My holiday experience with hotels.com

The oldest (!…) of us will remember that, when it came to plan a vacation to the other side of the world a few years ago, it was soon an insurmountable test…

Before the Internet, so we had to do everything by phone. And find a hotel, its coordinates, then call to reserve gibbering in the best of cases in English or German, (when it did not fall on people speaking only Dutch or Portuguese), it quickly was a hassle.

And I don’t mean when he had to find an address and tricky thing with a paper called “road map”… : When we think through the suburbs of Toronto without GPS, we say that we had merit, before.

But now, in addition to the GPS that leads us to the foot of the hotel (if all goes well…), book a hotel at the other end of the world is a breeze:

This month of July 2014, the Quelbazar smala was vacationing in the other side of the world. The touring trip had been planned since my couch with, regarding accommodation, the precious help of a hotel booking site online: Hotels.com. There are several, but the advantage to do everything from a single site, it is to take advantage of their loyalty offers.

So it’s a fortnight to hotels that have been reserved, cancelled, re-reserved, consulted, compared. And all this with zero problems, or almost.

The return of experience:

If we’re looking for typical, intimate and hyper family accommodation, Hotels.com maybe isn’t the best solution. Even if this kind of accommodation exists on Hotels.com, it is quite rare to stumble: you will often find big enough hotels.

At the level of prices, they offer a “lowest price guarantee”. I have not analyzed in detail what it is, but the comparisons made indeed confirm that, for a given hotel, the prices are competitive. On several occasions, the “direct at the hotel” price would have been higher than the price through Hotels.com.

Most of the time, the free cancellation is possible up to 24 hours prior to arrival. I tested it and it works perfectly. If the accommodation had been charged in advance on a credit card (which is the case most of the time), it is repaid within 3 days after the cancellation.

In “last minute”, one of our hotels booked well in advance was offering a promotional price: I therefore cancelled the initial reservation 24 hours before our arrival, to remake the same booking immediately: the rate charged was 20% lower. It’s… practical, although I am not sure that an obscure clause of the General conditions to banish it. But it has passed!

The site offers a system of assessments. I found it well representative of the reality, in fact: A price equal, a hotel with a rating of 4.5 was much nicer than a hotel with a rating of 3.

At Hotels.com, for each purchased night, we get a “Welcome Reward” point. After 10 points, we got a free night. That’s interesting.

I did call customer service of Hotels.com on 2 occasions, via a form on their site. For one case, it was a mistake of the hotel. For another, it was a problem in counting the Welcome rewards.” In 2 cases, the responsiveness of the service has been good! I’m really surprised, actually.

In conclusion, I found these surprisingly reliable services! A real treat!