Online apartment booking system. The best hotel booking services

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 the 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 funds 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. Blocked in cash You can’t even pay 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 situation. 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 online booking systems: 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 via Personal Area=> “My bookings” 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

Which website to book hotels on? In my opinion, it is best to book hotels where they are cheaper. But if you think that there is one super-duper site where the most low prices, then I have to disappoint you. Over the years that I have been traveling independently, I have used a variety of hotel and apartment booking sites. And on each of them I found very, very interesting offers. So it makes no sense to focus on any one resource. But it’s worth talking in more detail about how to look for the best offers.

However, first things first.

Hotel booking sites

The most famous and popular resource, of course, is www.booking.com. I often use it and book not only hotels, but also apartments there (on Booking you can find both individually rented apartments, apartment complexes and apart-hotels). Booking, of course, is good because you can almost always find a lot of fresh reviews about almost any accommodation facility, which is very helpful when choosing the final option. However, even if I find some interesting option on www.booking.com, then, as a rule, I am in no hurry to book. It often happens that there are better offers on other sites.

So, I had the opportunity to book hotels on ostrovok.ru, and on agoda.com, and on www.hotels.com, and even on such exotic sites for Russia as www.laterooms.com and www.getaroom.com. None of these resources caused me any complaints, although, of course, each of them has its own characteristics. They relate primarily to the booking conditions. For example, on Agoda and Ostrovka there are often offers that require full prepayment at the booking stage and, at the same time, the possibility of returning the prepayment in case of cancellation. There are other nuances too, but I won’t go into too much detail. It is important to understand that in any case, always and everywhere, you need to carefully read the booking and cancellation conditions before booking a hotel. Fortunately, on all of the above (and on many other) sites, these conditions are always described in detail.

How to Find the Best Hotel Prices

Now I’ll tell you how I look for the best prices on hotels. Perhaps this will be a discovery for some, but to search best offers It is not at all necessary to visit all existing booking sites. It is much more convenient to use metasearch sites. My absolute favorite among them is www.roomguru.ru. However, there are other metasearch engines, and using them, you can make a number of interesting discoveries, which I have already talked about in detail. As for Rumguru, this, in my opinion, is the most convenient site. I especially like Rumgurov's mobile app(there is both an iOS application and an Android application).

This is the point. Rumguru searches for hotels simultaneously using several dozen booking systems, while comparing prices both on booking sites and on the own websites of many hotels.

Thus, as a result of the search, you get not just a list of hotels with prices from one site, but a list indicating prices from different sites. In one case, the best price may be offered by, say, Booking, in another by Ostrovok, in a third by the hotel’s own website, etc. Thanks to search engines like www.roomguru.ru, all these offers are visible at once, which is very convenient and, most importantly, profitable. I've saved a lot of money over the past few years using hotel metasearch engines. Particularly good results are obtained when you focus on not the cheapest hotels. For example, if the usual cost of living in a hotel fluctuates around 250–300 euros, this does not mean that a room in this hotel cannot be booked, say, for 125 euros or even 60! As it turned out, it is possible I take numbers not out of thin air, but from real practice. And we are not talking about the low season, but about booking for the most popular dates.

It is also convenient to use metasearch when you are focusing on some specific hotels. So, when planning trips to cities where I have already been, I often check the prices of the hotels where I stayed last time.

Finally, I’ll say one more interesting thing. If you are used to using one site, but do not trust all other sites, then it still makes sense to compare prices. The fact is that many booking systems claim the best price guarantee. This guarantee is provided, in particular, by www.booking.com and www.hotels.com.

What does it mean? It's quite simple. You find a hotel on the same www.roomguru.ru. You book it, say, on Booking, even if the price is not the lowest. And then you write to the www.booking.com support service that there is a better price on such and such a site. And as a result, you get the same price, but not on some website, but on Booking.com. It is only important to make sure that the booking conditions are identical. For example, if the booking conditions on Booking provide for free cancellation of the reservation, but on a site offering a lower price the reservation cannot be canceled, then you will not be able to take advantage of the best price guarantee. This significantly limits the possibilities of using this option, but, nevertheless, in many cases the best price guarantee actually works (tested personally).

A similar guarantee, by the way, is provided directly on www.roomguru.ru (details). I myself have never used it (there was no such need), but I keep this possibility in mind.

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Classic: hotel aggregator sites

Personally, I open these sites first when I'm going on a trip somewhere. As the name implies, they combine information from various booking systems, such as: booking, hotels, ostrovok (one of best prices in Russia), agoda (good for traveling in Asia), trivago, expedia and many others.

Aggregators compare prices, look for discounts and special offers, where you can find not only hotels, but also hostels, guest houses- it’s very convenient to have everything in one place.

Free overnight stay

The best way to understand a country and its people is to get to know local residents, and even better, live with them for a while. International hospitality sites provide such opportunities when people invite guests to their home. Just don’t see them as just a free overnight stay, rather it’s a cultural exchange, interesting communication, an opportunity to improve your languages and find new friends around the world.

Source: instagram: @myinterior

Accommodation in exchange for housework

These sites should not be considered only as a way to stay overnight for free, but as a new unusual experience and an opportunity to help people and the ecology of the planet for a week, a month, or maybe more. The idea is that you work several hours a day, and in return you receive room and board.

Source: GettyImages

Rental services for cool and unusual hotels

If you want to live in a lighthouse, in a tree house, stay in eco-friendly hotels or hotels only for vegetarians, try glamping (glamorous camping) or just have fun, then there are special sites for this.

✔ and - here you can buy someone else’s reservation at a discount. Someone couldn’t go and is selling their reservation on the website. You get a good discount, and the person gets money for a non-refundable room.

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