When Making Air and Hotel Reservations

[Neal]

When making your hotel reservations for anywhere in the world, please please try clicking on the Agoda banner on this forum and change the city to whichever country and city you wish and check out the rates. Making your reservations through this site halps support the costs to run this free forum. Your help is greatly appreciated.

On the other hand, you could just click the banner.

:sleepy1:

[joe552]

Just to clarify Neal - is it necessary to actually make a booking for you to get your commission, or is simply going to that site and say checking hotel rates enough? :dontknow:

[stevehadders]

Many of us have little "breaks" from our favourite hotel in Pattaya eg to Phuket, Bkk etc, and Agoda a good site, so good opportunity to support the board

[Neal]

To answer, clicking on the banner brings you to Agoda and identifies that it came from Sawatdee BUT if no reservation is made AND followed through, there is no commission paid by the hotel to Sawatdee. So no, you need to actually make the reservation and follow through.
Thank you so much for asking. Its not a great big commission but everything helps. With all the clicks last month only 2 followed through this month and the commission was only a little over $4.00. :sign5: We have had good months where it has been about $40 to $60 so I assume Agoda has good deals and some people are very happy using them.

[yaraboy]

Love to but dont see the banner..........................!

[fountainhall]

I have consistently found that agoda has the best rates for hotels within Thailand, so it is certainly worth checking before you make a trip here.

However - and I don't want to take commissions away from the Board - but it's only fair to point out that agoda is not always the best outside of Thailand. One easy way to check is to use the site http://www.hotelscombined.com . This gives you an at-a-glance view of the rates offered by several search engines, including hotels.com, expedia.co.th, laterooms.com, booking.com, octopus.com, ratestogo.com, skoosh.com and a host of others.

A quick look today at availabilities in November confirms that most of the best Thailand rates are from agoda. In Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, agoda also wins hands down, whereas in Hong Kong, hotels.com gets better rates in some hotels. In Tokyo, though, hotels.com has a majority of best rates.

That said, though, the other good thing about hotelscombined.com is that it gives you full comparisons, not just on price. If you decide that agoda is best for you, it redirects you to the agoda site to make the booking. Or you can come back to SGT and just click on the agoda banner.

One other site worth checking from time to time is Travelzoo. It doesn't often have Thailand offers, but when it does, they tend to be spectacular. I booked six nights at the Khao Lak J W Marriott Resort for the start of next April at US$90 per night all inclusive (with breakfast and free wifi). That offer covered most of the rest of 2012 and then about 3 months from April - June 2013. The lowest rate for an identical room and roughly the same extras for that period on other search engines is US$204 (at otel.com)!* The one problem with Travelzoo is that you only have about a 10-day window to purchase the vouchers. So you have to make your decision quickly. However, unlike most low rates, once you have booked you can change dates without any penalty.

* For those interested, this was the deal. It sold out pretty quickly!
http://www.travelzoo.com/au/local-deals ... _australia (http://www.travelzoo.com/au/local-deals/Outside-Australia/Getaway/21717?utm_source=localdeal_au&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1286608_html_australia)

[Neal]

Yaraboy they are all over the site. Talks about many different cities in Thailand. Just click on the banner and change the city or country.

The site i use for a lot of my accomodation is Booking.com....you get low prices and you dont have to pay anything in advance...when i've used Agoda you usually have to pay when you book

bluechris1, I do not doubt what you say - as I have never used booking.com.

What I do know though is that generally the very best deals/lowest rates at many hotels (most especially the larger "chain" hotels) require well-advanced booking together with immediate pre-payment - and most often preclude any change or cancellation.

So I looked at the T&Cs on the booking.com site and I found the following:

For certain rates or special offers, please note that your credit card may be pre-authorised or charged (sometimes without any option for refund) upon reservation and confirmation of the booking. Please check the room details thoroughly for any such conditions prior to making your reservation.

So it does appear that whilst you personally have never been asked to pre-pay, it is certainly possible that this could be the case for others, depending on the offer conditions. Not that this should stop anybody looking of course

:hello2:

[lexusgs]

Bluechris,

Unfortunately I have to agree with SG. :occasion9:

Booking.com charge your card immediately for the 1st night in most cases. I thought the same as you until a week ago in Hong Kong. I wanted to change the card I had used but they informed me on check in that my card had already been billed. I have one or two instances in Bangkok where they hold the room without charge but it's rare.

