Has anyone had experience booking hotel rooms through tripadvisor.com? I am wondering why their rates are so much cheaper than through the hotel website or booking.com.
Please comment on experiences with the various online booking companies for European travel (Croatia and Slovenia).
Thank you

Perhaps TripAdvisor has recently started offering its own hotel bookings? I haven't looked at TripAdvisor much lately, but I use it extensively when planning a trip. Just look at the totals (taxes and fees) when comparing TA rates to those on other sites. Maybe this is a new service they are offering and are offering cheap rates temporarily to lure people into using them. I wouldn't hesitate to use TA to book hotels but I would read the change/cancellation policy carefully before giving them a credit card.

I use Booking.com (owned by Priceline) as my first pass at looking for hotels in Europe. I've booked dozens of places with Booking.com over the years and have never had any issues. I will however book directly with a property instead if I can, if I can get the same price and same cancellation policies etc.

For Slovenia and Croatia, I found some places (especially smaller towns) on hostel booking sites - and these are in many cases completely private rooms not really "hostels." In these countries you will find a lot of small "Sobe" (private rooms) available instead of conventional hotels, and they are a good option - but many of them will not show up on the big booking sites. Some of them use smaller local booking sites or no booking sites at all - you may need to contact the property directly. I have done this numerous times without issue (sometimes you don't even need to provide a credit card to hold a room, yes even in 2014).

I think if you are used to booking conventional hotels in western Europe, it may take some change in thinking to book these non-conventional places in Slovenia and Crotia, especially in places like Dubrovnik that don't have many conventional "hotels" - but lots of sobe.

Especially if you are visiting a town at a busy time and it seems booked up, try browsing TripAdvisor for places that don't offer any direct booking option. These are probably the places that must be booked directly - and less likely to be booked up in my experience. Just because they don't use Booking.com or some other booking site doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them.

Here is a very recent and very information thread on exactly this issue:
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...ravelocity.cfm

Never use TA the reviews cannot be trusted plus if a hotle is not officially listed with TA and is with Booking.com they link to hotels via booking.com.
Booking.com also has several apps to suit the various phones and tablets so it is easily to book your next hotel using that.

You can compare prices with a site such as www.hotelscombined.com or www.trivago.com.

These compare the rates for the same hotel at all the usual booking sites, expedia, booking.com, asiarooms, otel.com, hotels.com and so on. There can often be a significant differnce in rates between sites.

To my knowledge, TA does not offer a booking service. It looks like a redirection to various hotel booking websites for rate comparison purposes. Makes no difference which one you use for "European travel".

The various booking sites use lots of tricks to make their price for a specific hptel look lower than that of the competition. They might leave off the room tax, or show a price for their broom closet special. Sites like Trivago, Tripadvisor, and the like get annoying after you've clicked halfa dozen times only to find that the serious price is higher than the comparison price was.

I use booking.com for reservations most of the time, although I sometimes use Tripadvisor and other sites in the research phase.

Thank you everyone for your replies. I found out the trip advisor booking actually used a site called getaroom.com, which I had never heard of before. They don't let you request anything re: the room, like non-smoking, or a quiet room.
Hopefully, they won't be the worst rooms in the hotel, since they are quite a bit less expensive than other sites.

I just booked a five hotel trip (for next March). I used the same technique I've been happy with for the past few years.

I go to booking.com and put in the city, then pull up the map. I have done research before so I know which areas I want to be in. Then you hover over the map and the price for the various hotels will light up. The one's in my price range I click on. There's basic info, including the price - there are usually numerous prices - 'economy' rooms, regular, 'delux rooms', with and without breakfast, able to cancel or not. But it's all clearly laid out. Booking.com has reviews I find quite reliable. Then once I have narrowed it down to a few I go to Trip Advisor and read those reviews. TA lists prices for booking.com, hotels.com, etc. but they have been almost always the same as those sites. Booking.com also gives you the square footage of the room.

If you are willing to spend a few hours, between reading the stats and the reviews you really can get a pretty good idea what you are getting.

Yes, Isabel, I book my hotels pretty much exactly the same way.

You nailed it, Isabel.

Booking.com is known for it's reviews. Also, after using the site for the first time, your details are remembered.

I prefer www.hrs.com as they have the most liberal cancellation policy and often have rooms cheaper than what I could get by going to the hotel itself.

Trip Advisor has a long running forum thread about complaints against booking.com but I have never read a complaint about hrs.com so I think that is one of the reasons to use them too.

The majority of reviews on Trip Advisor are real and truthful, as are the photos taken by guests. It is an excellent tool to use to find hotels, restaurants, tours, etc.

thanks for taking me to hrs.com, Mainhattengirl. I did a search for a random date for Plymouth, where I stay a lot and came up with a few suggestions, with, as you say, very good cancellation terms which is important to me because I go there for work and sometimes need to cancel at last minute. OTOH they didn't have the place where I normally stay which already gives me very good terms through their in-house booking arrangements so the jury's still out.

I will try to remember to check them in future though.

I have been using booking.com for years. I found a site last month that I like best hotel offers.net. It gives prices of several booking sites. jv

www.trivago.com is also a good meta-search (it searches a batch of sites, including booking.com and venere.com) and then lists the results, with the cheapest highlighted

TA doesn't offer booking service, it just diverts you to other booking sites. I personally really like booking.com. I have had great experiences with it. And all of the reviews on there are only from people who have stayed at a hotel and get invited to review.