I apologize for my few words. In 2012, we, being completely unfamiliar clients to the Romanovs, quite calmly paid an advance payment (I don’t remember a day or two in advance) - the amount was small. Last year, when we made a reservation, our beloved hostess already said: well, you’re one of our people, period. We arrived calmly and rested. Moreover, this year she called back in March and asked if we were planning to come again (knowing our love for the noise of the sea and trains in the old building, she said that there were already few places) With a heavy heart I answered that Montenegro was waiting for us this year . And here I want to tell you the following to understand how they do it there.
We booked the villa through a Moscow company back in January - we are going in August (the booking company had categorically booked it for the whole summer - well, you understand - the right people bought it and put it into circulation). For an advance payment of 1,300 euros for 2 weeks, we were required to pay 30 percent - that is, at the exchange rate of that time, almost 20 thousand. Paid. And the money is non-refundable.
And then the fun began: since we were traveling by car, we needed to get Schengen. Route: Russia-European Russia-Poland-Slovakia-Hungary-Serbia-Montenegro. Since the country of first entry was Poland and, moreover, we were supposed to spend the night there and back, we went to the Poles to bow to the visa center. And they have a requirement - 50 percent payment for their hotel reservation and MANDATORY CONFIRMATION OF THIS FACT BY FAX ONLY. Therefore, a lot of problems arose, ranging from transferring money to receiving this very fax. But in the end everything worked out.
The fun started a week ago when I applied to the visa center. From the door, the consultant stunned us with the news that the reservation at the destination (read, Montenegro must be paid 100 PERCENT) And this despite the fact that visa-free Montenegro has nothing to do with Schengen for us! We knew this fact from the requirements of the embassy, ​​but we still counted on the prudence of the people working there. Still, paying 60 thousand rubles 7 months before the trip, not knowing whether it will take place at all, is somehow completely irrational. This is what I stated loudly right in the lobby of the visa center. I quote my words verbatim: THIS IS BULLSHIT!!! To which they answered that you have read the requirements of the embassy and whether they will accept your documents is a very vague matter, but you will not receive the service fee back (one thousand per person - a total of 4 thousand for a family) But even if they accept: it is not clear - Will they give me a visa? And again the consular fee will not be returned - and that’s five more grand.
In the end, we decided to take a risk. The documents were accepted and visas were issued. But the fact remains: a total of about 40 thousand rubles have already been spent on a trip that has not yet taken place.

The Airbnb service is suitable not only for tourists and active travelers, but also for homeowners who want to rent it out. Let's look at how to work with the site if you rent out housing.

Working with the Airbnb service begins with registration. On the main page, select the “Receive Guests” tab.

Let's start work. Register, accept the rules for using the service, and bind your phone number.

We will place the first advertisement for housing for rent:

Adding a property to Airbnb

Using the example of one apartment in Yekaterinburg, we will step by step analyze the process of adding your own apartment or house to the Airbnb website.

basic settings

Step 1. We indicate what we will rent. In my case, this is a house, an apartment. What will be available to guests? We choose “entire housing”. Although in Europe a private room or a shared room is very popular.

We indicate how many baths. If the apartment has a separate toilet, it is considered half the bathroom. In the Russian Federation this is not so developed, but in Europe the “guest toilet” is popular, i.e. separate toilet without shower.

Where the housing is located - indicate the address. Rest assured, only guests with a confirmed reservation will see the exact address of the apartment/house.

Indicate what amenities you offer - select from the list. Be careful! If you indicate something, but it is not in the apartment (for example, air conditioning or working Wifi), then there will be problems with guests.

Some hosts offer guests breakfast or dinner - this is not necessary, but it attracts more clients.

What facilities can guests use?

Step 2. Show the property, tell us about it. Upload photos of housing. Short description. Who is the housing suitable for? You can provide any additional information in the description below.

Enter the name of your ad, 60 characters available. Think about the headline and how to make your home stand out from your competitors.

Step 3. Prepare to receive guests.

We indicate our requirements for guests. There are standard requirements; in addition, you can request some of your own.

You can add “No bad ratings” and that the guest has already booked on Airbnb. In this way, you will protect yourself from inadequacy, but will lose newcomers to the site.

