Hotel Thailand Booking Site
 

I was wondering if anyone has used Hotel Thailand to book hotels and, if so, what your experience had been. They seem to be a tad bit cheaper than Sawadee, but people seem to have had very good luck with Sawadee, so it might be worth the extra $5 per night to use them. But if Hotel Thailand is reputable, I may go with them.

I haven't heard anything about this site - good or bad. I did note a couple of things when I checked their prices:

1. They showed a cheap rate for a hotel I checked, but it was 'on request'. I've seen other sites do a 'bait & switch' routine - coming up with a higher rate when you make a reservation.

2. For the same hotel and dates, Hotels Combined came up with a lot of other sites offering a much cheaper price than Hotel Thailand.

Thanks so much. I got a bit concerned about some of the same thing you were seeing. I will check out Hotels Combined. I was not familiar with that site.

I looked at Hotels Combined and found that on many of their agents sites, the exchange rate to US dollars is low.

For example the Bangkok Marriott Resort is shown by one agent as 5260 baht or $173. This is an exchange rate of 30.4 wereas the rate should be around 33.5 or $157

Exchange rates for Baht can be a bit tricky right now. The off-shore rate you get from an exchange web service (which is what HC is probably using) gives me a rate of 30.35 to the dollar, while the 'local' rate from Bangkok Bank is 33.6 or so. You can't blame HC for that, there's no place that I know of that can give you the 'local' rate.

The rates supplied (to HC) by the booking sites are almost certainly in US$ so it's generally best to compare rates in dollars.

As you search this site you'll see a number of booking sites. Overall, I found sawadee.com to be the most efficient and if a little more at one hotel they were a little less at another in another destination I was visiting. Also, they only require 1 nights deposit ntil 2 weeks prior to arrival vs. all up-front.I have used them for 3 trips (probably 11-12 hotels) in Thailand,Malaysia and Indonesia with no problems.

I just used Sawadee to book Centre Pointe Silom and it was very efficient to use. Unfortunately they do not seem to "carry" the Kata Beach Resort in Phuket, so I can't use them for it. But what is interesting is that someone here had sent me a link for the Kata Beach Resort (www.R24.org/phuket-luxury-hotels.com) and when I sent a query the e-mail I got back was identical to the one I got back from Sawadee. So maybe there is a connection.

R24 is the actual 'engine' behind Sawasdee and one or two other booking sites commonly mentioned here.