Online booking of apartments and hotels. The best hotel booking services

Are you planning a business trip to the capital? Do you need to organize leisure time during your vacation or weekend? Choose the best Moscow hotels in the extensive catalog of the website VashOtel.RU. Here are the elite and cheap hotels Moscow, all the necessary information has been collected with real photographs and objective reviews. It is convenient, very fast and does not oblige you to anything. Hotel reservations are made instantly, no prepayment is required. All you need to do is simply submit an application online or make a phone call. The VashOtel.RU service for booking rooms in all hotels is free!

VashOtel.RU is a reliable site that offers all the best hotels in Moscow, providing convenient service search on the map and the possibility of instant booking. If you are traveling to tourist trip or on a business trip, then our website will be an excellent opportunity for you to plan your trip in advance and not worry about your place of residence in the capital.

What hotels in Moscow do we offer?

We provide only official and verified hotels.

Our company is a professional service offering booking hotels in Moscow that have an official certificate and permission to conduct hotel activities, which guarantees high quality services and safety of residence.

The best hotels in Moscow.

Our service provides a unique opportunity to book rooms online in hotels that are classified as 4 and 5 stars. Such hotels offer developed infrastructure, the highest level of service, luxurious rooms and exclusive accommodation options with a magnificent panoramic view of the city. You can be sure that a hotel in Moscow, which has 4 or 5 stars, is appreciated by professionals.

Inexpensive accommodation options.

Our wide database also provides the opportunity to book a hotel in Moscow at a low cost. Depending on your desires and capabilities, we suggest choosing a mini-hotel, hostel or 1, 2 or 3 star hotel. Here you can find Moscow hotels of various classes, the prices and location of which will best suit your wishes.

True to reality.

The list of proposed accommodation places includes only those hotels that provide objective and up-to-date information about the rooms, as well as photographs that correspond to reality.

Why is it profitable to book hotels in Moscow with us?

VashOtel.RU is a free booking service that does not charge additional cost for its services;
We present hotels of various categories, the location of which may be Moscow or the Moscow region;
we do not take prepayments - you can pay for services directly at the hotel;
you can see current reviews of hotels in Moscow from real clients, which will allow you to make your choice easier and faster;
our clients receive instant booking confirmation in a convenient way communications.

You can book hotels in Moscow online on our resource

This article discusses in detail various ways, how to book hotels without prepayment and a card. The reasons why a hotel administrator can block funds on your credit card and how to avoid this are described. Given step by step instructions with screenshots for booking hotels without payment or credit card.

Why does the hotel need your card details?

In most cases, the online system requires you to enter your bank card information to complete your hotel reservation. This is not surprising if a tourist plans to immediately prepay for accommodation. But Why do you need credit card information? if it happens hotel reservation without payment?

The fact is that hotels impose fines in case of no-show or late cancellation of a reservation. This information can be found on the online system website in the hotel room descriptions. As a rule, you can cancel your reservation without penalties a day or three before your expected arrival. At the time of booking a hotel without prepayment, the tourist accepts the cancellation conditions in accordance with the hotel policy.

In turn, the hotel has the right to have guarantees that in case of no-show the tourist will pay the cost of the fine. This guarantee can be obtained by saving data bank card(credit or debit) tourist.

If you are not yet strong in matters of hotel reservations, then I recommend first reading the general article: .

Who can benefit from hotels without prepayment?

A few examples when you may need to book hotels without prepayment:

Visa. Many consulates require a hotel voucher. In this case, it is advisable to make a hotel reservation without paying for a visa.
Fuzzy plans. I want to go on vacation, but I’m not sure that my boss will let me go.
Lack of funds. There are situations when you need to urgently book a hotel room while there is a good choice, and salary is not coming soon.

If you intend to make a hotel reservation without payment through popular specialized platforms such as booking.com, agoda.com, roomguru.ru, hotellook.ru and others, you need to choose hotels with the following characteristics: "Free cancellation, pay later" or similar. Hotels without prepayment are most from the list proposed by the online system. In this case, without any debits, the reservation can be canceled 24-72 hours in advance (there are other requirements; you must first read the cancellation conditions). That is, there is no need to worry until this deadline.

What happens during the period when free cancellation is no longer possible:

There is no way to withdraw money from the card; you need to pay at the hotel after the fact.
Payment is made for one day or for the entire period of intended stay.

It all depends on the hotel and booking system. For example, Booking is inclined to the first option, and Agoda is inclined to the second. By the way, the latter accepts credit cards only.

How to book a hotel without prepayment:

We switch to one of the booking systems or a search engine. Let's say on agoda.com =>>
In the search window, fill in the destination, dates, and number of guests.

We sort the results using the horizontal menu, and also set the necessary characteristics using filters in the left column.

