Researching a trip to Thailand and among the online hotel sites asiarooms has great prices and claim all tax and service charges are included. If this is true then the prices are much better than anything else I have found. Does anyone have experiewnce with this site and can you recommend them?

If you search for asiarooms on this board, you will see that quite a few people have used them. For the most part, they seem pretty reliable.

Two things of note - you will be charged the entire amount upon booking, and there have been reports that refunds for cancelled rooms can take a few months to get.

on all of these discount sites making changes and cancellations present certain problems....so when you commit, make sure you are accurate the first time...

some sites only charge the first day up front and then charge the rest about 2 weeks before you arrive....that is the case with the huahin site

www.huhhin.20m.com

i make all my arrangements through them...very reliable...they also list a bkk phone number on the reservation page once you have committed....write it down as it does not appear any place else...

Depending on the hotel, Asia Rooms do not always have the lowest rates. In Bangkok only a very few of their hotels have the best fare. Take a look at the following sites where you do not have to pay everything up front.

http://www.r24.org/huahin.20m.com/bangkok/hotels/

http://www.hoteltravel.com/

http://www.hotels.chiangmai-online.com/bangkok/

The online travel agent I frequently use is www.asiatravel.com their rates are very good.

I just booked with hoteltravel.com and they got back to me immediately, and the booking was done no problem..Don't have to pay anything until about 2 weeks prior to arrival and the cancellation policy is quite good..

Tracy, I think everything will be all right with them, but you never know until you encounter problems like a cancellation or when you get a different room than booked. What is stated on websites is not always true in the real world unfortunately.

Steve

Yes, i know..Trust me, not everything is always what it apprears to be...But sometimes it is..You should have seen what happened with some of our hotels when we were just in India!! Not what we ordered!!!!! But it just made our adventure all that more exciting!!

but that was india too which makes a difference...

I stick with any of those in the R24 mainly for a very large choice, going to the local sites for lots of photos and reviews with the good, the bad and even the ugly, they show reviews complete, plus I have never had a single hitch even when we left a voucher behind, never a problem, booking always with your own name, had upgrades etc.

I tried booking with AsiaRooms.com (and PrecisionReservations.com), but I find that the former is not too quick with the replies--as opposed to AsiaTravel.com which included my hotel of choice in its list of hotels with instant confirmation. The prior 2 provides cheaper rates, but AsiaTravel gave a quicker response.

One problem I encountered with AsiaRooms was that my credit card is being charged for the cancellations I made--cancellations which should not be charged because they were made before the reservations were even confirmed. Even so, my credit card account for last month still reflected the amount that I booked with them. I'm not going to panic, though, until I received the actual statement. The current accounts are still on float and may still be subtracted from the actual transactions incurred for last month.

I used asiarooms.com to book one hong kong hotel and 2 bangkok hotels for my stay last month. I had no problems at all. I even got an upgrade at the hong kong hotel. The prices do include all taxes and service charges and breakfast if it is noted. You do have to pay upfront.

In Vietnam, a good site is www.vietnamstay.com . It doesn't require upfront payment, and will meet you either at the hotel or at the airport, where it will provide vouchers after you have paid.

I have seen several posts about it, and they have all been complimentary and positive

used asiarooms recently for Center Point Silom in Bangkok and Princess Pathuwan with no issues. There printout voucher included instructions written in Thai to provide to Taxi driver which was helpful.

gaz

TracyB. Did you get your hotel rooms in India through Asiarooms.com? If so, what were the problems? I am thinking of using them. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

No, i used hoteltravel.com for BKK but booked directly with the hotel in India.

TracyB. Thank you for getting back so quickly. What kind of problems did you encounter when making room reservations directly with the hotels in India. I have been planning my trip for March since last May. I thought I secured a reliable travel agent and now 4 weeks before my trip he has pulled a "bait and switch". Now the hotels that he promised me are pretty much booked up even when I inquire directly with the hotel. But then some web sites say they have availability and others don't. I am now so confused and discouraged. I am assuming that ones safest bet would be to make reservations directly with the hotels but now I am wondering how true that is. Any advice or info would be greatly appreciated.

I won't be of much help on this one, because our friend whom lives in India booked our hotel..Now i hope when we get there that we have a room!!! However, i have booked a hotel in Mumbai for 2 nights and i had a heck of a time getting them to understand me..I really am not even 100% sure i even have a room...So i don't know..what to tell you..But i know it can be discouraging..