State house rules for guests. Is it possible to smoke, throw parties, bring pets, etc.

If guests break your rules (which they previously agreed to when booking), you can cancel your reservation online without penalty to you.

Next, we set up the booking calendar. How often do you want to receive guests? How many days in advance should guests notify you of arrival, what time of arrival. For Russia, it is better to issue an alert on the same day.

How far in advance can I book accommodation with you? Most offer up to 6 months. As a rule, people plan their vacation or business trip in advance.

How long can guests stay at your property?

When can you receive guests? Select dates when reservations are not available. If the apartment is not ready yet, just block your calendar for this month.

We set the price. The system automatically suggests average prices for your region. You can set up “smart prices”, i.e. the price will vary within a certain range depending on demand.

For the first guests, you can set a 20% discount for a review. You need this to attract your first clients.

Offer guests a discount who books for a long period of time. For example, for a week's stay, a 20% discount, for a month - 50%.

That's all! You can always edit all booking settings.

How does the booking work?

And Airbnb has 2 booking systems. Instant- standard option, as it was on the booking. The guest goes to the website, finds suitable accommodation and immediately books it.

Booking via request. The guest sends a reservation request to the host, the host reads it and can either confirm the request or cancel.

Recently, the Airbnb service has been switching everyone to instant booking, because... it is more convenient for guests. And in return, the owners have the opportunity to cancel the reservation if you are not comfortable with it, and you will not be charged a fine.

The host can always change the requirements for the guest before booking.

Nuances

You will need

• - computer;
• - Internet access;
• - documents of all passengers;
• - bank card (may not be required).

Instructions

Go to the airline's website. In the proposed form, enter the departure and destination and the date of departure, whether you are flying one way or round trip (in the second option, you will need to indicate the date of return), the number of adults, people of retirement age and one or another age category among the passengers. In most cases, all the necessary parameters can be selected from the drop-down list and/or entered manually. When everything is ready, by pressing the appropriate button, instruct the system to search for options.

From the options offered, choose the one that suits you best based on departure date and time, price, and fare conditions. The latter can be read by clicking on the appropriate link. Be sure to do this before making any decisions. The fare conditions may include, among other things, restrictions on the payment period after booking. Some, usually fares require immediate redemption of the ticket. In this case, you will need a bank account.

On the next page, enter the names and passport details (or details of the child’s birth certificate) - number and series - of all passengers. Treat this with the utmost attention: if there is the slightest mistake, a person will not be able to pick up the reserved tickets, board the plane, or return the ticket.
When everything is ready, move on to the next step.

The system will request your bank card information. Enter all the required information and move on.

If you prefer to visit the airline, ticket office or travel agency in person, take all passengers' documents with you. Tell the operator all your wishes regarding the future flight: from where, where and when you are flying, one way or back, the number of passengers, how many children and what age and pensioners among them, the preferred class of service (economy, business, first, premium etc.), wishes regarding price and other essential conditions of the tariff. Make your choice from the options offered by the operator. He will do everything necessary and give you a confirmation of your reservation. It may be needed, for example, when applying for a visa.

If booking by phone, call the correct number for the airline or other organization providing such a service. Tell the operator all the important information regarding the flight, just as you would during a personal visit to the ticket office. Listen to the proposed options, choose the most suitable one.
Then dictate to the operator the names and passport details of all passengers. Make sure that he has recorded them correctly (usually the interlocutor himself suggests doing this). Next, listen and remember or write down the instructions for further actions to buy tickets and cancel your reservation.
To confirm it and redeem tickets, you will have to visit the office of the company through which the telephone reservation was made.

Video on the topic

Any traveler planning a trip wants to save money. Booking is one of the ways to save money. In addition, by booking a ticket or a hotel room, you can be sure that they will be assigned to you.

Instructions

The booking process is simple. Go to any sales website and register on it. Then enter your points of departure and arrival (destination), select the date, time, airline and click “book”. On this page you will need to enter passenger details, delivery method and place. After this, the company's managers contact you and clarify payment methods and the time when you will pay.