We look through the generated list. We search for hotels using the phrase “Free cancellation, pay later.” The “free cancellation” filter is only available on the hotellook.ru search engine. On other platforms, selection occurs visually.

We select a hotel and proceed to booking. Once again we make sure that we are satisfied cancellation conditions And payment period.

Fill in the required fields and enter your bank card details. Once we complete your booking, an email with a voucher will be sent to your email address.

⚠ Important to know! Unfortunately, this method of booking a hotel does not require prepayment. does not provide a full guarantee that no actions will occur with your bank card. To check the solvency of a future guest, some hotels may block cash on the map. This procedure is called pre-authorization (or Hold). The amounts vary: a dollar, the price of one night, and the entire cost of the reservation. In this case, the money is not physically written off, but it will be impossible to use it until it is unlocked. In turn, the banking system is designed in such a way that the lock is automatically released in about 30 days(depending on the bank). Credit card owners may not feel this discomfort, since potentially borrowed funds are blocked, and this process does not entail the accrual of interest, since no debiting actually occurs. But debit card holders can find themselves in a difficult situation when they get blocked from the amount they were hoping to use while traveling. You cannot pay with blocked funds even at the hotel, which is what started all the fuss.

For example, a tourist booked a hotel without prepayment in Nice for two weeks for 1000 €. The hotel administrator verified his debit card, pre-authorizing the entire amount. The bank, in turn, did not remove the block manually, and automatic cancellation will occur only in a month. Let’s say a tourist flies out on vacation in a week, and after another two, he checks out of the hotel. But the money with which he planned to pay is still blocked, since only 21 days have passed. It’s good if the vacationer has sufficient cash reserves. What if he is not there at the end of the vacation?

One good thing is that such cases do not happen often. But you need to know about them and be prepared for such a scenario. Hotel booking without prepayment guaranteed can only give a hotel reservation option without a bank card.

When is it useful to book hotels without a card?

A few examples of reasons why you may need to book a hotel without a card:

100% no blocking . If necessary, unconditionally receive a hotel reservation without payment and blocking a bank card (credit or debit).
The card is about to expire . If your bank card expires at the time of check-out, your reservation may be denied.
Card type is not suitable . Sometimes the simplest (non-embossed) Visa Electron and MasterCard Maestro cards are not suitable for booking.
No map at all .

I found 3 ways to make a hotel reservation without a credit card. Let's look at each of them in detail.

Book a hotel without a credit card viabooking. com

Unfortunately, everyone’s favorite booking did not provide special filters to automatically select hotels without paying by credit card. However, this can be done in other ways:

By manual search.
In a tricky way.

Manual method

Go to booking.com =>>
Fill out the form: city, dates, number of guests.

Let's sort and filter the results according to the necessary parameters.

Scrolling through the results, visually look for the phrase “You can make a hotel reservation without a credit card.”

Having decided on a hotel, select a room and proceed to booking.

Fill in the required information. Be sure to check the box next to “Ability to change reservations online.” Click “Continue”.

Fill in the latest information: country of residence and phone number. No credit card details are required to make a hotel reservation.

Within a few minutes the voucher will be sent to your email. It will need to be presented in paper or electronic form when checking into the hotel.

Tricky way

We repeat points 1-2 of the previous section.
We go to any hotel from the proposed list and simulate a reservation (steps 5-6).
When you need credit or debit card information, click on the “No card?” icon.

In a pop-up window, information appears about why a bank card is needed when booking a hotel, and below it offers options for hotels that can be booked without a credit card. The absence of such a list means that you cannot book hotels in a given area without a map through booking. Then the methods described below will be useful to us (they are much simpler).

We go to the proposed hotels, make a choice and complete the reservation, as described in previous paragraphs 5-8.

The easy way. Update dated July 25, 2016

Recently, Booking has expanded its functionality and now includes filters for booking rooms without cards and prepayments.

Hotel reservation without card payment through domestic online booking sites

One of the most convenient options is to use domestic systems online booking: hotels.ru, oktogo.ru, ostrovok.ru. The search on these sites is identical, so let’s look at booking a hotel without a credit card and prepayment using one of them as an example.

Go to the website hotels.ru =>>
As usual, fill in the destination, arrival/departure dates, number of guests, and click “Find hotels.”

A column with various filters will appear on the left. Find the “Payment” filter and select the “Do not require a bank card” option. In our example (Haapsalu, Estonia), there were 19 hotels out of 34 that did not require a card to book.

We select a hotel and proceed to checkout, be sure to fill in your first name, last name, e-mail, phone number, country and city of residence. Additionally, you can enter the name of the second guest (if there is one). This may be required if you need to provide a voucher for a visa.

When you confirm your reservation (the “book” button), you will receive an email with a voucher. You can print it out for your visa. For a hotel, it is not necessary to provide a printed form; an electronic file is quite suitable (the main thing is not to forget to save it to your mobile device).

