Has anyone had bad experiences with any of the sites for hotel booking online? There are so many, and I am wary. Am I justified?
Going to London in April, so need to make some decisions.
Thanks for any help.

Londontown.com is heavily used by posters here. I have used it once and was happy and have booked the same hotel again for a visit in April. On a previous visit I went too cheap and got a poor room. It was not a ripoff, I just got what I paid for...which was not much. I don't recall the web site that I used. The hotel was Kennsington Edwardian. I now accept that London is expensive and deal with it. Use tripadvisor.com and this site to check for reviews of any hotel that you are considering.

Message: We've booked through France.com and through the Logis de France web site for years and never had a problem. With the Logis web site, we do send a letter and a deposit in the form of a check. When we are checking out, they return our US check and take our credit card or cash depending on their policy. (France.com takes a credit card number so there's no need to do that.)

We've never tried Priceline or anything like that so I can't comment. There have been many positive comments on this forum about venere.com but we've not used that one either. You might do a search in the search window above and see what you pull up.

Enjoy your trip.

I've booked three hotels for my upcoming trip to Scotland and England through Smooth Hound - weird name, great site - they have TONS of info, photos, maps, links to the hotels website etc. What I liked about them is that they put you directly in touch with the hotel (or B&B) and you reserve direct - no middle man to charge a fee or lose your info, plus lots of places give a discount if you mention that you found them at Smooth Hound. You can find them at www.smoothhound.co.uk

I have done it both ways. But I prefer to call the hotel directly. With a lot of long distance plans the call is under a dollar and when you have them on the phone you can ask other questions or maybe arrange for a special room.

I've used many sites all over Europe and never had a problem. This includes smoothound in England, venere and itwg in Italy, france-hotel-guide.com, and several others. I've always gotten just what I had expected and never has there been a lost reservation. Obviously this could happen but my experience has always been positive. I've also had positive experiences reserving directly with the hotel (via e-mail).

But I actually recently just read that it's safer to reserve through a booking site than through the hotel direct. If the hotel is overbooked and someone gets bumbed they may be more likely to bump (and piss off) an individual than one of their booking sites. An individual deciding not to do business there again is just one person whereas the booking agent potentially give them lots of reservations each year. And this makes sense to me. So I actually just booked a hotel through a booking site and gave them a credit card number rather than just go with the hotel which said they didn't need anything to hold the reservation. That made me nervous that I could just show up and they could have lost the reservation. Seems less likely to happen with a booking site who has my credit card number. I do always email the hotel itself the week before I go to make sure they have the reservation.

Best Westerns are nicer in Europe than here and are very easy to book or cancel from the U.S. - all on the internet.

Whenever I book online I always call the hotel a month or so in advance to ensure they have the booking and correct room type.

I've used several online sites over the past few years without any problems. One of my favorites is www.hrs.com--the one used by the German rail system on their website. We've done very well through them on several trips.

I do also check prices directly with the hotel and then followup by email or fax to ensure that the reservation is secure.

For my upcoming trip to the UK and Scotland, I booked every hotel over the Internet, either directly thru the hotel's own website, thru a chain's website (Best Western, Hilton and Paramount) or using londontown.com. I did the same thing for my two previous trips and have never had any trouble at all.

Just make sure you print your confirmations and reconfirm a week or two before your trip. Also, make sure you know the cancellation policy for each hotel.

I just booked some rooms with Venere.com and this got me the lowest rates. check carefully to make sure that you are getting the best rate. the rates from different sites were as much as double and triple for the same room as was quoted on Venere.

Tinarose has very good advice about being sure you get the best rates. Like some of the other posters, I always call the hotel to re-confirm and ask them to send me a fax or e-mail confirmation as well, specifying the details of the reservation (e.g. double bed, non-smoking room, breakfast and tax included, etc.).

For London, we used londonnights.com and found a much better rate than on londontown, which was higher for most of the hotels I checked.

hrs.com has great rates for Germany, and it looked like maybe for Paris too - I was perusing it last night. In many cases, I think it's a better deal than Priceline.

I am still of the opinion that there is no one best way to book hotels and get the best rate.
I have not seen a rate so far on Londontown that the hotel wouldn't match, though some have not had that experience. Hotel individual websites don't always have the lowest rate either--sometimes if business is slow they will offer a bargain if you call or fax, but they don't bother posting it on the website. Some hotels like Best Western affiliates offers improved rates on their toll-free telephone lines in the USA. I recently found that Westin Hotel general phone number in the USA offered a better rate for a hotel in Vienna than the hotel itself did when I went on their website.

All you can do is try several ways of getting the best rate, and then just do it. There will always be someone who got a better air or hotel fare than you did.