Last year I booked hotels through AsiaHotels.com. They offered good rates for hotels in various Asian cities. This year, when I did my first booking with them again I received confirmation notices from HotelClub.com, which seems to be an Australian firm.

Has AsiaHotels.com been bought out, or absorbed by the new operator? I am concerned because the hotel rates are now very much higher for the same properties than last year (like US$20 to US$30 higher!).

Anyone have any info on HotelClub.com?

Thanks much.

What country were you booking in? Someone posted here a number of months ago that HotelClub was a contractor that Asiahotels used in one country (I can't remember which one now). I've been using Asiahotels for years and would be sorry to find that they had been bought out by another company.

Kathie: Kyoto, Japan was my first (and perhaps last) reservation with AsiaHotels.com just a few days ago. I truly miss the friendly confirmations from the AsiaHotel gals; they were terrific. What I received this year was simply an ice-cold acknowledgement.

The rates for Singapore & Kuala Lumpur are as mentioned US$20-30 higher now on this site compared to last year at the same properties!

I think that something there is going on that doesn't yet meet the eye.

Alas! I hope we hear more on this matter. I've used them in the past for Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, VN...

Hotel rates in general have gone up in Singapore and KL in the past year. This could account for some, if not all, of the increase you encountered.

It would be interesting (if anyone had the information) to compare the rates quoted on those hotels' own websites today, to the rates they were asking a year ago. I wonder if the hotel's direct rates have gone up at the same pace as those on Asiahotels.

i think that hotel rates in asia in general are up and $20-30 does not surprise me..

look at some other sites and compare...

I'm curious about your Kyoto hotel...in the past, I've found that booking sites, including asiahotels.com, have had rates much higher than directly booking with the hotel, though that direct booking is often in Japanese.

I read that average Singapore hotel rates had gone up between 12% and 16% in 2005 compared with 2004.

hi easywalker, i can enlighten you on this issue. please email me at [email protected].

Thanks!

enkil615, can you enlighten the rest of us since many of us are curious about asiahotels.com?

an entirely new company is running asiahotels.com now. almost all its staff has been made redundant. the new company has a different policy with regards to customer service thus, the icy responses. In the new company's effort to achieve efficiency, asiahotels.com had lost its personal touch

I have been to Asia 3 times and never booked hotels through Asiahotels.com as they always had more expensive rates than the other sites.

I had used asiahotels.com many times in the past but for my upcoming trip to Asia, I didn't use them at all. They became much more expensive than other sites when in the past, I always found their prices to be cheaper. I also don't like the changes made to the web site. It's too bad that the company who took over saw the need for change when the site was good the way it was. Unless they change back to how they were, I doubt I'll be using them in the future.

I've used Asiahotels for many years and always got great prices and great service from them. After this post in January, I checked some of the prices at the new website (I don't like it either, Laurie!) and found them to be much higher than in the past.

While I can use sawasdee in Thailand, does anyone have a general-purpose hotel booking site for other Asian countries that they like?

I also used sawadee.com for Thailand and Malaysia Kathie and liked them very much. Good service, reliable and good rates, along with nice hotel photos and information.

www.hotelsguru.com required your credit card information before they even tell you the price or availability. I just tried a booking for August to try it out and the price came back "on Request" and required my credit card information to go further. T & Cs stated your card is charged when your reservation is confirmed by the hotel, and may be cancelled up to 5 days out from check in for a $10.00 charge...so if I tried to book a place then got confirmation but the price was higher than expected and I cancelled I'd still have to pay $10.00. Not good.

If you use any booking sites, stick with the ones that don't require a credit card until price and availability are clear.

To clarify al the speculation, AsiaHotels was acquired by Cendant, the major travel group and is now being sold under the HotelClub group - this is one of Cendant's better known online travel brands.

Being part of a larger group means that AsiaHotels no longer provides the personlaised service we knew and loved anymore. AsiaHotels was also able to offer better rates as they worked so closely with the hotels and ran special promos regularly.

So sadly, another unique and individualistic supplier got eaten by a global player....

Thanks for the info, xv. I'm truly sad to see the old asiahotels.com gone. They were wonderful to deal with. I doubt I'll ever use the "new" asiahotels.

I'll probably never use them again either, a real shame because I loved the old site. Hopefully asiahotel's business will drop off dramatically and these companies will learn a lesson. I submitted some questions, on two separate occasions, to the new site several months ago. I never received a reply. The old asiahotels would have gotten back to me within 24 hours.

I am the original poster of this thread, and I can see that many of us relied on AsiaHotels in previous years for bookings at a low price with a hometown touch. Sadly, I can now only say: R.I.P.

I did unwittingly make 2 hotel reservations though them, with the new firm being undercover. My reservations are both for next month, in Kyoto and Darwin.

I shall keep you all posted in this space as to whether the reservations go off without a hitch.