Still my favorite hotel-booking site
Back in 2015, I posted that two of my favorite accommodating-booking sites were Airbnb and Booking.com. I still use both of these regularly, and in particular, I still love Booking.com for hotels and bnbs. And no, I’m not being paid to say this, I just really like their website for a number of reasons. I mean, they should pay me, because I’m constantly promoting them!
Although not a paid-advertisement for them, I did include my “refer-a-friend” link down below, which will get you $15 off your next booking.
Here are a few reasons why I like using Booking.com:
1. You pay when you get there.
Almost always you don’t have to pay until you arrive. There is no down-payment or money you have to put upfront. I love this! With Airbnb, you have to pay everything right when you book, which can be a pain if you plan ahead and don’t have all the money you need right away. I like that I can pay when I show up.
2. Free cancellation.
Most of the time, I can get a room that I can cancel within 48 hours of arrival. (Sometimes even 24 hours prior to arrival.) This gives me ease in booking things well in advance, and if things change I just cancel my reservation with no penalties. Booking.com has a lot of the smaller bed and breakfasts listed as well, instead of just the larger hotel chains which tend to flood sites like Expedia and Orbitz. I’ve used this feature a lot. I’ve booked sometimes 3-4 hotels, and then decided later which one I actually wanted to use.
3. You can book as a link through TripAdvisor.
If I’m looking at hotels through TripAdvisor and I put in my dates, it gives me options on which sites I can book through. Some hotels are listed on Orbitz, Expedia and Booking.com, some are only available through the hotel website. If it’s available through Booking.com, that makes things easier for me!
4. Customer service.
I booked a hotel in Edinburgh months in advance. Unfortunately, the hotel canceled our reservation on account of “being full” a day before we were supposed to be there. Booking.com offered a few other places to stay at, but they didn’t have good reviews. I chose another place to stay on their website, but wrote them a letter explaining our situation. They refunded us $50 for the extra cost to stay in another hotel. They credited our bank account quickly, which I appreciated. Even though that happened, I still felt that this site did due diligence to try and make things right.
5. Changes are easy.
It’s easy to make changes. Sometimes I want to switch the date or the bed-choice, and their website is easy to make changes.
6. The site emails the hotels for me with requests.
I recently needed to email all the hotels I booked about parking, and the website has various prompts you can use and they will email the hotel right away. This means I don’t have to worry about finding the hotel email, and checking back to make sure they received it, etc. The hotel receives my questions and responds back to them. This also means all the messages for the various hotels are all stored in one place, so I can just check my account instead of searching through emails.
