B website wanted payment by bank transfer, which would have eliminated any savings. So I emailed the B&B and offered my credit card number instead (they replied that they would hold the reservation without the card number or bank transfer for a repeat guest).

I have also called booking.com to resolve a problem, which they did beautifully.

I make 20-25 reservations per trip, so I like using as few sites as possible. I also like the chronological listing of reservations under My Bookings, so I can easily see if I double-booked or underbooked a night somewhere.

I too use booking.com as a guide for the most part, unless the fee they take on the reservation is tiny and the booking is last minute (for instance, I've booked hostels and paid $1-2 for service...I lived.....my Scrooge-like soul didn't even suffer), and then I contact the place directly to check availability, no matter what part of the world it's in. I try my best to do the same with Air BnB too. Give it a shot, the worst someone can say is no!

At our B&B in the Dordogne in France we would prefer that people book directly through us, because despite what booking.com may say about availability, or lack of it with us, we may well have a vacancy because we do not give all our rooms to booking.com. Also--as has happened in busy season-- if a client books directly with us at the same time as a booking.com we will give priority to the direct booking.
We charge the same prices whether via us our b.c but we can give a more personal and immediate service to clients who contact us directly. We find that clients who book on b.c do not always read either the fine print or the letters we send back via booking.com.

I've used booking.com but not exclusively. Like others here I shop around including booking directly through the hotel. There are a few cases I've found where booking.com is the cheapest but its usually a special circumstance. For example, there is a hotel I like in the Bavarian Alps and the owner prices the triple rooms the same price as a double on booking.com but if you book directly you pay more for the triple. The triples are usually the last rooms to go at this hotel so my guess is he prices them lower on booking.com to move them.

DJ