With so many travel firms now on the market trying to attract your business, arranging trips can start to get a little overwhelming. It's often quite difficult to know if you're really getting a great deal and whether you can trust the booking agent you've chosen.
Despite all the competition, we always find we end up using one hotel booking website in particular. For its ease of use and consistently good prices, we like using Booking.com. Here are some of the reason why.
1. Free cancellation on nearly all rooms
The most important reasons we use Booking.com is that on most rooms, you can cancel your booking penalty free. We've found ‘free cancellation’ offered on nearly all of the rooms we’ve booked and generally, there’s no surcharge.
The flexibility this offers is useful for many reasons, but particularly if you’re making a last minute booking. When we begin our search for accommodation, we’ll start by making a short list. We’ll then make a quick decision about which of our short-listed properties fulfills our basic criteria, and then place a booking.
At this point, we've locked down somewhere to stay, but it might not necessarily be the best place that’s available. With free cancellation, we’re now free to continue our search, this time being more selective. In the event we find somewhere nicer and/or cheaper, we place a new booking, then cancel our first booking.
It's worth noting that some smaller, independent hotels are not terribly keen on the 'free cancellation' model as it makes managing demand difficult. Our advice is to try and limit your usage of 'free cancellation' bookings as much as possible, particularly when dealing with small, independent hotels.
Another thing to note is that cancellation policies can change quite frequently. When making your booking, read everything to ensure you are booking under the cancellation policy you expect.
2. Clear pricing with no hidden fees
The prices displayed are the prices you pay. Booking.com doesn't add any reservation or admin fees. In fact, Booking.com rarely charges you anything. In most cases, all charges are payable directly to the hotel when you arrive.
Of course, there are occasions where Booking.com does collect payment, but this is always stated clearly during the booking process.
Please note that occasionally, hotels add tourist taxes or additional fees to the bill when you arrive. This should be written clearly on the hotel listing. In the event it doesn't, let Booking.com’s support team know.
3. Book hotel rooms on the move
The travel industry is plagued by poor apps which only offer limited features. Booking.com’s app is different though. Everything you can do on their website, you can do in the app. It’s really nicely designed, really easy to use and it's updated very frequently.
While there are several really clever features in the app, our favourite is the screenshot feature. When taking a screenshot, the app realises you're taking a screenshot and offers a sharable link instead which can then be sent by email or posted to a social network.
4. Your loyalty rewarded with freebies, perks and discounts
Book hotel rooms with Booking.com and you become a Booking.com Genius. This programme rewards your loyalty with additional discounts, freebies and perks (like free airport transfers and welcome drinks) and access to a priority customer service line. Membership of the programme is completely free and is automatically triggered once you place your fifth booking.
Genius perks are offered by the hotel's themselves and not by Booking.com, so the perks you receive depend greatly on the hotels you interact with.
5. Really good support
Thankfully, I've not had to get in touch with Booking.com’s customer service team very often. On the occasions I have though, my issues have always been sorted out very quickly.
6. Price match guarantee
In the event you manage to find a cheaper rate for a booking you’ve placed, Booking.com will match it. Obviously, you’ll need to provide proof and meet some other criteria, but it’s good to know that when you book hotel rooms with Booking.com, you know they'll price match.
7. Over 93 Million Reviews
Reviews are vitally important when placing hotel bookings as they provide an unbiased insight into what it’s like to stay at a given hotel. Booking.com has an active reviews system built in, so you don’t have to scour the Internet searching for other reviews. They’re right there on the listing.
Those are our thoughts on why you should book hotel rooms with Booking.com, our first calling point when we're booking rooms. We'd love to hear from you if you've used Booking.com or if you've used a different hotel booking website. Let us know in the comments below.
Disclaimer: There are affiliate links inside this article that link to Booking.com's website. We receive a small commission from Booking.com for sending you their way. The appearance of affiliate links in no way influenced our genuine recommendation of Booking.com. All of the words and opinions in this article are our own.
