>plan to go to Vietnam. >Check Booking.com for hotels. >Everything decent is over 700,000 dong MINIMUM

>plan to go to Vietnam
>Check Booking.com for hotels
>Everything decent is over 700,000 dong MINIMUM
>Arrive in Vietnam
>See "Hotel" signs on the street
>Price is 300,000 for a decent hotel
What the absolute frick? Could probably be even cheaper if I keep looking. How come no one told me of this tip? We're any of you gays even aware of this? What other countries are like this?

Schizophrenic Conspiracy Theorist Shirt $21.68

Homeless People Are Sexy Shirt $21.68

Schizophrenic Conspiracy Theorist Shirt $21.68

  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It’s been said about a thousands times: the best rates are usually when you book directly with the hotel, either by phone or if they have an online form or something. Not only you often get something cheaper but you often get a better room than with booking.com

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      It's the opposite for hostels though, if you book in person you pay more than you would on hostelworld

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      No. With hotels you get the same rate or worse. I don't know why but Booking somehow has cheaper rates than direct. Maybe if it's luxury it's different.
      What I'm saying is that it's cheaper to go with hotels that aren't even listed on Booking. Which for Vietnam is surprisingly common.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You often get same rate but shit rooms (shit view, noisy floor etc).

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You often get same rate but shit rooms (shit view, noisy floor etc).

        You get a slightly better rate but generally forgo all cancellation/rescheduling policies. People on this board have said to time and time again not to use these services. I can see why this board is so slow, with constant morons asking the same questions without bothering to read other threads

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This is par for the course in 2nd and 3rd world countries, the cheap hotels never advertise through Western websites it's just the expensive ones and business hotels

    You should never book a hotel in advance in these countries

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    booking looks at your IP when calculating price.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      So does literally every online travel agency. That's why you book on off-peak hours or use a VPN (which you should anyway)

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The mark up that a place like hotels.com charges is a big deal to a little hotel in the third world that probably has margins measured in the tens of usd. They have to pass it on.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >not having level 3 genius
    peasants

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Level 3 is nothing. You can easily get it only after a few bookings.
      Thing is, booking.com is alright with shit or extremely mediocre hotels; all the rooms are more or less equally shitty/mediocre.

      It’s a game changer if the hotel is a bit fancier as they keep the better rooms for their privileged clients (with reward programs), or business travelers, or those who booked directly, which is unsurprising since booking.com takes a huge percentage of commission.
      The difference is sometimes day and night and that little 20 yurodollars difference sometimes make a huge difference.

      I myself use booking.com during offseason and/or I just want to sleep (so usually solo) and I don’t want to search for hours using google maps. It’s convenient if you want to quickly fix your night.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    scammed

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Vietnam is a big country. Which city were you looking in? Were you using Agoda?

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The amount of halfwit responses in this thread hurts my head so let me tell you all once and for all how it works
    Online companies like booking.com, hotels.com, Expedia etc have a built in commission when you book a hotel directly from the hotel groups which is usually a % of the overall cost. So say you book the Marriott in dallas, for $300 a night on Expedia, Marriott will pay Expedia 10% of that as a commission - they then sometimes pay that forward to customers which is why hotels.com give you "free nights" .... They're not free they're just sharing the commission. There's also "overrides" whereby if a company books a certain amount of room nights in a year they get an extra amount .. something like Marriott will give them an extra $3 per room night booked if they book 10,000 + , an extra $2 for 100,000+ etc

    Anyway this leads onto your shitty little $20 a night room in butt frick nowhere Vietnam. There is no contract for this, these shitty independent hotels have no agreement with any of these onlines so rather than getting kickbacks, the online sites actually charge these independent hotels to list on their site, it's a flat rate of say $100 a month to be on there and then the site will add on an arbitrary amount to the hotel cost, so a $20 a night hotel is actually bookable for $30 as booking.com will take $10 as commission so it's always worth booking these direct.

    tl;dr
    If you're booking a shit hotel online you're always going to pay more than direct.
    Also the VPN/ deleting cookies thing is a moronic meme. You won't get a hotel any cheaper by pretending you're in Argentina, any incremental costs are based on a hotels search history rather than your tracking cookies, if a hotel is busy prices go up, if no one searches or books it prices will be lower.
    Now you can all stop getting this so painfully wrong
    t.have worked in travel over 10 years including for Expedia

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *