Hey Guys
I am tentatively planning a trip next summer to visit Osaka, Japan, Seoul South Korea and Taipei. I know it's super early, but I wanted to find out about some good and reliable hotel reservation web sites for those countries.

Even though I've used www.Asiarooms.com in the past, I've seen alot of complaints about them on this site, so I was wondering about some alternatives with speedy and reliable service.

Any information would be greatly appreciated and will help my research on those countries.

I don't know about asiarooms.com for other places, but for Japan, every single hotel I have ever checked rates for is double or triple price on asiarooms.com over the hotel's direct booking price, and actually, the same has been true for the hotels I am checking into for our travels this year even outside of Japan...maybe asiarooms.com offers good rates for some hotels, but not for any of the hotels we are considering.

For Japan, some hotels list on rakuten.co.jp and there is English. Many hotels have their own websites, and the Japanese versions often offer much better prices than the English versions. If you are planning to stay in chain hotels like Hilton or Four Seasons etc. then it's possible that a travel agent would be able to negotiate a great price for you.

It's always best to check all of the options before booking, and to understand the booking conditions clearly. I strongly prefer to pay at checkout, so unless the discount were substantial, I wouldn't use a booking site that required payment in advance. I also like that most hotels do not have a penalty for changes or cancellations like many booking sites do.

I used asiahotels.com for 2 reservations and all went smoothly. But since most of my destinations were in S.E. Asia this year I used sawadee.com/precision.com really one and the same. They were excellent and only required 1 nights deposit, but not refundable, up-front with balance due 14 days prior to arrival at each location. I received the room category I requested as well as the location in the resort or hotel I had "on-request".

I always use asiatravel.com

i always use www.asia-hotels.com and www.ratestogo.com.

I recently used www.asiarooms.com for my Athens, Greece stay at the Hilton. Everything went smoothly, got a great rate with breakfast, much better than on the Hilton's website. I will give them a thumbs up.

My fav is hoteltravel.com.

Kayak.com I've found is a useful site. It gathers info. from many different hotel sites, including the ones listed by others here. However, no asiarooms.com -ever. They are a lousy site with bait and switch tactics-they'll advertise the lowest hotel room rate, you go, you book, they say they'll get back to you in 24 hours, already charging the credit card of course! then, no room. Avoid asiarooms.com like the plague.

It depends where in Asia, for Thailand we always use those sawadee local sites so that you get more than just a list but actualy get local information, www.beachsiam.com is good for having local detaails for beach places in Thailand, majors plus smaller islands etc, for Phuket with Phuket Luxury or www.patong-beach-hotels.com but if for other places in Asia I would search on www.asiaoz.com as they give a choice of Sawadee for like KL where they are good, defiinately for Australia as you can search also, Vietnam, HK, japan etc, also they offer Hotelclub, World Choice for those perhaps in US or Canada who want phone help too, and also they offer Rates to Go, so like Gypsy says places that offer different ones so you can compare on one site.
It's many many years since we went to Europe but I know Venere.com are great for Europe, but I wouldn't think of them rightly for Asia, so it depends where you are heading. For Hua Hin and down that coast we would use www.huahinwhatson.com for Hua Hin, local information but then going thru same place to Sawadee.

We found sawadee.com and asiahoteld to be the bestfrom our trip to 5 destinations in 4 weeks in 26 days this past April.

For budget lodging in Japan:
http://www.itcj.jp/

As well as using the sites that feed into R24 like Sawadee, Beachsiam, etc I look at and have booked with

Hotel Travel hoteltravel.com

Direct Hotels directrooms.com/

ThaiHotels thaihoteldiscounts.com/

Chiangmai Online chiangmai-online.com/
You have to watch the prices as there is a 3-5% fee added on to the rates shown

Circle of Asia circleofasia.com/

Precision precisionreservations.com/

For Cambodia I use also
Nongasia nongasia.com/cambodia_hotels.html

Cambodia Travel cambodia-travel-hotels-tours.com/

I have also used Asia Rooms without any problems.

JamesA-I'm such a good customer of venere.com's they actually sent me a little coupon gift recently! (which is not the same as saying I use them to book all the time, I do go for their excellent maps and to see what's available, particularly for Italy, which is where they are headquartered, then compare their prices to the hotel website).

Sawasdee.com is excellent, have dealt with them both by website and phone, very professional and responsive, FAR better than asiarooms in every way-wouldn't even think of using the latter any more.

But as I said, kayak.com will pick up most of these other asia hotel reservations websites without you having to go to each one, and then do a price comparison for you.

I too, have thought about using them for Asia, but

my previous post got cut off-I have thought about using venere.com for Asia, but that's just not their geographical specialty.

Just a note of interest kayak.com uses Aisia Rooms as their booking agent for many of the hotels in Bangkok.

Indeed they do, because they pick up most of the Asian hotel reservation sites, like sawasdee.com, and then look for the lowest advertised rate-but that doesn't mean anything-you then go to asiarooms. and find out after 24 hours or more that their lowest advertised rate is not available.

I used this site for Seoul, Tokyo, and Bangkok:
www.priceline.com

I have used Sawadee.com on several occasions and always been satisfied with their pricing and service. I noticed there is a Sawasdee.com site also but this looks like it may link to the same site?

http://www.precisionreservations.com/

used precision on recent trip to Indonesia . very professional and only charge after room is confirmed.

And for China..Beijing and Shanghai..is there a site that will get me good rates on hotels this spring? (I am looking at Peninsula Beijing..not sure yet about Shanghai) I usually book directly with hotels, in Europe.