I’m winging it around Thailand now...nothing booked.
I’m finding hotels are offering reasonable prices ....less than Booking.com and other websites....to those of us arriving at the front door.
So the question is....”is it worth using websites or just arrive and ask for a room”.
This assumes you KNOW they have rooms...e.g off season etc.
Any views?
I include in my holiday experience both the anticipation of the trip and the recollection afterwards and so I like my Thailand arrangements to be clear and immutable. I even email my hotels a week before arrival to confirm....come to think of it, I've just done so at my Chiang Rai hotel for next week's arrival. At the same time I envy those who are more spontaneous.
poshglasgow (January 9th, 2018)
How do you know that, exactly? You check booking.com before you turn up and ask? In that case you will know whether they have a room or notOriginally Posted by gerefan2
Not necessarily as hotels usually only allocate a certain % of their rooms to the "discount" booking sites, so it's not uncommon to see a hotel with "no rooms available" on either one or all of the various sites and then see it on another site OR available direct from the hotels site, likewise this can also happen in reverse where the hotels direct site shows "full" but there are still rooms to be found on the booking sites. Unfortuantely in my experience it's not an exact science and sopmetimes you win, sometimes you loose.
For instance I was in Spain two weeks ago and had booked my room two months previously at about £110 a night, only to find when lying on the sun lounger that i could actually book a room either on the same booking site or direct with the hotel for £55 a night ! Grrrr. Simple supply and demand of course. I beleive the hotels are made to sign a contract stating that they wont undercut the booking sites advertised rates to avoid the every thing that Gerefan is describing from thing happening, but likewhere sometime people break the rules and I guess if your hotel is half empty and you've a guy standing in front of you waving cash you just might take it a risk the booking sites never finding out.
So to me if it wasn't critical I think I'd take a chance and go on the hoof ( in low season) BUT I've also been surprised sometimes to walk into what i expected to be half empty hotels and find them fully booked so it's a hard one to gauge - simple answer I guess if you're time limited you book the room in advance and if you've all the time in the world then one has the time to shop around and find out.
a447 (January 9th, 2018)
I'm not sure where you're getting your information about these sites from. There have been a couple of published investigations of them recently. Although there are many sites, they are all just brand names for the same three or four large consolidators who are predatory in their behaviour with hotels that they list. In particular, hotels that list with them are not allowed under their agreement to offer prices via their own Web sites to the general public that undercut the price they offer the consolidators. This is the basis for their claim that you can always find the cheapest price via them. The only way around this, apparently, is prices that a hotel chain might offer only to members of its loyalty club. It's always possible that a hotel will offer a better price if contacted directly, either via email or walk-in, but not otherwise
I've tried both with advance booking and without.
I always used to book in advance, but then I found myself forced to move on when I really wanted to stay in a place for a day or 2 longer. So I did a couple of trips with very little booking. For instance in Vietnam, I booked one night in a hotel & then did everything as I went after that. The same for part of a trip to Cambodia & some parts of Thai trips.
This all works if there are a number of candidate hotels located close together. For instance, I had been around Halong bay & was returning to my previous Hanoi hotel, when the one just down the street offered a much better room at a low price. This also permits changes of itinerary at short notice.
The disadvantage is (for example) when turning up in a town and not finding any vacancies until the 6th hotel visited.
Of course, there are disadvantages to booking on line.
In one instance, I booked a hotel in Ayyuthaya & the lady had over booked & placed me in a hotel around the corner, with a rating 0.5 below that for the hotel I had booked. The worst hotel of my trip & needless to say, she got a terrible review from me.
My last few trips have been 100% booked in advance, although if I were doing longer trips away from peak season, I would probably do some parts without advance booking.
Yep, I'm fully aware that its the same two or three companies that own most of the hotel booking sites, I never thought or suggested otherwise and they cleverly "appear" to play each site off against the other, however that still doesn't stop you sometimes winning that game ( or at least not OVER paying) by checking them all against each other ( and not via one of the comparison sites as they too are ALSO owned by the very same companies half the time.
Re your "hotels that list with them are not allowed under their agreement to offer prices via their own Web sites to the general public that undercut the price they offer the consolidators" - yep, I believe thats exactly what I said too so you're bang on there as well. And likewise re your "It's always possible that a hotel will offer a better price if contacted directly, either via email or walk-in, but not otherwise".
So what exactly did you mean by your assertion "as hotels usually only allocate a certain % of their rooms to the "discount" booking sites" since that simply isn't supported by what you now claim to know?
https://www.theguardian.com/money/bl...st-hotel-rates
Without going over the same ground I meant exactly what I said as I've had numerous experiences of hotels only making a certain number but not ALL of their rooms to the available to the various ( or some or just one) booking site, I can only assume this is as the hotel KNOWS they can fill a certain number of rooms themselves at their preferred (higher) rates and without paying the any commission to the sites, whereas then they'll use / all the sites to hopefully fill up their remaining available unsold rooms. Or Likewise in reverse and hotel with few guests may use the sites to get (some) people into the hotel, either to simply cover the staff's wage cost or to make the hotel appear busier, in the hope then of attracting more private ( higher paying) full tariff guests. But either way it's ablsutely not uncommon for hotels to only make a certain percentage and certainly not all of their rooms available for booking via the booking sites - hence it's not uncommon for a room to be available on the sites, but when you ring it IS still available via the hotel directly, which is I believe what I'd said.
Right - all based on your subjective experiences - very scientific
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