You can change or cancel your reservation at Hotels Ru through your personal account => “My Reservations” section => “Orders” tab.

Find the required reservation and click the “Reservation Details” button. A window will open where you can cancel or make changes.

Hotels.ru presents more than 877 thousand hotels in 225 countries (its own database, as well as the database of the Expedia system). Good help for Booking, which has slightly lower figures: 855 thousand hotels in 223 countries.

Make a hotel reservation without a map through the metasearch engine hotellook.ru

Now I will tell you about the most universal way to book hotels without a card - search through the hotellook aggregator.

Go to the website hotellook.ru =>>
In the search form, fill in the destination, arrival and departure dates, and number of people. By the way, you can fill it out here too.

In the top horizontal menu above the issue, find the “additional” item and select the “without card” option.

Using the sorting of the second horizontal menu, we select hotels.

Do you know why I like this method of booking a hotel without a card the most? Because the hotellook search engine displays results from oktogo, ostrovok, and booking, as well as other online booking systems (except hotels.ru, which we looked at before). It defines the option “hotel booking without a card” for any of the given hotel platforms.

Example. Let's say a certain hotel "X" onostrovok you can book without a card, but onbookingAndoktogo- No. At the same time, the hotelY» on Booking is displayed with the status “card not required”, but other platforms do not have such a function for this hotel. Hotelluk will also show the hotel "X", and the hotel "Y", at the same time displaying prices for other online booking systems.

It turns out that the search engine finds the maximum number of possible hotel booking offers without a map. All that remains is to select a hotel from the proposed list and go directly from Hotellook to the selected option on any platform.

If you know other ways to book a hotel without a credit card or prepayment, share them in the comments - this information may be useful to other users. Your experience with blocking money on your card by a hotel will also be interesting.

We were looking for a hotel reservation without a card and payment

Marina and Konstantin Samorosenko

Useful and interesting articles:

85 comments

10 tips for those who want to book a cheap hotel room. How to find the best price and special offers? What system do you use to make a reservation? Book in advance or search on the spot? All the answers are in this review.

Friends, we have formulated 10 basic principles for finding hotels at the lowest cost. Study these rules and take them into account when planning your vacation! They will help you save money.

In this post I share tips on how to book hotels most profitably on one's own- This is information for those who organize their own trips. If you prefer to relax on a voucher, then study my advice, .

1. Compare prices and save!

You can book a room in the same hotel at different prices. The thing is that different booking systems offer different prices (the reason is different agreements with hotels and the size of the commission). How to find the best price? Luckily, it's very simple!

There are special services that compare prices among all the most popular booking systems (such as Booking, Agoda, Ostrovok, Ozone, etc.) and determine where you can book a hotel for the cheapest. The difference in cost for the same number can be significant: 20%, 30% and more. Why overpay? In a minute we will compare prices and find Best offer! In addition, each system has its own database of hotels: some are not in one, some are not in the other.

When I'm preparing for my next trip, my usual pattern of searching for a hotel always starts with looking at options on price comparison services. This is the first and most important thing to do when searching for and booking accommodation!

Example differences in price for a room in the same hotel in different booking systems:

2. Take advantage of promotions and great offers

"Profitable proposition" is one of the filters that can be used on Roomguru. By checking the box next to it, we will see all the current promotions that allow you to book a hotel with a significant discount.

For example, a good hotel in the center of Prague can be booked for 4,000 rubles instead of 5,800 rubles. And renting a villa in a luxury five-star resort in Phuket costs only 5,200 rubles instead of 8,000 rubles!

3. Choose the optimal dates

The cost of booking a room at the same hotel on Monday and Saturday can vary greatly. As a rule, hotel prices are higher on weekends and holidays. Therefore, if you have the opportunity to move the dates of your trip and hotel stay and this allows you to save money, take advantage of it.

You can also book a hotel at a lower cost during the low tourist season (it is different for each destination). For example, prices for rooms in April and May are almost half as low as in March - we took advantage of this and it was great.

4. Book your hotel online

Is it cheaper to look for a hotel locally, without making an online reservation? More often than not, no.

You will be surprised (I am also surprised by this fact), but in 90% of cases, booking the same room in the same hotel using an online service will be cheaper than at the reception desk! The difference is not too big, but still noticeable - usually 10-20%.

There are other downsides to finding housing locally. You have to waste time and effort (with a suitcase, in the heat or rain, looking for a hotel or guest house is a dubious pleasure). There is also a risk of getting a pig in a poke: you come and look, the room seems to be suitable, and then it turns out that in the evening it is very noisy or the Internet does not work. If you book a room in advance, online, after looking at reviews from other tourists, such threats are minimized.

I look for hotels locally only when I’m traveling to a real wilderness, where hotels are simply not represented on the Internet or in online booking systems. This is what I did when traveling around and. There was no other way out.

