I found a lower rate at booking.com than the hotel is ofering on its own web site, but I have never heard of booking.com before. Is ayone familiar with it and recomend it?

This thread has lots ofinfo:

http://www.fodors.com/community/trav...bookingcom.cfm

We have used them in seven countries without a problem.

We book almost all hotel via booking.com. Never had a problem.

My grandmother and I used them for hotels in England and Paris, and they were great! Got some very good deals!

We are about to open a guesthous in Wales and, after considerable research, booking,com is our preferred choice of booking engine.

Always use Booking.com. I too had a quote from booking.com at a lower rate than the hotel's website showed. I called the hotel directly and was told that booking.com was able to offer the lower rate and to book online with them. I did and was happy to get the lower rate.

We also have used booking.com Usually, you don't have to pay up front, only when you reach the hotel. If you need to cancel, it is never a problem.

www.booking.com is awesome now owned by priceline.com

Have been using them for a decade.

For me get better deals than direct booking

Best site to find HONEST exit reviews from recent guests

Unlike all the fakes found on TripAdvertizer.

They are based in Europe and if your CC charges a

foreign fee (mine capitalone.com does not)

you might get charged an extra 3% so use a foreign fee free

card card if you can but they are GREAT.

www.otel.com out of Istanbul giving me best rates though.

betterbidding.com for awesome big city deals on 4 stars.

Have fun,

They do not charge your card but they do put a hold on it

Usually you pay at the hotel for most of their booking but

They will dock you one day if you do not show usually...

So check cancellation policy carefully there can be a penalty.

Thank you very much!

One hotelier told me that, yes, you often get a lower rate on Booking.com but by booking direct with the hotel, you will usually get a greater choice of rooms or better quality. It's because they release a certain number of rooms to Booking.com at a wholesale rate, and depending on how well the rooms sell, Booking.com can discount it over retail rate.

It's similar to booking airfares with Expedia etc rather than direct with airlines.

But usually, yes, there is no problem at all reserving through Booking.com and all my reservations so far in various countries have been honoured, and at the rate agreed.

I've had some brilliant rates from Booking.com. Only thing that annoys me is in the US when they can't tell me in advance how much tax i'll be paying but i can live with that when comparing the hotel's rates!

It has been owned by Priceline for a long time, as far as I know. I thought they always were, but in any case, I used them in Paris a few years ago because I got a much better rate than the hotel's own website. I don't know what the deal is about the room quality cited, you purchase a type of room (ie, superior double, jr suite, regular double, etc) and that is the category you get. Sure, there may be other room categories not on booking and you can go see what those cost elsewhere, but I don't think the hotel marks specific room numbers within a category for booking.com. It would be pretty hard to manage your vacancies that way. I got a perfectly nice room on booking.com, in fact, it may have been nicer in location than many others in that category.

When I'm looking for a room in a new place, I usually check TA first, then go through the various booking sites to get an idea of price. then i check the hotel website itself, to see if I iike it/can get a better rate.

also, some places it pays to go on google maps - I've found that in france, [specifically where we are now in Brittany] there were places there that did not feature on TA. we eventually found our current B&B in Paimpol through the Gite de France website.
but I have used booking.com in the past and been very pleased - I like them especially for business due to the easy cancellation procedure.

We've used booking.com for nearly all of our travels over the past several years after they were extremely helpful in calling a Cinque Terre hotel where I had managed to mis-book our reservation. They are very easy to work with (including cancellations, as mentioned above). Unless I'm booking an apartment, I always use booking.com.

Ditto all the good things about booking.com -- used them for years -- never a problem. Easy to navigate website and their number ratings and user reviews have proved to be reliable.

mark.

Booking.com and Colour Hotel in Frankfurt just screwed me out of roughly $860. I had made hotel reservations in Oct. for our June trip to Germany, I was sure of it, but had no record of receiving a confirmation email. Yesterday, I checked the booking.com site and there was no record there of our Frankfurt reservation at Colour Hotel, only one in another town for earlier in the week. So, in a panic, I made a reservation at Colour Hotel - only to find two reservations pop up when it was finalized. I immediately contacted Booking.com and explained the problem and they claimed they asked the hotel to refund the money, but the hotel allegedly refused. So now I have two reservations for the same room, same dates, one at the original price of $800 or so and one for a higher price of $860 - and I have to eat it.

flsd: "<i> and I have to eat it.</i>"

And why is that? This is not that unusual -- two bookings by mistake. Contact your credit card issuer. If the two bookings are for the same period you can dispute the charge and your cc will investigate . . .