[gaymandenmark]

I have never been charged, but I think been pre-authorised using booking.com, I have always paid at the end of my stay.
I have not used booking.com for hotels in Thailand, but in Istanbul, Las Palmas and Berlin. In Berlin I also changed the card I wanted to pay with. In Las Palmas I had made reservation at a hotel for one week. I thought the room was on the small side, and moved after one night. No problem, I did just pay for one night at the time of leaving, without any penalty.

However it is correct that in the last year(s), for some rates, some hotels ask you to pay for one night or the total amount at the time of reservation. It is as I remember very clear mentioned on booking.com.

Some hotels on booking.com also have 2 different types of rates, one where you pay at reservation time and one where you pay at the hotel. But the difference is not that big.

So bluechris1 is not necessarily wrong, because I have had the same experiences, for sure.

Look, we don't have to have any argument on this - we know exactly what the booking.com policy is - because I copied and pasted their own T&Cs.
So unless anybody now wants to say that booking.com is printing crap in their own T&Cs, I don't see the point of further discussion on this specific point.

Nobody is saying bluechris1 is wrong - he has clearly had the experiences he has had and has been highly satisfied.
What is being pointed out is that his experience of never being pre-charged is neither universal nor a guaranteed feature of booking.com - as was implied.

:old:

[Brad the Impala]

Yaraboy they are all over the site. Talks about many different cities in Thailand. Just click on the banner and change the city or country.

I recently made two bookings through Agoda, both of which I was very happy with. On both occasions I wanted to use the link from here, for the reasons given that it costs me nothing, but contributes to the running cost of the site. However each time having looked on the Portal entrance, the general forum page and the gay Thailand forum page, I could not find an Agoda banner on which to click, so I went directly to Agoda.

[gaymandenmark]

SG I am really sorry if I have offended you, by writing about my experiences with booking.com.
Because you have copied and pasted their T&Cs, mine and other experiences is of cource of no use.

In fact my post confirm the T&Cs, I write for some rates, they write for certain rates.

End of discussion.

[GMD, be assured it takes much more than that to offend me!
Your experiences are 100% valid - as are those of bluechris1 - the very point I made in the last 2 lines of my post.
However, your and his experiences are quite different and those of Lexusgs are different again - exactly why I posted the T&Cs.

[Neal]

All the banners work on a rotating basis. All you need to do is to reload the page and usually the abnners change.

[Brad the Impala]

Nope, the only banner i ever get is Jesters Care for Kids. Not complaining, just informing

[Neal]

Specifically tell me which page yopu are on. The forum index or gay thailand or a thread. Where? Are you looking at ads on the top middle or bottom of the page?

Likewise here Neal - the only two Ad's I ever get coming up at the top of the Gay Thailand page are for Happy Boys and Eros Bar.

[Neal]

Well according to what I see, the thread title page in Gay Thailand that has Eros and Happy Boys in rotation along with Happy Place has a baneer ad all the way at the bottom that has in rotation an Agoda ad. I also see various ads when you open a thread to read a post. Those have 3 ads....one at the top one in the center and one at the footer. They also rotate and there are Agoda ads for different cities that rotate sometimes there. I mean I am pulling up the threads and gay thailand forum page and I see them.

The Agoda banner appears (for me) at the bottom of this very page.

[lukylok]

Is it not a privilege of golden members ? I have no add either !

[Neal]

But NIrish is not a Gold Member. I thought you were not upposed to see ads on the front forum page.

[Neal]

I made myself a Gold Member and you are right. All these ads seem to disappear. Guess I will have to move Jesters to another spot and put an Agoda ad there. Thanks for pointing it out to me but I still do not understand why NIrish who is not a Gokd member does not see it.

[joe552]

I can see the Agoda add at the bottom of this thread page as well as on the Gay Thailand index page. Perhaps it's blocked for those who are not worthy? :occasion9:

..... Perhaps it's blocked for those who are not worthy? :occasion9:


If that was the case I don't think NIrish would be seeing the SGF Website at all!

