Good websites for booking hotels in Europe

mikedublin

Hi, I wonder if anyone could recommend any good safe website s for booking hotels in European cities. Where you can get a full upfront price and pay in advance by card.

I used to use roomex.com but they seem to be moved over to corporate business now. I like to know the full price before I go so I'm a bit wary of any sites that just give guide prices and then charges a different rate when you get there.

Thanks

SteelyDanJalapeno

I've used booking.com and Expedia 40-50 times without issue

spurious

I use booking.com, but will then check the hotel's own website or something like a national tourist board site for offers.

irish_goat

A good thing to know as well is that booking.com will come down very hard on hotels that try to scam you on arrival and charge a higher price. If you ever have any issues I'd advise to give them a call.

kenkin

I use alpharooms and travelrepublic a lot. Never had a problem

munchkin_utd

I've used bookings.com and hotels.com a good few times and never an issue.
Mostly I'd book direct with the hotel to get a cheaper price, loyalty points or a cheap or free brekkie. With Hilton, Holiday Inn or Accor (Mercure/ Novotel etc) I never had an issue either.

To be honest, its the first time I heard of hotels asking for more cash when checking in and I'd normally associate this with car rental companies, sometimes through insurances, but once with Avis at Dublin airport who charged me a diffrent price than I had booked it for and they hadnt a clue why it was different !

A wee tip for properly cheap hotels, checkout the likes of Novotel or Hilton Garden Inn's at trade fair grounds across the continent during the summer, because with no business travellers to pay a premium price, they discount the rooms heavily to attract leisure travellers who would gravitate more to city centre hotels. Often they are right by a metro stop and night links, so for maybe a fiver outlay for a day metro ticket you can save a pile on accommodation costs.

otnomart

Have been using booking.com for years, and no issue.
Good value chains I have been happy with are Ibis (one of the Accor brands, now diversified into: Ibis Budget, Ibis Styles...) widespread in France
and Motel One ( a Germany chain but also present elsewhere).

mirandatour

I've used booking too

aabarnes1

Hi there,
hotels.com. trivago etc cover all the other booking sites so if you use one of these you really will get the best deal.
Having said that booking.com comes out on top most of the time for all the price comparison websites and their customer service is pretty hot too.

I think I have only ever got a cheaper deal once by going to the hotels own website (Seafield Hotel in Wexford), so play safe and stick with the winners--- Booking.com.

kerry4sam

Thread closed by me.

Thanks,
kerry4sam

re:closure

Our Travel Forum have a sticky thread with links that answer this query. If other links come to light by anyone, people are more than Welcome to add to that one sticky useful links thread. It would be more than beneficial for future posters to have them in one place, rather than trying to search through the fora.

Thanks,
kerry4sam