5. Book your hotel in advance

The sooner you book a hotel, the higher your chances of finding the best hotel, the best room and the best price. Don’t neglect this rule, don’t be lazy and don’t procrastinate! This is especially true for popular destinations and peak dates. For example, at the height of the season it is quite difficult to book a good hotel at an adequate price in Turkey, Sochi, Crimea, Prague, Paris, Cuba, Cyprus, etc. More than once I have stepped on this rake, holding out on booking until the last minute - I had to overpay and stay in mediocre hotels.

6. Find a place where hotels are cheaper

The cost of hotel rooms depends not only on the star rating, brand, but also on location.

As a rule, hotels in the very center of the city are the most expensive (although there are exceptions). If you need to save money, why not check into a hotel a few kilometers from the center and get to the sights and the right places on public transport or on foot? For me, it’s even more interesting - you can see the residential areas of the city, and not just the combed and glossy center.

Also, to save money, you can book a hotel even (attention!) in another city. Example from mine personal experience: preparing for a trip to , we reserved a hotel room Ibis!} in the suburbs of the capital - Zaandam. The room cost half as much as in hotels in the very center. The hotel itself is modern, clean, beautiful and comfortable. We spent only 10 minutes on foot and 7 minutes on the train to get to the center of Amsterdam. So we got more comfort at a lower price - beauty!

Moreover, you can shift the location in this way when choosing a hotel not only for the sake of savings, but also for pleasure and comfort. If the financial issue is not acute, then, in my opinion, it is better to spend the same amount on living in good hotel more high level and with excellent reviews a couple of kilometers from the center, than to check into a mediocre hotel in the very center with inflated prices.

7. Choose the best option for the company

If you are traveling with your family, friends or another group of people, then look at different types of accommodation to find the best option in terms of comfort and price.

For example, if two married couples are going on vacation, then do not rush to follow the obvious path and book two separate hotel rooms. Check out alternative options - maybe you can rent a house, villa, or apartment with several separate rooms for the same or less money.

Is it difficult to choose the best hotel? Check out ours for popular cities and resorts: , , .

8. Use the All Airlines card

(Photo © Hotel Internazionale Ischia / Flickr.com / Licensed CC BY-SA 2.0)

9. Is it cheaper to live in a hostel?

If you're traveling alone, then yes, you'll save money - it's always cheaper than booking a whole room.

If you are traveling as a couple, family or with friends, then staying in a hostel is rarely financially justifiable. Often, booking a separate room is no more expensive (sometimes even a little cheaper) than two places in a hostel. At the same time, you will get much more comfort.

10. Should I book the hotel directly?

If the hotel has contact information, you can book the hotel directly. But this doesn't make much sense.

Firstly, when booking a hotel on Booking and other systems, you get a defender of your interests in the person of this service. You will have a document (reservation) confirming your reservation and all its conditions, including the final amount. And if suddenly the hotel administration offers you another, worse room, you simply call (even just threatening to do so) to the service where you made the reservation, and the hotel will be required to fulfill its obligations.
Secondly, booking systems and services for finding cheap hotels allow you to compare many hotels, find out reviews about them and thereby choose the best one.
Thirdly, very often a hotel offers tourists who contact it directly booking rooms at an inflated price. When a hotel places its ad in booking systems, it tries to reduce the cost as much as possible due to great competition. After all, booking services offer dozens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of hotels in one city - you need to stand out and make the client the best offer.

Introductory image source: © PortoBay Trade / Flickr.com / Licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Review of the most popular hotel reservation systems

updated 09.20.18. We have expanded the review and added 3 times more online services where you can book a hotel, and at the end there is a bonus - how to search through all booking systems at once. If you are too lazy to read a lot of letters, go straight to the last two paragraphs.

agoda.com

Surprisingly, such a developed online booking system has few disadvantages.

Descriptions of hotels and rooms are not all translated into Russian, which is a difficulty for some.
Subjectivity in descriptions and different understanding of comfort for different people. When someone describes a “luxury” stay on an amazing pristine beach, for others this same beach will not seem interesting at all: it has no entertainment facilities. As they say, taste and color...

HRS

HRS (Hotel Reservation Service) is the oldest travel company offering services on the market since 1972. The HRS online portal allows you to book hotels in over 190 countries around the world. The service database contains detailed information about 250 thousand hotels.

The HRS hotel service offers its clients booking with the following advantages.