For those who are not particularly experienced in flying, let us remind you that there are 3 services: first, -class and economy. But not everyone knows about booking classes. These classes are distinguished by the ability to change the flight schedule of the ticket and many other possibilities. Thus, passengers who paid different amounts for one ticket can fly on an airplane in the same class of service. Moreover, the difference is significant. So a passenger who bought a ticket of booking class Y for $1,200 in economy class will be able to change the date of the flight throughout the year, fly on another airline, return part of the ticket, and so on. He can do all this without paying fines. He will be able to buy the ticket on the day of departure.

Tickets booked in V-Class will cost $400, but you will not be able to return the ticket or change the date without a penalty. At the same time, you can book a ticket no earlier than 2 months in advance, and redeem it no later than 3 days before departure.

A passenger who paid $300 can sit next to the previous two passengers in a seat. This is a T class reservation. There are even more restrictions here, but the most important thing is that you need to redeem the ticket on the day of the reservation. However, he will buy a ticket 4 times cheaper than a passenger with a class Y reservation. Needless to say, they will be treated exactly the same?

As for the booking rules, there are several general recommendations: 1. You need to book in advance to save money;2. Tickets that arrive on the night of Saturday to Sunday are cheaper; 3. Buy round trip tickets immediately. The savings will be more than a third of the cost. In addition, this will save you from unnecessary explanations with customs officers and other authorities monitoring visitors;4. The longer the interval between the date of departure and arrival (more than 30 days), the more expensive the tickets;5. As already mentioned, the cheaper the ticket, the lower the booking class, the greater the fines in case of changing the date or time of departure.

Video on the topic

Tip 3: How to book plane tickets online

Electronic ticket for airplane, also called E-ticket, is a way to book flights to almost any destination from the comfort of your home, right from your computer. You can choose a convenient flight, and then issue a ticket on the airline’s website at a time convenient for you. After booking is completed, you will need to pay for the ticket by credit card or electronic money.

You will need

• computer with internet
• credit card

Instructions

At this stage, check all entered data. Whether the ticket is in the right direction, the required dates, flights. Once you are sure that everything is correct, proceed to filling out the traveler information. Enter your full name, passport details, contact phone number and e-mail in the required fields. Check everything again. If you made a mistake with your passport details, you will not be able to make the flight. An error in the email address will result in you not receiving your ticket, it will be sent to the wrong address. All this can be fixed, but you will need to additionally contact support, and some changes, such as correcting an error in passport data, may cost money.

If everything is correct, proceed to payment, the booking system will offer you options to choose from. All airlines support the ability to pay with Visa or MasterCard; some accept cards of other formats. Some Russian carriers agree to pay by electronic money; some airlines even allow you to pay for tickets through electronic payment terminals, Svyaznoy or Euroset.

As soon as the purchase is paid for, you will immediately receive confirmation by email that your ticket has been issued; it will be attached to the letter. Print it out and present it at the reception. Some companies require a printed ticket, this happens on international flights. If the flight is domestic, then you can simply go to the counter with your passport, the ticket will be issued to you without any printouts, since all the information is stored in the airline’s database.

What is early booking and does it really help you save? What are the pros and cons of early booking? Who benefits from it? In this article I will tell you everything in detail and give advice.

This article is intended for persons over 18 years of age

Have you already turned 18?

Early booking of travel packages is gaining more and more popularity every year. Travel agencies offer tourists to book a summer tour in winter, and in summer to book a trip for the New Year and promise huge discounts. Everyone wants to have a good vacation, but no one wants to overpay for their vacation, and this is quite logical.

What is early booking and who benefits from it?

Early booking is booking a tour at least 21 days before departure (usually these are not very popular destinations). This is a special offer with an attractive price and the opportunity to pay for the tour in several stages. In the tourism business, like any other, everything depends on demand: high demand - high price, low demand - low price. The “winter season” is considered a “low season” in tourism; after the “New Year’s boom,” the tourism market freezes. Of course, tourists vacation all year round, many go to warm up, others go skiing or fly to sales in Europe. But still, February and March are months when there is no huge tourist flow. What should be done to “invigorate” the tourism market?

