booking hotels in usa

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bond-007

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I want to book hotels for my touring holiday to california in November. Is it better to book with hotels direct or with a company like ebookers.ie?

As I need several different hotels would an agency be charging alot in commisions as they would be maybe 7 different hotels involved.

thanks
007
 
All my holidays, I book the hotels online.

Sites such as http://www.hotels.com (Hotels.com) and Wotif.com are excellent.

You can get some real bargains on those sites. I especially like Wotif.

-soc
 
I've never bothered prebooking hotels anywhere in the U.S.

Just walk in and see what's available.
 
bond-007 said:
I want to book hotels for my touring holiday to california in November. Is it better to book with hotels direct or with a company like ebookers.ie?

As I need several different hotels would an agency be charging alot in commisions as they would be maybe 7 different hotels involved.

thanks
007
Click to expand...


try

[broken link removed]
www.octopustravel.com
http://www.hotelclub.com (www.hotelclub.com)
and avoid ebookers, they are usually more expensive than the other sites
 
RS2K said:
I've never bothered prebooking hotels anywhere in the U.S.

Just walk in and see what's available.
Click to expand...

IMO Saturdays should definately be booked in advance but you could leave some of the weekdays free and only pay when you find a nice place, this way you are free to go where you want or stay longer in a place. I also found hotels.com very useful.
 
Do hotels.com charge you up front? Is it standard practice to charge upfront in general?
 
In America the best prices for hotels are all on the chains official website. So Best Western's best price is on the best western site. I travelled around the states for three months and always booked through the chains own website. I used hotels.com, expedia etc. to get the info on what hotels were in the area ?I was travelling to, but ALWAYS booked through the hotels website. They all have a Low Rate guaranteed program, which means that if you find it lower (I never did), they will refund you double the difference or something similar.

Charges for hotels.com and expedia and the like are quite high relatively speaking.
 
I have found that hotels.com to be significantly cheaper than the chains own website in some cases. In one case they were 50% cheaper than the hotels own site.
 
go to hotels.com. find a hotel you like. Google the name of the hotel and then book with the cheepest site. you will save a bundle!! Also if hiring a car hire the smallest car on the site. In the USA the hire companies don't actually have the small cars so they have to up grade you for free. You will get a car the size of a Ford Focus. They will try every trick to get you to upgrade keep refusing (we were told out luggage might not fit!) Stick to your guns and you will get a great car for a lot cheeper than they will normally charge for that car.
 
Also check your hotel out on a site such as and read the reviews form ppl who have had dealings with the actual hotels. I actually cancelled a hotel after reading some of the reviews and booked another hotel in the same town.
 
Hear, hear - TripAdvisor is great - Don't forget to give something back to that community by submitting your own reviews.
 
Priceline.com was recommended to me by a friend recently. You enter the area you want to stay in, max. price and star rated hotel, and they come back with the options available. Colleague in work reserved the Waldorf Astoria in NY for $80 a night. Prices don't usually include taxes etc so there will be a bit extra to pay on checkout.
 
Only problem with Priceline.com is you don't get a choice, and you must give CC details before searching for hotels. Not great really.
 
We did a fly drive of California before, we copied the route from the travel agents brochure and then booked all the hotels ourselves. We stayed in best western types, and they were all great in America, and we were in them so little. In some places we stayed in a nicer hotel. I think we saved nearly 600/head booking it that way. It took a good bit of time on the net but was well worth it. Some hotels we booked directly with the chain, some with hotels.com and some on the aer lingus website. It gave us a good mix of some being paid before we went and some when we were there.
 
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