Appropriate language. On the online portal you can choose one of 32 different languages, and the information content of the site will not suffer at all.
Mobile app. To use HRS, a smartphone at hand is enough: mobile app works in 14 languages.
A huge number of partners and regular customers among companies. About 40,000 legal entities regularly use HRS services.
24/7 hotline for clients. Any question you are interested in can always be clarified by calling our toll-free number.
Guarantee best price. The portal guarantees that if you can find better conditions for booking a hotel on another site, it will return the difference to you.
Cancellation of reservation without penalty. If for some reason you decide not to use the services of the hotel whose room you booked before, you can cancel your reservation without fees or fines and return the money on the same day until 18:00
Business rates from HRS. New service booking business rates allows you to save on business trips and business trips up to 30%. The corresponding offer can be taken advantage of at personal account My HRS.

Hotels.com

Hotels L.P was founded back in 2002. The first office was opened in Texas. The company began its activities on the Internet two years after its founding. Today Hotels is a subsidiary of the large holding company Expedia, Inc. For more than 12 years of existence, many offices have been opened throughout Europe. Russia was no exception.

The project database contains information about 240 thousand hotels whose rooms are available for booking. Due to the fact that the resource is multilingual, you can pay for your order in almost any known currency. You can contact the company's consultants using a special form or by phone specified in the contact information section. On hotels.com, hotel reservations can be made for one or two adults, as well as for families with children. The company offers users information not only about the availability of rooms, but also about their cost, services provided in hotels, and worthy alternatives if there are no rooms in the hotel.

Welcome Rewards Program

Separately, it is worth noting the Welcome Rewards program offered by the Hotels project. The discount provided to clients as part of the program is expressed in additional free nights for hotel stay. To receive this bonus, a person must stay in one of the 65 thousand hotels included in the program database for 10 days. If these conditions are met, he will receive another day in the same hotel.

Welcome Rewards also provides a cumulative point system. Everything is simple here. When booking a room through the resource, the client receives 1 point for every day he spends at the hotel. Ten points accumulated automatically turn into an additional free day of stay. At the same time, it is not necessary to immediately spend them upon reaching the required amount of points. This system makes it possible to slightly extend your rest. So far, absolutely all of the company's clients have liked it.

Discounts and codes on hotels.com

For most hotels.com users, the “Special Offers” section is of particular interest. It is there that the most attractive last-minute tours, information about discounts and various coupons appear. With the "deal of the day" you can save up to 50% of the cost of your hotel booking. You can book a last minute tour in a matter of minutes. The resource always offers trips with good discounts, the main thing is not to miss them.

Most often, special offers apply to the most popular destinations. These are Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, Istanbul, London and Milan. Cheap and short trips are also available, sometimes with discounts of up to 60%. The website contains information about the most popular destinations, which are viewed by other Hotels users. This makes it possible to understand where this moment the most interesting thing is to go.

Ozon.travel

Yes, yes, the Russian company ozon.travel, which you know well from booking air tickets, is one of the portals on which you can also book a hotel. The service's partner base includes over 270 thousand hotels around the world.

Advantages of ozon.travel

Customer support via hotline number. ozon.travel will not leave the client who made the order with questions - the portal’s consultants are ready to clarify any detail of the order around the clock, every day.
Special offers. Such offers, launched, for example, as part of the development of a particular partner brand of the ozon.travel portal, allow customers to save significantly, because the cost of tickets or hotel reservations can be reduced by up to 50%.
Bonuses for using services. Offers of bonuses that can later be used to pay for part of the purchase are not new. This type of marketing tool for attracting customers is used by a large number of well-known retail chains. However, ozon.travel has gone further - now you can pay with bonuses not for part of the purchase, but for 100% of its cost. This opportunity is offered by the Travelmania program, recently launched by the service.

Island

It would take a very long time to list the regalia of the Ostrovok.ru portal. The authority of this site is given by the fact that it is recognized by the famous National Geographic as the best service for travelers. The portal database stores detailed information more than 500,000 different hotels around the world, including in the most modest cities.

Advantages of the Island

The Ostrovok.ru portal has several advantages compared to other services for travelers.

24/7 customer support. The portal has a hotline number that is available at any time of the day or night. At the moment, the excellent operation of the portal is guaranteed by more than 130 professionals, for whom a satisfied client is the main priority.

A huge number of partners. Ostovok.ru cooperates with almost all major travel services.

Bonus program Ostrovok.ru

Ostrovok offers its clients participation in the “Bank of Dreams” bonus program. When booking accommodation in certain hotels (not all!, you will immediately see which ones it works in), Ostrovok will award 2% of the cost in the form of “dreams” (well, like bonus points). 4% can be received if you book and pay 90 days before your stay or through the mobile application. You can pay for your stay in hotels using cash.

The travel service elvoline.com was created specifically for those who love to travel, but cannot spend time visiting specialized agencies. More than 4 years ago this project was launched and very soon became very popular.

Another hotel booking system created in 2012. The website and booking are in Russian, but the support service is in English, there are no Russian phone numbers, and if you have questions you will have to call international lines.

Hotel room prices vary. Sometimes there are interesting discounts and offers for accommodation in popular tourist destinations.