Let's first remember what a tourist package (tour) consists of. The cost of the tour consists of the cost of the accommodation facility (the main part of the tour), air travel, transfer and medical insurance. Many Mediterranean hotels operate in the red in winter, and, naturally, they need funds. Where can I get them? It's simple: hoteliers give good discounts to tour operators provided they receive funds here and now. Accordingly, the tour operator has the opportunity to reduce the price, the tourist will book a tour and pay part of it now at a “low » season. Everything is quite simple.

Everyone benefits from early booking, starting with hoteliers who can “survive” the winter: in any case, they will not work at a loss, because there is a “high season” ahead, during which they will earn very good money. The tourism operator is also satisfied; even during the low season, he has the opportunity to earn money and be confident that there will be income. And the tourist gets his discount.

And now about the most important thing: is it really worth running to a travel agency or tour operator in February-March and booking a tour for the summer? Below are the pros and disadvantages of early booking for tourists.

Advantages of early booking

1. Choosing a convenient flight.During the “high season”, there are often several flights per day to the most popular destinations. By booking a tour in advance, you can choose a flight and departure airport that is convenient for you (in most cases you will have to pay extra to specify the flight). But during the season, mostly charter flights fly, which means that even if you have specified the flight, the flight may be rescheduled.

Advice! If you are dependent on departure times, book tickets for regular flights - this will help avoid unpleasant surprises, but regular flights are always more expensive than charter flights.

2. Wide selection of accommodation facilities.By booking your tour in advance, you have the opportunity to choose exactly the hotel you need. This is the main advantage, because the choice is huge, you can choose among thousands of hotels, apartments and villas. You can choose the required room category - this is important when vacationing in a large group or with children. Some tourists prefer to vacation in the same hotel year after year. If choosing an accommodation is a priority for you, then early booking is for you. After all, during the “high season” there may simply not be room in the hotel.

3. Tour cost and tour payment.The cost of early booking is lower than in the season (of course, last minute tours “nobody canceled, but they may or may not be, and remember that a “last minute tour” is almost always leftovers that could not be sold). The cost of an early booking tour is fixed in currency (dollar, euro) and is paid at the tour operator’s rate on the day of payment. This means that the cost of the tour will change only depending on changes in exchange rates. Tour operators pay for the tour in different ways, but most often you first need to pay 50% of the tour cost, then you can pay in installments, and 2 weeks before the start of the tour, payment must be 100%

4. Planning.Many tourists like to plan everything in advance and know that they will fly on vacation on a certain day, to a certain hotel. We booked a tour in February and relaxed until August. During this time, you can plan, for example, excursions of interest. Or if you are flying with the same company, but from different cities, then it is very important that the whole company vacations in one place at the same time. Many vacations take place on fixed dates, and if you don’t take care of the tour in advance, then there may simply be no seats on the flight that day.

Disadvantages of early booking

1. Cancellation.Many tour operators apply very strict penalties for tour cancellations. And some even fine you for making changes to the application, for example, changing your last name. Or, let’s say, you decide to remove/add a tourist to your application. Although every year tourist operators are becoming more loyal. In any case, carefully read the service agreement, especially the clause with the terms of fines.

2. Last Minute Tours. TO As I wrote above, this is most often what is left, for example, a plane flies, and 70 seats are purchased from tour operators, and 68 are sold, money is paid for the seats, and the tour operator gives it back at “cost”, accordingly, the price is reduced. The same goes for rooms in accommodation facilities. But good tours also sometimes burn out, but again, this is a matter of luck.

3. Exchange Rates. The question is ambiguous. The cost of the tour is fixed in foreign currency, and the exchange rate is not always stable. For example, tourists who booked tours for the New Year in the summer of 2014 did not save money, but rather overpaid, because the exchange rate more than doubled in the fall of 2014. This happens infrequently, but nevertheless we are not immune from it. In any case, most often the tourist immediately pays 30-50% of the tour cost, and recalculation is carried out for the remaining amount.

1.Tourism is a business, and no one will engage in charity and “give” vacations to the detriment of their business. Therefore, when you are promised discounts of up to 50%, this is nothing more than a marketing ploy. Yes, you can really save money by booking early, but not much.

2.Buy early booking tours only from a trusted travel agency.

