Hotel Booking
3 websites that I recommend and rank according to my preference:
http://www.booking.com/
http://www.asiarooms.com/
http://www.agoda.com/
For me, I prefer booking.com due to the fact that I do not have to pay for the hotel room upfront. Just provide your credit card details for reservation. Furthermore cancelling of the room is easy!!
*note: taxes are normally not included.
Asiarooms and Agoda are used to compare hotel rates and of cos the cheapest of the 3 wins! Unless I am very sure I will travel and if the price is substantially cheaper, I will use Agoda..
*note: the rebate that you see on the website, you have to wait 30 days after your departure from the hotel before it is credited to your account and you have to accumulate to a certain amount before you can use it to offset the next booking..
Tips:
1. Other than checking on the 3 websites for your hotel, after you have decided on the hotel, check to see if they have a official website and compare the rates. The hotel official website may have better packages that the 3 booking engine website do not have.
Normally, the 3 website mentioned above will be slightly cheaper for places like Macau, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc
2. For China trip, you can try http://www.ctrip.com/, seems like a pretty good site with good deals as well.
3. Book early, remember to specific if you want a non-smoking room, double bed, etc.
4. I am not exactly sure if it is true, I may be thinking too much but I sort of feel there are some "advantages" booking from the more popular booking websites. The hotel may be afraid of some nasty comments therefore they will try their best to compensate for some errors, which I will elaborate further when I share my experiences on Macau!! But, I may be wrong..
5. Reading some other reviews from http://www.tripadvisor.com/ would be good for reference.
____________________________________________________
Hostel Booking
I normally search:
http://www.hostelworld.com/
http://www.hostelbookers.com/
Tips
Be sure to check if the hostel has a website, I normally find the rates provided directly from the hostel cheaper.
