How to book a hotel cheaper than on Booking.com

Booking.com is a popular booking service trusted by people all over the world. The site claims to have the lowest hotel prices. I will say right away that this is not always the case — on other sites, you can book a hotel cheaper than on Booking.com. We will now figure out exactly which sites and how to do this.

Booking.com, like all popular products, generates a lot of debate: is it good or bad, expensive or cheap. There are many questions about it from both travelers and hotels.

We need to know the following:

• The site really works and in 99 cases out of 100 it works well.
• There are alternatives to it, and finding a hotel cheaper than on Booking.com is indeed possible.
• Errors in the system sometimes happen, but this does not occur often.

4 ways to find a hotel cheaper than on Booking.com:

1. Use a booking search engine
   The simplest and most convenient way is to use a site like Hotellook or similar ones, such as Roomguru. These are not booking systems, although some also have their own database of hotels, but so-called meta-search engines or aggregators. There are many hotel sites on the internet, and checking and comparing prices on all of them is inconvenient and time-consuming. Search engines will do this job faster.
2. Book a room on the hotel’s website
   If you read the article via the link, you already understand that prices on the official hotel website are sometimes lower than on booking sites — this needs to be checked manually. If you like a hotel, go to its website (just type the hotel name into Google) and see how much the rooms cost there. You might get lucky.
3. Book a room through a tour operator
   The online tour site Travelata claims that you can book a hotel cheaper than on Booking.com. Let’s check.

The first hotel I found in Turkey was 550$ for 7 nights. Looking on Booking.com for the same dates, it turned out that everything was already sold out.

Let’s change to a less popular country. Let’s check Berlin. Now Travelata cannot find any options. In Paris, it’s also quiet.

Finally, I found one in Greece — Achousa hotel, one night: Travelata — 168$, Booking — 163$.

I couldn’t find a cheaper hotel. But! Most of the hotels I found on Travelata were already sold out on Booking.com.

You have already read why this happens.

I would still recommend checking this site, especially if there are no rooms available in your desired hotel. Most likely, Booking.com sells its quota faster due to its greater popularity, while rooms on Travelata are still available.

4. On Booking.com itself
   The only thing cheaper than Booking.com is Booking.com itself. Look at the top right corner of the hotel page. There is a line “We refund the price difference”. For those who did not mind doing the previous three steps and found a cheaper offer online, Booking.com came up with this option. They don’t want to lose customers.

If you trust Booking.com more but don’t want to miss out on a good price, use this option. You can report that you found a lower price when booking. There is a special button for this. You will contact a service representative who will say they are ready to lower the price.

Good luck!