WARNING about some bad practices

Online travel agencies are very numerous and never forget that they defend only one interest: theirs and not yours. So don't believe them when they said it's a good deal for you, which is not always true, but for them it's always a good deal for them if you book with them.

Some often resell packages developed by tour operators, others offer tailor-made trips according to your desires.

You can also build your itinerary and your trip, by buying flights tickets, train tickets ... on internet, as well as the hotels either directly on the hotel websites, or through online travel agencies like Expedia (Hotwire, Hotels.com, Travelocity, TripAdvisor, CarRentals.com and more) or Priceline (Booking.com, RentalCars, Kayak and more). You can also rent cars with international car rentals (hertz, avis..) or sometimes get a better deal with a local car rental company.

 

Our experience with hotels and airlines booking :

So today we booked only directly with hotels and airlines as we are convinced we have a better service as they dont 'have to pay any huge commission to any travel agency, and also they are more accessible for any question or claim when the customer service of these giants are not very skilled, don't have any power to solve a case and sometimes don't even answer or so lately. You loose a lot of time on the phone waiting an answer or no answer.

 

Hotels - Avoid non refundable bookings in advance

Except if your departure or your hotel checkin is very close or if you are going for a special event when hotels will be full (High season in some locations, Rio carnival, Sport event..) : never book non-refundable nights. These online travel agencies managed to create 2 rates : one refundable but more expensive and another cheaper but not refundable. In that case : check on the website of the hotel directly (or on another website) if there is such difference. Recently we checked a case : this hotel has only rooms cancellable (30 days before arrival) cheaper than Hotels.com which create for the same hotel those 2 prices to push you to the cheaper rate which is non refundable and after you are locked as their "price match" is almost impossible to get. Others online travel agencies are doing the same. So for locations where there is plenty hotels like big cities : the best deal is booking a cancellable room to secure a night, you can cancel to rebook if rates dropped and if there is at the last minute a better offer, because the hotels wants to fill their rooms, you can book to get the best rate.

And also, unfortunately, you never know what can happened in your family or your professional lifes if you booked months in advance. We get a huge problem for a medical reason, we had to cancel a trip and our travel insurance was very dishonnest and we get 10% of the loss as they use all arguments to avoid the refund.

We had many problems with Booking.com "as they aren't responsible for anything" so one day we booked a very remote hotel and when we arrived the hotel was closed. And Booking.com denied any responsability even they get a comfortable commission just to make the relation between the hotel and the customer. Recently, in the newpapers, we saw a family booked a villa for vacations for an high rate, and when they arrived , there was no villa !  so Booking.com don't even check the existence of the property!

For Hotels.com, they are speaking about a "Price Match" but good luck to get it and there is many testimonies on social networks. We tried many times with evidences but they answered after the check-in telling "they can't check the price so they refused the refund" (when i sent many days before the screen copy with all data: dates, room type, rate ..). So we fired them. Also they like to offer you a promotion code to get 8% on your next booking, the only problem is it doesn't work with the hotels you want and it's just a lure to attract them on their website to buy a room without any discount as you are tired after few attempts. So our experience is very bad with www.hotels.com and we wasted a lot of time for no result when we had a claim. We avoid them today.