Observation on Booking Sites for Hotels and Cashback Offers

bin555 on 11/03/2023 - 17:08

I've been booking hotels for short vacation in Singapore. I observed following:

A. Cashback offers on some site especially booking.com are useful. They inflate the price and few threads on ozbargain about this.

B. Expedia has worked in past. However, i must say on average all the hotels it shows be were over 200 a night. It looked like I am doing really well if i can find decent accomodation for roughly 220-240 a night.

C. Agoda surprisingly was the winner. Lots of choices around $150 mark (rated hotels with good location). I ended up booking something for $150 a night (after discount and 5% cashbacks).

Point of story:

  • I thought all sites were the sane in terms of options they display. That was evident on booking and expedia. However, options shown on Agoda were different.
  • Increased cashback as pretty useless. They seem to inflate the price for the same thing.

I would love to know what are your go-to sides for booking hotels

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Comments

  • Hybroid on 11/03/2023 - 17:18
    +1

    Hotels.com is my preference - easy to use site and app, you sometimes get better offers when logged in, free cancellation policy is very easy to use, pay at hotel if desired with none upfront and you get a free night for every 10 nights booked.

    There's only a few travel agencies around. Most belong to the same few companies. Booking/Agoda/Kayak/Priceline/Rentalcars are all the same company. Expedia/Hotels.com/Hotwire/Trivago/Wotif/Travelocity/Orbitz etc are all the same company.

    There will be differences between each as they may have different agreements and allocations. There's lots of variables at play, that's why you cross-compare. It's normal.

  • USER DC on 11/03/2023 - 17:44
    +1

    Booking.com has been best for me (for those genius discounted places) booking at free cancellation places, and no upfront payment too. Best IMO
    + only make booking during cashback upsizes.

    Yesterday Expedia had a good 23% upsized cashback (10% was from using Westpac card)

    • Mokr on 11/03/2023 - 18:14

      I'd be wary relying on cashback.

      As sometimes it just doesn't track etc.

  • Stalker on 11/03/2023 - 18:55
    +1

    Thanks man! You just saved me ~$100! I just booked a room for 5 nights using Booking.com thinking the cashrewards cashback of 12% was great, but when I saw this post, I checked the others and found that Expedia actaully had a 10% discount on the room rate + 5.5% cashback via cashrewards. Many thanks!

  • tsunamisurfer on 11/03/2023 - 20:38

    I just recently booked 4 hotels. I checked the prices at expedia and booking before and after logging in through cash rewards.

    The prices in each instance was the same.

  • jolee3 on 11/03/2023 - 20:54

    I booked accommodation yesterday and the one I found on Wotif didn't come up as available on any other website (including booking direct) when I tried to shop around.

    Turns out Wotif marked it as a room for up to 4 people, but other websites were all 3 people only. So I booked through Wotif…which in the past have been a bit hit and miss.

    The other options for hotels that came up were similar pricing across the different sites.

  • dtc on 11/03/2023 - 21:29

    Most of the time you can get the same price booking directly with the hotel. You might need to sign up to their loyalty program.

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