Mimar

The hotel rooms available from Booking.com tend to be the standard ones. If you book directly with the hotel or via their website, you can get a bigger room or one with a balcony or a view or other amenities.

Sometimes all the rooms allotted to booking.com are taken, so the hotel is shown as full. But you can still get a room by communicating directly with the hotel or its website.

And, I find, the hotel websites all have rates with free cancellations. This used to be one of b.com's big pluses.

Edward2005

Bilbo can speak for himself (herself?), but the way I interpreted the "what's left" comment was that early bookers get great rooms while everyone else gets what ever dregs happen to remain. Ignore the following if it is not what you meant to convey.

It's true by definition that people who book late or who wing it get what's left over, but there have *always* been good rooms available in good neighborhoods when I have winged it. And I'm pretty picky because I like to relax in my room in the afternoon (a good room to me is clean, comfortable, quiet, and in a safe area).

I guarantee that if you wanted to book a room in Paris for the next 3 days starting tomorrow, you could get a fine room in a good location. You may not get your first choice, but there will always be quality available and you will have more than one option. You won't have to choose among the dregs.

massimop

Growing up in a hotel or around hotels does not automatically result in an attitude of never looking for a hotel to enjoy for its extras. Same is true of children whose parents were in the restaurant business or ran bookstores, etc.

A lot of people are very particular about certain travel amenities, for quite legitimate reasons. Some people are not. Nothing wrong if you are happier eating the 10e tourist menu and the house wine and the hotel room with dorm room decor. Many find it delightful to figure out how to travel on the cheap. But there is also nothing wrong or naive about searching out and paying for extras if that is part of enjoying leaving one's own nest and flying abroad.

IMDonehere

we have used booking.com in about 10 countries in multiple cities and have had only one clunker.

We look for basic services in non-chain hotels. Sometimes we pick a splurge hotel if we are only staying two or three nights in a location and there is something special about the location.

Among the failings of Little Ricky is his capricious choice of which towns and cities to include in his guides. There can be worthwhile town next to one that is included w/o even a passing reference.

Macross

I look at those sites and if at all possible book directly. I had one huge mess with one in Germany though. We had all stayed at this guesthouse before and it was good but the restaurant was what won us all over. Seven of us in Europe at the same time decided to meet up for the night and stay here. She had our reservations so screwed up. It was the worst system as I watched her pull it up on her computer. We ended up sharing a bathroom and made sure one couple had the room with the bath and my single friend has her own room with bath. My husband went down the hall to bathroom and locked himself out. I had earplugs in and tool ambien so poor guy slept in the hallway till I heard him knocking. I used booking.com after that for a while. She knew we had dinner reservations but not room.
Rick Steves, read that article this morning. He was all we had in the dark ages with PBS. I learned a lot from him.

bilboburgler

"I'm sorry that my opinion has upset you"

Dukey don't worry you didn't. I always find your posts interesting and thought provoking.

Christina

I think this line of thought is ridiculous. booking.com provides a good website and allows hotels to have a much bigger audience plus basically free publicity than they ever would have had before. No hotel is forced to agree to be on it if they don't want those advantages which are worth a lot to them. Some hotels may not even have their own website and thus get a booking tool. So Rick Steves line of thought, and I've heard it from others, is that this is "unfair" that they are getting all these perks and publicity and customers, and that somehow they should take advantage of all those things and try to get all that marketing help for free and that the public should spurn booking.com for having a good business model that provides a good service.

As a matter of fact, I don't book through booking.com unless the price is cheaper, and it sometimes is but rarely. But I don't have anything against booking.com, that website has made travel planning so much easier, I am really grateful. If hotels are virtually invisible without it, then they were before, also, so I am having trouble understanding that logic. Lots of the time, I book through a hotel chains own website, particularly if I have some frequent traveler acct with them.

I don't know if Ricks' suggestion of blackmail to a hotel works, it sounds bogus to me. The idea that if you book directly with a hotel you will get an "upgrade" or free breakfast just for booking directly is absolutely not true, I have never been offered those things for booking directly. I don't know if you have to threaten them with saying you would book through booking.com if they don't or what he is proposing. But what he says is not true at all, which is one thing I don't like about him. In fact, I have even asked hotels directly if they would give me the same rate as booking.com when it was lower and every single hotel I've asked has refused to even give me the same discount as booking.com, let alone some extra perk for booking directly. So much for that theory. Granted, it hasn't been that many, but I have asked about 3, and they all refused to even give me the same rate. So I did book through booking.com.

scrb11

Before booking.com, I used to like Venere.

Also some of BB Planet and Lodgis.

