Accommodation through Booking.com
7:19 PMHi!
Thanks to the previous posts about how to find cheap flights you finally decided to buy it and you need to look for a place to stay. You probably start from the most popular website - Booking.com and prices on preview can be so confusing and there is so many options.. you just don't know what, why, who and when.
Where to start?
What accommodation Am I looking for? The first and most important question before you make any further step is to find out what are you expecting from your hotel, what is the purpose of the travel, what conveniences would you like to have, if hotel is family-friendly or great for partying young adults.
If you are looking for a hostel/hotel/motel/guest house just to sleep at night while exploring during the day, there is no point of focusing on luxury spa resorts that will be no use for you anyway. But, if you planning your holiday as a relaxing stay, sweet laziness, doing only minimum of exploring then It might have a sense to treat yourself with something nice for your holiday.
Very good place to look for advice is TripAdvisor which is totally free to sign up with and it became the most popular platform for frequent travelers where you can read reviews about literally anything! You can find out if the restaurant you were planning to go is worth a visit, you can see travelers pictures of the hotels/rooms (and compare with professional pictures on hotel website).
Once you know what accommodation are you interested in, you will be searching in a certain area.
Free cancellation - Do I need it?
There is two sides of medal on that one. Frequent travelers who look for the best deals or the best value for their money would rather pick up free cancellation option if they have any doubts before they finally decide on one. That guarantee your reservation without paying any money so whenever you will find a better deal you might cancel your current booking.
However, if you totally decided on that one hotel/any other type of accommodation and no any other seem to be better than that - I would pay straight away.
In many cases, that option becomes cheaper than free cancellation option.
So, if you decided on a place to stay, you are happy with the price and you have a needed amount of money in your bank.. I would totally suggest to buy that straight away than waiting for no reason until very last moment. At least you know your accommodation is paid and you can relax and save up for something else.
Small print
That goes really often for any reservations you try to make in US.
Before you decide on making reservation at Booking.com, please allow yourself few minutes to read the small print under any room reservation as it always contain a note ,,Not Included" or ,,Included" . Sometimes it's a tax, sometimes it's a cleaning fee (for those staying in rental houses, holiday homes etc.), sometimes it's a climate fee and stuff like that.. Many of other websites include that annoying little thing that Booking.com sometimes doesn't. You have picked up an amazing hotel with quite affordable price aaaaand then at the end of the booking, right before you pay, website adds 15.69% tax to the price of your booking or 50$ fee for cleaning etc. Just be careful and make sure you checked all the options and nothing will surprise you at the last step of booking.
Genius rewards
If you decided to book your stay with Booking.com good couple of times you might become a Genius loyalty program member which allows you to receive few extra freebies every now and then. It includes discount on prices, late check-outs, free shuttles to the hotel etc. However, if you dig deep enough you might find even better value for your money than Genius membership. But if you really loyal to that website, it's good to give it a go as obviously we all love free stuff.
Alternatives
There is good couple of websites offering reservations from all over the world. This post is particularly about the website Booking.com but I can highly recommend to search on Expedia, lastminute.com, hotels.com, agoda and even hated by so many people Trivago - only, because at least it gives you idea about price range in particular places and you might move on from there to other websites.
I hope I explained for you a bit how booking accommodation through Booking.com might look like and what to be aware of, I am not going to explain exactly how to book the room because I presume that every adult can follow the simple booking steps.
If you have any questions or suggestions for content you would like to see, leave me a message!
- Mags
instagram: gosiekth
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