Amoma

Popular in Europe, but little known to Russian users, the Amoma hotel reservation system, whose main office is located in Switzerland.

The reputation of the Amoma agency fully justifies its slogan: “Sleep peacefully and save money.”

Hotel booking amoma.com is:

170 countries, 19,000 destinations, 230,000 accommodation options for clients in all corners of the globe;
user support in 17 languages, including Russian;
the ability to choose the most convenient payment option (from full prepayment online to payment upon check-out);
safety of your reservation until 5 o'clock the next morning if your plane lands late;

Thanks to the excellent reputation of the amoma.com agency, many leading tourism projects around the world are seeking to establish partnerships with it.

Hotel.Info

Hotel.info is one of the popular international hotel booking services. Hotel.info is one of the world's leading online services, founded in 2001 and today has about 400 employees and works with more than 250 thousand hotels from around the world.

Russian language site. Here you can book a room by phone. Well, yes, suddenly you don’t have the Internet. Not every booking system offers this. Toll-free number in Russia - 8 800 112 112 00. 24-hour support. Free cancellation. Various discounts and promotions.

HostelWorld

A unique project called hostelworld.com was created especially for budget travelers in 1999. This is a real-time booking service for hostels around the world. The project base includes more than 30 thousand excellent hostels in 180 countries. All budget hotels have detailed descriptions and photographs. So decide on optimal place accommodation will be easy. The company's head office is located in Dublin. There are also additional branches in European countries.

There is an application for smartphones. The site is in Russian. But the support service is only in English.

Payment for booking from a bank card. The service charges a small prepayment of 10% of the total booking amount. The rest of the money is debited from the card after checking into the room. If the client changes his mind and wants to cancel the reservation after paying the first payment, he will not be penalized. Booking and voucher immediately after prepayment. If any problems arise, the service administration will not only return the money, but also pay an additional $50.

was created about 10 years ago specifically to enable budget travelers to book hotel rooms at competitive prices. The office of this British discounter is located in Brighton. The company doesn't operate quite like other services. The functioning of the project is based on the purchase of hotel rooms from wholesalers and their resale to tourists favorable prices. Room rates are often the lowest on the market. Therefore, many tourists prefer to work with this service.

The database now contains more than 80 thousand different hotels - from budget to five-star. A prepayment for booking is required. There is no postpaid system. But it is possible to change the booking conditions or cancel it altogether 3 days before entering the hotel. In this case, no penalties are imposed on the client.

For registered users of skoosh.com, hotel reservations are made at even more low prices. Valid additional discounts for booking hotel rooms in certain countries.

The site is in Russian, but the 24-hour support service will answer all questions about the service, but only English language.

Otel.com

Otel.com is one of the leading services on the market. The agency is popular due to the variety of offers and flexible conditions for clients. I is part of the MetGlobal company. Today it is one of the leading tour operators in the world. Recently, the dhr.com reservation system also joined the service.

Benefits otel.com

FivePlus loyalty program. Users of the service, regardless of the chosen hotel, have the opportunity to receive at least a 5% discount on the amount spent on previous bookings. Clients have the right to independently manage earned credits. The equivalent of each loan is one US dollar.

The company often has discounts and promotional codes for hotels in popular cities.

Low Price Guarantee - If you find the same room in another booking system, otel.com will compensate the difference and give you a discount on your next booking.

Disadvantages of otel.com

The site is in Russian, but the support service is only in English. If you have problems, you can contact her by email, chat or by calling the Turkish number.

The service offers to book hotel rooms in more than 180 countries. The portal cooperates with 40,000 establishments, as well as with many other major travel services. IN belongs to the largest TUI Travel group of companies, operating in the market for over 40 years

Among the advantages of the system, it is worth noting the possibility of booking without prepayment. The site is in Russian. The downside is that the support service is located in the USA, so it is only in English and not 24 hours a day, only during business hours and according to Orlando time.

A truly luxurious holiday awaits those tourists who choose the most best hotels. A unique service was created in 2004 specifically for people who are not used to making compromises. This project was developed taking into account the needs of the most discerning travelers. The company offers to book rooms in exclusive, luxury designer hotels.

This is a service for discerning clients. The splendia.com portal contains more than 5 thousand hotels in 130 countries. The design of the tourism portal was clearly developed by professionals. Large colorful photographs hotel rooms And detailed description help to form an idea about all hotels and make the right choice.

In order to book a room in one of the exclusive hotels, you will need to make a deposit equal to 25% of the total amount. The remaining funds will be debited from your credit card within 48 hours of booking. It is also possible to pay extra directly at the hotel upon check-in. With the splendia.com service, hotel reservations can be made using a special loyalty program. Its meaning is the gradual accumulation of bonuses that can be exchanged for discounts. With each subsequent booking, the client will receive greater benefits. So being a regular customer of the service is very profitable.