:ura1:

It appears that I have now reached the same acceptable standards of worthiness as the rest of you as I CAN now see the Agoda Ad running at the bottom of my screen - it may of course have always been there the whole time and I may never have thought to have actually scrolled down and looked for it before posting my original message but I certainly am not going to admit to such blatant laziness and carelessness now after posting that earlier, so you can all just draw your own conclusions a to what you believe the truth to be but I'm sticking to my original line that it was never there in the first place and it's all Neal's fault - SO THERE ! :-)

[Neal]

hmmmmm she says.

[Captain Swing]

I don't get it. I'm looking to book at the Tarntawan at Christmastime. The Tarntawan's own website quotes a price of 2900 baht. I think I can get a slight discount by being a Utopia member. To be a good sport I checked Agoda, which I've never used before, clicking through from this board of course. The price for the same class of room is 4728 baht. That's more than 50% higher. I checked Booking.com, which I had never heard of before--even more, 5600 baht, nearly twice as much. Is this typical of these sites? What am I missing here? The Tarntawan's own price IS inclusive of tax and service, as are the others I presume. What possible advantage is there to book through one of these sites?

Sometimes when they dont have the standard rooms available Agoda I know for sure that they automatically upgrades your room choice so I'm guessing the 4000 odd figure is actually for a suite, make sure you checked below on their site in the "other room choices available" (or words to that effect), also in my experience if you've stayed there before perhaps it's always worth giving the hotel ( or ANY hotel) a call and asking them for their "special rate" to encourage you to book now, whilst I believe technically hotels have a contract which says that they must never beat or match the Agoda rate shown etc in the real world sometimes this might happen if the hotel is sitting half empty, I know from my own experience I always used Agoda ( as generally it's not to bad I find) but with a few hotels where I now know the phone call works ( and I'm not necessarily saying the Tarntawan is one of them by the way :-) I do that and usually save "something" BUT if I've stayed there before I also find if there's an upgraded room available they may chose to put me there instead of discount the price to much which works equally well for me too.

Actually .......whilst the above is all sound info I have just checked the Agoda website there myself using a random date of Saturday 22nd Dec and you are quite correct that the STANDARD room rate is shown on Agoda at 4758 bath which is expensive and I'm guessing is as the hotel is so busy over the main Christmas period and Agoda only have a set number of rooms allocated to them to rent THEIR allocation is nearly all used up hence their prices go up - so, having just myself made a call to the Tarntawan there to check availability I REALLY suggest that you give the hotel a call direct and who knows you just might get a nice surprise- to assist you as the sooner you ring the better I think their number is 0066-2-238-2620.

Hope that helps.

[christianpfc]

Another note on Agoda: On my recent holiday (September), I didn't book a hotel in advance for maximum flexibility and just turned up at Penguin House (Sathorn, stayed there before). I had a printout from Agoda with 722 Baht per night for a double bed room, but the walk-in rate was 800! For five nights, the receptionist (whom I know from my previous holiday) offered me a discount at 750 Baht per night, which I accepted.

Here we have the strange case that booking via an agent is cheaper! (I read this is quite common in Thailand that using a Thai middleman can give better prices than booking directly, but this is the first time I experience it directly.)

Whereas all guesthouses I stayed at (Howards, Twoguys, Om Yim) have the same rate for booking online or walk-in.

[stevehadders]

normally walk in / book on the day of arrival is generally more expensive as you need a room so the Hotel generally will charge you more on day of arrival, than advance booking. I imagine if you checked agoda/other OLTAs (on line travel agents) they would not be same price as your printout which I assume was printed before arrival. Usually most hotels /groups especially have parity on the websites as the OLTAs...years ago the Hotel could offer cheaper rates but the OLTAs are now so powerful they have price parity in the contracts and have automatic trackers to check compliance. ( the exception being seasonal pre pay promotions, but normally only the big groups)

Years ago walking into Hotels you could negociate - and still a little bit the case in some hotels especially Asia, or if they know you, but increasingly not is the trend as they realise that you need a room and they know most of their competitors do the same now