Saturday, August 9, 2008

Finding the best travel and hotel services

 

Where would you like to go for holidaying next time? How about some exotic locations like Pattaya, Bangkok, Bali, Hong Kong, the Caribbean Islands, Rio de Janeiro, Hawaii, the sunny beaches of the Canary Islands, or the French Riviera?

I love travel. I never miss an opportunity to go around places and enjoy scenic sites, visit historical monuments, etc. But sometimes I feel that my entire program could have been planned well beforehand. The most important things for me are timely reservations, for traveling to the desired destination as well as for my stay. Now, the easiest thing, I feel, is searching online for airlines and hotels that suit my taste and budget. I used to be a bit old fashioned, collecting info from many sources and searching for what I want based on the collected data from individual sources. Now I found out some easiest ways.

Recently a rich friend of mine wanted to visit some countries. I had to do a little bit of searching around and planning for him. I started googling keywords for his destinations, hotels, airlines, etc., but eventually ended up depending on some consolidated services sites. For example, kayak.com provides the facility to search for hundreds of travel sites from all over the world and kayak send you directly to the source to make your booking, whether it is a flight, hotel, cruise, or rental car, or whatever.

Similarly, if you are looking for the most popular and comfortable airlines from any country or region in the world, you can select a region of the world to see a complete list of airlines from that region which have websites.

In fact, I went from one online service to another to look for the easiest and reliable services. And finally I landed at HotelsCombined.com and found it suited my needs for online hotel reservation. It is simply a search engine to look for availability of hotel accommodation, details, rates, and to compare prices and offers from various sources. You can compare prices and availability from all major accommodation providers on the same screen. Once you find the accommodation supplier suitable for your needs, they link you to the suppliers’ website to help you book directly. Their services are free to use and they help you search the world’s most popular hotel reservation websites. There are over 900,000 hotel deals, over 1.5 million consumer reviews, about 3 million pictures of hotels, 2 million hotel descriptions and maps.

The best part is HotelsCombined is not involved in any pricing process and they cannot change the prices displayed at various the reservation websites. They are not travel agents. They do not sell or provide reservation services. You cannot make a booking with them but once you identify the best priced hotel service or best deal for you, they link you through to the service providers or their booking sites to complete your reservation directly from their website.

Now what would you prefer, going to a number of websites for your hotel and travel reservation at various places or finding and booking your needs from one or two sites?

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