Chic boutique hotels and luxury villas can be selected according to certain criteria - the presence of a restaurant, spa center, swimming pool and others. Currently, about 500 thousand tourists are clients of the service.

The call center operates 24 hours a day, which allows you to resolve a problem related to your booking at any time if it arises. But only in English, just like the website

Updated: 03/13/2019

Oleg Lazhechnikov

The most important thing is where planning begins independent travel- this is buying tickets and booking accommodation. Tickets are a separate matter. Now let’s figure out where to start and how to properly book online accommodation for your trip, be it a hotel, guesthouse or hostel. Now there are many booking systems (such as Booking, Agoda, etc.) and services (for example,), where you can search for hotels and compare prices in different booking systems.

First, let's talk about everything in detail. At the very end of the post I’ll tell you how I book hotels myself, in what order.

What do you need

To book a hotel yourself, you will need a little time and three simple things that most people already have:

- Access to the Internet. Now it is available almost everywhere: home, mobile, in cafes, shopping centers, hotels, etc.
— Bank card (debit or credit) Mastercard, Visa or similar. You need to do it in advance, before the trip, in your hometown
- Email. You must indicate her address when booking, and you will receive a booking confirmation email and a booking code there.

By the way, some systems now allow you to book a hotel without a card.

What is a reservation system

A booking system is a website that allows you to book a hotel, essentially a database of hotels around the world. Hotels themselves are added to it in order to be able to rent out their rooms via the Internet. Reservation systems do not charge users a commission for using their database, and receive money directly from the hotel. That is, as a rule, the cost of staying in a room via the Internet or on site (at the reception) does not change for you. But it all depends on the specific hotel, because it is the hotel that sets these prices; for example, it may hold a promotion that if you book in advance you will receive a discount (but there will be no discount on the spot).

In any booking system, you can select hotels according to different criteria - country, city, dates, number of people, availability of certain services. Payment is made by bank card (). After payment, you will receive an email with your reservation details (reservation confirmation).

Which booking system should you choose? There are no clear rules here, it’s a matter of habit; some people understand one interface, others understand another. However, still the number of hotels in different country differs in booking systems. Therefore, there is an unspoken rule: there is a greater choice of Asian hotels, and more suitable for Europe and Russia.

List of hotel reservation systems

The most popular reservation systems: Ostrovok, Hotels.com, Expedia.com. There are also booking systems specializing in hostels, but now the same Booking and Agoda have become very large services, and they have hostels, apartments, and even houses with villas.

Here are my instructions for each service:

You can search for hotels in different booking systems and compare the results. In some places the interface is more convenient, in others there is a larger database of hotels. Therefore it is best to use Hotel search engines, which are searched across all booking systems at once. Essentially, such services do most of the work for you. More about them below.

Apartment booking system

I would like to make a separate point about Airbnb. This is a service that offers private housing. Most of them are apartments, rooms in apartments or even houses local residents. This service helps home owners make money by acting as an intermediary between them and you. By the way, you can also rent out your apartment by the day this way if you wish (anyone can participate).

If you are not yet familiar with the service, be sure to read about it, where it tells you what it is, how to register correctly, how to book accommodation, etc.

So, Airbnb offers really cool options that are primarily of interest to families with children and groups of several people. Because often an apartment can accommodate not two people, but 4-6 or more. And with this approach (you usually pay for all accommodation at once) it turns out to be several times cheaper than in a hotel. After all, a hotel would have to take several rooms for such a number of people. Moreover, living conditions in an apartment can be much better than in a hotel. For example, most apartments have kitchens, and many also have a washing machine. These are very relevant points when traveling with children.

What are Hotel Finders?

A hotel search engine is a service where you can search for hotels in all popular booking systems at the same time. That is, such a service searches for the hotels you need right away, both in Booking, and in Agoda, and on Ostrovka, and in other systems. It would be a pain to sort them out manually. Hotel search engines are also called aggregators and metasearch engines. In essence, this is a hotel Google.

How does this happen? You also specify the search criteria you need (country, city, dates, room services) and the search engine gives you the results - a list of hotels. And then, having selected a specific hotel, you will see the cost of living in this hotel in various booking systems (Booking, Agoda, Ostrovok, etc.), that is, you have the opportunity to compare and choose. When you make your choice, the search engine will redirect you to the website of the selected reservation system, where you will make a hotel reservation. That is, the search engine itself does not sell anything, it only searches. There are no additional or hidden fees. The principle of operation is reminiscent of those already familiar to everyone. You can read more about the services in my instructions:

One of the best hotel search engines in my opinion is . It has very good integration with Booking and other systems, it has all the necessary filters, and the hotel rating is immediately shown. I personally also like the display of hotels on the map, since I often look for accommodation in some specific place. And when you move the map, hotels are shown throughout the entire territory, even if I initially specified a different city in the search. This makes it easy to find hotels between cities or on specific beaches without even knowing their names. You can try searching for yourself using the form below.