I have only used booking and have more then 5 bookings but have not received any rewards or perks..
Hi Lydia. That sucks! Do you see ‘Genius’ next to your name when you’re logged into Booking.com? If so, you’re eligible for perks. Bear in mind though, not all hotels offers perks and discounts. When you do find them, you’ll see ‘Genius’ offers clearly identified in your search results.
Can I build up higher percentages off or free rooms Once I reach a certain number of bookings?
Thanks
No, not at the moment. The perks and discounts are actually offered by the properties themselves, not by Booking.com. So it’s entirely down to the individual properties as to what kind of offers are available to you. Becoming a ‘genius’ just kind of opens up the possibility to get perks and discounts, rather than making it a certainty.
Hello !
Thank you for your article. It has been very informative!
I have a question about the loyalty program, are there different “levels” or does it just stay at “Frequent traveler”? Because I seem to recall while reading a property review seeing something other than that, like a higher level user.
Thanks for the reply!
Hi Saya. Thanks for your comment.
As far as I’m aware, there are no levels as part of the Booking.com Genius scheme. I’ve made lots of bookings over the years and I’m still a ‘Frequent Traveller’. The perks you get on your booking vary depending on the property rather than on the scheme itself.
It’s not automatic, you do have to register for Genius status, it’s only the discounts that don’t apply until you’ve had 5 stays.
Your on level one if you’ve only made 2 bookings in two years. You’re on level 2 and become a genius member if you have made more than 2 bookings within 2 years and you become a genius member for life even if you make 0 booking after those 2 years. There are no other levels after that.
i meant level 2 if you have 5 stays within 2 years.
As a Booking.com Genius myself, these days I typically end up booking on Agoda. It’s usually cheaper than the Genius price on Booking.com and they usually have extra discounts and perks available that make it cheaper again, ironic given they are both owned by the same company. In fact, I find Booking.com is usually flat out the most expensive booking site and a price match guarantee isn’t worth the effort. If it’s the same price I might as well book elsewhere anyway, again such as Agoda where I get frequent flyer miles on top of a better price. It needs to be a price beat guarantee to be worth going to the effort of proving the better price. I’m wondering if they vary their pricing depending on your country. I know some airlines charge us more to book flights between Australia and Japan if we book them with an Australian address then if we book with a Japanese address. Same deal with flying to NZ and the USA.
Interesting comments, Matt.
Agoda doesn’t have much of a profile here in the UK so I don’t have a lot experience using it. I like the design and the ability to collect loyalty points with your choice of partner programme is a nice offering. I couldn’t find any examples of lower prices on my admittedly limited searches. Most of the results I found were ‘from Booking.com’ anyway.
What I didn’t like was how Agoda displays prices by night rather than displaying the total amount for a multi-night trip like on Booking.com. I clicked through and found it only displayed the total on the booking page, two clicks in. Not very helpful.
I think all travel sites have dynamic pricing depending on the time of day and the user’s location. That’s where incognito mode comes in handy.
