{"id":795,"date":"2024-11-06T17:07:44","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T17:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/?p=795"},"modified":"2024-11-06T17:07:44","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T17:07:44","slug":"booking-hotels-direct-or-through-3rd-party-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/06\/booking-hotels-direct-or-through-3rd-party-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Booking hotels direct or through 3rd party sites?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When it&#8217;s time to book a hotel this is the first question you should be asking yourself.. Opinions on this will vary, but for me the answer is (almost) always book directly with a hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why? First of all your booking is held in the hotel&#8217;s own system, so less room for errors. However the biggest pro is that almost always, it actually is cheaper. Add to that the possibility of freebies like upgrades, free wine\/bubbly, sometimes free spa, robes and slippers etc. Most hotels also have some sort of bonus program you can join and get 10-20% off the price. Join all of them, I do \ud83d\ude42 I also find the hotels are more likely to honor your room requests for a high floor or whatever else you are interested in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, if you don&#8217;t care about any of those things, the 3rd party sites can work well. Just make sure that you choose a big, reputable one! If I&#8217;m going to a city that is new to me, I will usually head over to booking.com or expedia.com just to see what hotels are available and to get an idea of prices. When I find something I like, I&#8217;ll go to the hotel&#8217;s own website and book there. In 99% of the cases it will be cheaper (esp if you sign up for a bonusprogram). Who doesn&#8217;t love bonus points?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My only exception is when I buy a package deal with hotel and flight together, this can sometimes turn out to be a great price. Again be very careful which companies you use for this! I can recommend BA Holidays <a href=\"http:\/\/www.britishairways.com\">http:\/\/www.britishairways.com<\/a> You can secure a trip there with a small deposit and lock in great prices. Even when I&#8217;ve had issues in the past at a hotel I was able to get help through their dedicated helpline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To sum it up, I would recommend to always book direct through a hotel, unless you find a great package deal with flights included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(image: Almirante hotel outside of Alicante, Spain)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When it&#8217;s time to book a hotel this is the first question you should be asking yourself.. Opinions on this will vary, but for me &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solotravel","category-travel","category-uncategorized","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swetravelista.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}