Book a hotel in advance or search locally

Local search is more relevant for inexpensive Asian countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and where there are many small hotels at every turn. But in Hong Kong, Singapore, or Europe it is cheaper and easier to book everything in advance. However, I still prefer, if possible (when I know the exact dates), to book everything in advance so as not to waste my time searching, there are all the tools for this, it’s stupid to ignore modern technologies.

By booking in advance, you will be sure that you will have an overnight stay when you arrive. You can adjust and plan the entire trip at once and, thus, the likelihood of falling behind schedule is minimal. This is especially true if you are traveling to a popular place during the season, you can simply stay on the street and not find any empty seats.
Again during preparation you can read real reviews from guests in booking systems and take into account all their wishes: distance to the beach, air conditioning, swimming pool, WiFi, etc. On the spot, you will have to go to all the hotels in a row and ask what is available, and it will also not be entirely clear what the actual service is, do not ask people on the street.
The most important thing about booking in advance is saving time and effort. The fact is that searching on the spot is far from a romantic activity, and not everyone will like spending even 1-2 hours walking around various hotels in the heat and after a long flight. No, of course, if you come for several months and you need to carefully select housing for this period, then this may be justified.
It often happens that prices when booking online are lower than directly on site. I remember I made a reservation right at the hotel reception (it was almost 2 times cheaper), no matter how strange it may sound.
When you receive your visa, you may need printouts from the reservation system to confirm that you have a place to live. For example, the French consulate (and many other European countries) accepts printouts from

Despite the fact that the databases of reservation systems are huge and include hundreds of thousands of hotels, the smallest and cheapest hotels may not be available (sometimes such hotels do not even have their own website). Therefore, if you have time, but you are very short on money, then it makes sense to go and look for housing directly on the spot.

Some nuances when booking

Check the check in time (usually around 2 pm) and check out time (around 12 pm). Some hotels are very strict about this and may charge you for another day if you are late. You also need to understand that if you arrive earlier, the hotel will only be able to accommodate you if it has such an opportunity, otherwise you will wait.
Check the opening hours of the reception desk, otherwise if you arrive late in the evening or at night, you may arrive to closed doors.
The debiting of money for a hotel or the possibility of booking a hotel without payment (with payment at the time of check-in) depends entirely on the specific hotel and its policy.
Please read the cancellation policy carefully, especially if there is a possibility that you will need to cancel your reservation. Usually, a reservation can be canceled without any penalties some time before arrival. In some cases (for example, there was a special offer), the reservation is not canceled and the money is not refunded. All this is indicated on the page of a particular hotel. Also, in case of no-show, they may begin to write off money for accommodation.
Sometimes it is possible to book a hotel not only without prepayment, but even without providing your bank card details. Of course, you can score and not cancel the reservation later, but I would not recommend doing this, there is a risk of getting fined (the cost of one night). Alternatively, you can register a new account each time, but IMHO it’s easier not to go through with it.
If the type of bed is very important (a large double or two singles), it makes sense to contact the hotel or at least read the reviews, since it is not always clear what is meant in the room description. Although I personally have never encountered any problems.
It is best to always have a printout of your hotel reservation (voucher) with you or a file with it on your phone to show on the screen. But usually just giving your last name or reservation number is enough.

How I book hotels and life hack

Life hack for those who are used to . Search for a hotel on your usual Booking website, copy its name and paste it into the search window for the dates you need. Thus, you will find out whether the hotel is offered at a cheaper price, for example, on Agoda, Ostrovok and others.

After using a little different sites, both booking systems and search engines, you will figure it out yourself. There is nothing difficult about finding and paying for a hotel or guesthouse. I am looking for housing in the following order:

In Thailand, if I don’t know exactly when and where I’m going to stop (for example, I’m traveling 800 km by car), then I look for accommodation right along the route of the service. But again, not without the help of services. I have a mobile application from Hotellook (Android, iOS, Windows Phone), the convenience of which is that it can show hotels right next to your location. Sometimes it’s enough to walk 100-200 meters and there will be the right hotel. Actually, these are not all the possibilities; there you can search and book hotels in advance, which is what I also do.

But in general, it’s better to book in advance; during the peak season in Thailand, it happens that all suitable hotels are already completely booked on the day of booking, and you have to check into places where you wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

P.S. Add if you forgot something :)

Life hack 1 - how to buy good insurance

It’s incredibly difficult to choose insurance now, so I’m compiling a rating to help all travelers. To do this, I constantly monitor forums, study insurance contracts and use insurance myself.

Life hack 2 - how to find a hotel 20% cheaper

Thanks for reading

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