Sometimes you'll find availability if you contact the hotel directly that doesn't show up in booking.com.

You can also see in the map view which locations are the best or at least popular, by seeing all the red pins which indicate places which are already booked.

Their messaging system used to be good but now, it's changed since earlier this year. I asked a couple of simple questions for places I am going to soon and didn't get a clear answer.

I emailed the hotels directly and got the answers.

Andrew

Christina: <i>I think this line of thought is ridiculous. booking.com provides a good website and allows hotels to have a much bigger audience plus basically free publicity than they ever would have had before. No hotel is forced to agree to be on it if they don't want those advantages which are worth a lot to them.</i>

Right - no hotel that doesn't want to remain in business is forced to agree be in Booking.com .

Traveler_Nick

They aren't forced to take out TV ads. Buy internet ads. Radio ads.

Lets be brutally honest the people most hurt by the likes of booking.com aren't the hotels it's the guide book writers.

If you can find your own reviewed hotel in the most remote corner of the world that's one less reason to buy a guide book.

If you're worried about hotels being blackmailed by booking.com it was far easier for writers to do worse in the past. One bad review would kill you.

scrb11

Yeah I haven't looked at, much less buy a guide book, in years and years.

Guide books are additional things to pack and carry around. You used to dog-ear several pages, highlight entries in the index, etc.

I now just distill all the information and places I want to see in a trip-specific itinerary on TripIt or Kayak My Trips. Much less to carry, the printout is only about a dozen pages at most or I just open as PDFs in my iPad or iPhone.

If I need more details on a particular attraction, I can web search a day or two before I actually go.

I never really relied too much on hotel listings in those guide books anyways. Even if you got the latest edition of a travel guide, the information, particularly the prices, were out of date by a year or two.

I never really used a travel agent either. The web has really revolutionized travel. Even if you don't want to DIY travel planning, you can find ready-made itineraries online or find these tour packages that your travel agent used to buy for you.

kerouac

As often as I can, I use www.accorhotels.com to book my accommodations. I like most of the Accor hotels and more particularly Ibis Styles and SuiteNovotel. However, I also use normal Ibis quite often, Ibis Budget sometimes and also Mercure and Novotel (but never with their outrageous breakfast price). By booking directly with their site, I get a minumum of a 5% discount but also sometimes 30 or 40% as a member of their fidelity club. The 'club' is free to join and you never lose your points as long as you stay at an Accor hotel at least once a year. I have risen to an intermediate level where I get a free drink at every hotel (which I rarely use) and also the possibility of late checkout (which I have not had to use yet, but which would have been very handy in the past a few times).

I am not at all advertising for them, because just about every hotel chain has a fidelity program, but it just goes to show that sometimes you get something extra by not looking for a "family owned" place. At Ibis Styles, I often find myself with an unexpected balcony or a room so large that I could almost call it a suite. And I almost never pay more than 70 euros for these rooms (you can forget Paris for rates like this).

And when an Accor hotel is not suitable or available, I use www.hotels.com to find the best place. They have the best "10th night free" program, because they do not inform the hotel for which you are not paying that it is the free night, so you don't get the worst room in the place.

IMDonehere

I like guidebooks. I just found an old Lonely Planet France in my bookshelves were the amounts were in Francs. Maybe it was last year's with a really confused editor.

A guide book is basically obsolete once it is edited. Hotels burn down, restaurants are over run by cockroaches, Brits riot when their breakfast tea is not the right temperature.

Booking.com verifies reviews, although even the honest ones can be bizarre. Most times you can find a current appraisal.

Robert2016

True, most travel agents don't travel very often, too expensive for most. And most

Guide books can be very useful. You can do your research on the internet, but If you don't know what you're looking for, how do you know you've found it?

scrb11

" You can do your research on the internet, but If you don't know what you're looking for, how do you know you've found it?"

Well you have forums like this one where you can gauge how popular or well-regarded a destination is.

Plus Fodor's and Frommer's put some of their content online. Frommers has an introduction, which is a paragraph or two, which is kind of a "why visit" justification for going to a particular destination. They also have listings of some attractions and "favorite experiences" as well.

You can also get samples of the ebook versions of guidebooks from either Amazon or Apple iBooks to your device and Amazon also has some guide books scanned so you can browse through some of them on their site without buying the books.

Then you can Google things like "best attractions San Sebastian."

Then there are sites like this one which gives some pictorial reasons to visit:

http://www.placestoseeinyourlifetime.com

And of course, several times a year, you get "best travel destinations" list generated by various sites and some of them are linked here.