It’s partly personal preference, but I guess also partly our travel style. I find Booking.com’s total price unbelievably annoying and makes it so much harder to plan a trip. I like nightly pricing because nights have different prices. Friday and Saturday nights are usually the most expensive, but not everywhere and not at every hotel and certainly not consistently throughout the year. I wouldn’t stay at a hotel for 4 nights in a row over a weekend if the rate was going to spike on Sunday for some reason, unless I absolutely had to be there for something. That’s weird, but a whole trip price doesn’t permit you to see that. Unless they’ve changed it, the last time I booked with them you could only see nightly price by searching each night individually or after placing a booking. When I can see the nightly rate I can see that Sunday is unusually high and can do some research to find out why that might be. It can change our entire trip plan, and Agoda, Hotels, Expedia, Wotif and hotel direct all conveniently show the price of each night with much less effort. I use HotelsCombined for comparison because they search the most booking sites and include hotel direct for some of the larger chains. For us, Agoda almost always comes out cheaper or the same price compared to Booking.com, including when running the same search on them directly. Considering Agoda offers better value for at least the same price we usually go that way. That said, you can get better deals elsewhere too. We’ve booked hotel direct sometimes because it was the same price, earned us hotel loyalty nights, and the hotel had upgrades (eg $1 buffet breakfast) not available on the booking sites. On a side note, you can now also earn affiliate commissions on your own bookings with Agoda, so that is making it slightly cheaper again :)
Alltough Booking.com is a very easy to use and good online hotel reservation system, it does not mean it is the best way to reserve a hotel room. They charge 12-15% over the hotel revenue which makes it expensive, those costs have to be paid by the customer through the hotel rates. There are cheaper systems, but because of the rate parity clause in Booking.com’s contract other websites cannot get cheaper rates, so hotels have been offering better rates directly more often. Rate parity has been made illegal in some countries, but it still influences the online hotel rates. Regarding cancellation policies, they are usually the same as reservering directly or on other websites.
Hi Michael. Thanks for your comments. Really interesting stuff.
I would say the biggest reason i used booking.com was the map feature. I knew what general area i wanted to go to, but didn’t really care where exactly i ended up. So the map feature being able to update to my general pricing settings plus family members was amazing. I could easily see which places were along the beach and which places weren’t and with little per night price tags above each spot. I could easily see what was around the area as well. I went to a bunch of other travel sites before booking and kept coming back to booking.coms map feature.
Thought I would leave my two pence. I use booking.com a huge amount (3-4 times a week) and I find I am always upgraded without effort or offered some kind of preferential service at no charge. I suspect booking.com grades you as a revenue Customer and passes that on to the hotel, who will then pamper you accordingly.
Hey Chas,
How very interesting. I’d not heard about this kind of thing happening before. I guess if you’re using a service 3-4 times a week, you should be rewarded for your loyalty somehow.
Hotels.com currently offers a free night per 10 nights stay (value of the free night equals the average of the 10 nights) which I find much more convenient than Booking.com Genius benefits. In fact, I have never got any Genius Benefits from hotels, even though I travel a lot, only the supposedly “Genius Discount”, which I don´t know to be true anyways. Hotels.com has the same Booking.com benefits (map search, reviews, free cancellation) but with the 10th night freebie which is a huge deal. Sometimes is a bit more expensive (though most of the times it is the exact same price) and that it sometimes adds taxes or fees at the end. I also prefer Booking.com reviews than Hotels.com, but knowing that I just search on both and decide which one to use.
Too bad the hotels.com rewards are changing and the one night free after 10 is going away.
Oh, no way! I didn’t know this. That sucks!
I have a question, the prices shown on the booking app (for example, it says “Price for 3 nights, 1 adult…NAD6 700.”) Is this the total price that I’ll pay for the three nights that in there or is it the price that I’m paying for each night that I’m there?
Someone please help me understand, thank you
On Booking.com, the price you see is the total cost of your entire stay, not the nightly rate. Other hotel booking sites (e.g. Agoda) primarily display the nightly rate.
Have Booking . Com changed their system recently? I’m finding that the price quoted increases at each step of the booking process, ending up over £100 more by the time I get to payment stage. I have Genius discount, but maybe this has time-expired (I havent travelled in Covid era)?
I’m not aware of any recent changes. And I’ve certainly not encountered prices changing between seeing them on search results and on the booking page. Maybe open an incognito/private browser tab and see if it still does the same thing. Perhaps it’s a rogue cookie. I do believe that your genius status is dependent on the number of bookings you make in a given time period, so it’s possible it has expired. You can check your status in your profile. Best in mind that not all properties offer genius perks.
Booking.com now has a Genius level 3, which I now qualify for. This means you can get up to 20% discount on some Genius hotels. It is a bit difficult to get to this level, as you have to complete 15 bookings in 2 years.