You can turn around the question. How do you know which guide books to look at if you don't know what you're looking for? When you browse through guidebooks at a book store, you're looking at the covers and then some pictures inside the books.

Andrew

I still use guidebooks, but I don't use them for hotel recommendations. (Who does anymore?) I use them to get a good feel for a place (will I want to visit or not? for how long?) and also to get a general idea of how to get from place to place. I always use the web to find specific information about which train or bus, etc., because of course all of that can change. I do much of the trip research online too of course, but the guidebook is a good starting point.

I'm lucky that our local library has a good selection of travel guidebooks. I still prefer the Rick Steves books, but he doesn't cover every destination I choose to visit. I like his practical, subjective advice, even if I don't always agree with it. These threads always bring out the Rick Steves haters - no idea why people dislike him so much. If you don't like him, use another guidebook. It's that simple!

travelhorizons

Responding to Traveler_Nick and Robert2016. Speaking as a travel agent, I'd like to correct some misimpressions and talk about the issue in general.


First, virtually all European hotels offer travel agents a 10% commission (as opposed to the 20-25% they pay wholesalers like booking.com, etc). It is simply NOT the case that TA's get incentives to book certain small obscure hotels all over Europe and make recommendations on this basis.


Second, commissions do not increase the cost that the customer pays.


Third, I think Robert is over-generalizing when he writes that "most travel agents don't travel very often." Maybe the salaried agent behind a desk at AAA, or sitting in a strip mall, doesn't travel much — I don't know. But virtually all of my colleagues are in the business because they are passionate about travel... and we travel a LOT in order to research destinations and hotels.

I invest a major amount of time (and dollars) visiting domestic and foreign destinations and doing hotel site inspections. I want to know the hotel's atmosphere (where it's located in the city, what its space "feels" like) and see different room categories so that I can speak knowledgeably to clients considering that hotel.

If you're sitting across the desk from a TA who doesn't seem like s/he's knowledgeable about the destination you're interested in, just leave. Be aware that there are hundreds of professional travel advisors who can advise you based on their own personal experience.

To search for a travel advisor who is knowledgeable in your destination, you might check this web resource (among others): http://tinyurl.com/ybgvr4kz


Fourth, why should anyone be offended that travel advisors get paid for their work? Does anyone else on this forum work for free?

As a matter of fact, the best TA's will charge trip planning fees ... and that’s to your benefit. If you've found a TA who truly has expertise and passion about your destination (and you have a good rapport), that fee will return dividends to you many times over.

The goal of a good travel advisor is to design a trip that matches up with your interests — helping you make the best use of your precious time and helping you avoid time-wasting and money-wasting mistakes. Like all humans, we've made our own mistakes (the best way to learn!) and you'll benefit from the wisdom we learned the hard way.


Fifth, luxury travelers will typically get better values working through travel advisors who are affiliated with luxury consortia such as Virtuoso. Again, it won't cost you a dime more, but you’ll get extra amenities such as free daily breakfasts, $100 credits toward food and beverage, and room upgrades (sometimes guaranteed at booking). You could book through an online travel agency such as booking.com or hotels.com ... and get zero personal service — or you could book through a Virtuoso travel advisor and get the same room for the same price plus amenities and personal attention.


With all this in mind, I do want to affirm that the Fodors community is a valuable resource. There's an incredible amount of valuable knowledge shared here. But if you're among the 50% of travelers who would prefer a bit more hand-holding when you plan travel, I encourage you to find a travel advisor who has expertise about the part of the world you want to visit.

Traveler_Nick

I still have nightmares about a couple of IBIS hotels

kja

I don't visit places because they are popular -- I want to visit places that are of interest TO ME, even if (and sometimes particularly if) they are NOT popular. And IMO, part of the problem that many people have with their trips, and their trip planning, is that assumption that they can and should focus only on what is most popular. JMO.

When I plan my trips, I use an average of 6 different guidebooks, spanning a range of approaches. I also use the internet and, of course, Fodor's forums.

I grow weary of reading people saying, "who knew...!" when what they "discovered" is covered in most decent guidebooks. I grow weary of people saying that guidebooks have no value, when they can't plan a trip without help for even the most basic of things, like how to get from place to place. I grow weary of people asking "what are the must-sees" when (a) what is a "must-see" depends entirely on one's interests and (b) the most likely things are fully covered in even most Incompetent guidebooks.

But I love those who actually engage when planning trips, and I sure do love to travel!

Robert2016

"who knew" sounds so Trumpish. RS is popular because he tries to help people. Making a living at the same time always helps.

In response to travelhorizons, yes, I'm well aware that there are travel agents who travel as often as possible, but overall, the numbers are not that great outside of FAM trips.