3.Check the tour operator, go to the Rostourism website, make sure that the tour operator really exists and conducts tourism activities. In principle, good travel agencies do not work with unreliable tour operators. Alas, not a single tourist operator is immune from bankruptcy, and we have clearly seen this over the past few years.

4.Carefully, no, very carefully read the terms of the contract.

5.Keep the contract for the provision of tourist services and all payment documents until you return to your home country, so that in case of unpleasant situations, for example, checking into the wrong room, you will have evidence in court.

In any case, it is up to you to decide what is best for you. Early booking is really beneficial, but is it really reliable in today's economy? We need to rest in any case, because traveling helps us take a break from everyday life, see the world and get incredible emotions.

Publication date: 2013-07-05

The information in the article is periodically updated; it is currently current as of August 2016

Welcome, tourists and travelers! In this article we will dwell in detail on the question of how to book a hotel yourself. There is nothing complicated about this. First, it is important to decide what type of number you want to receive. Next, you need to understand the difference between booking systems and hotel search engines.

content:

Hotel reservation systems- huge catalogs containing hundreds of thousands of hotels. There are at least several dozen such systems. The largest brands in the Russian-speaking market are such brands as booking.com, ostrovok.ru and agoda.com, and the leader of the international one is the same booking.com (expedia.com, hotels.com and venere.com come close to it). As you can see, we have already counted six systems, although there are others - not so popular, but this does not mean that they do not have interesting offers. Therefore, in order not to visit every booking system (in the hope of finding the best price), special hotel search engines have appeared.

Hotel search engines- aggregators that search for hotels using booking systems, compare and select the best offers so that the tourist can quickly make the final choice. That is, search engines are not involved in providing booking services - their job is to search and compare hotels. The booking procedure itself takes place on the corresponding website of the booking system. There are only two similar Russian-language hotel search engines - roomguru.ru and hotellook.ru. Naturally, their use allows you not only to significantly save time, but also to book hotels cheaper.

Room rate

When searching for a hotel room, pay attention to any information, especially small print. Be careful, some online hotel booking systems indicate room rates without taxes and fees. Such tricky tariffs are very common with agoda.com and hotels.com. To find out the real cost of the room, you need to start the booking procedure, but stop at the stage of entering your bank card details (if you need personal data, you can enter obviously incorrect ones).

Cancellation of hotel reservation

Booking a hotel online does not exclude the possibility of canceling the room. If canceled in advance, the service is free. However, if there is little time left before check-in (usually 5-10 days before check-in), then the tourist must pay a cancellation fee. There are options when the date is set to the penultimate day of arrival. These are the booking conditions that are most in demand among experienced tourists. The amount of the fine is usually equal to the cost of one night's stay at the hotel.

Booking special discount offers or promotions

Such offers are always attractive in terms of cost, but they include two serious drawbacks - the need for full payment at the time of booking and the inability to cancel the reserved room. What does this mean? You may be denied a visa, you may cancel your vacation, or other circumstances beyond your control may arise, which means your reservation will turn into a waste of money. When agreeing to a special offer, you must be 100% sure that the trip will take place.

We would especially like to draw the attention of first-time tourists who, as a rule, do not distinguish a special offer from a regular one. You can regularly find topics on travel forums where one or another reservation system is condemned for refusing to cancel a reservation. Let's explain. Even if you read " NNNNN.com does not charge any fees for changing or canceling reservations", this does not mean that the rules of the reservation system do not indicate the following " The cost of the reservation is refunded if you cancel it no later than X days before your arrival date, provided that your reservation is not marked PREPAID/NOT REFUNDABLE." The term “PREPAID/NOT REFUNDABLE” is where the nuance lies.

Payment for hotel reservation

When paying for a reserved room, there are two options: prepayment (that is, payment at the time of booking) and payment upon stay (on the day of arrival or on the day of departure). At the same time, for bookings that are paid upon check-in, a forced measure is used such as blocking a certain amount of money on a bank card (in order to verify the tourist’s intentions, as well as guarantee payment for a possible cancellation of the booking). We remind you once again that prepayment and blocking are different things. Prepayment is the debiting of funds from the tourist’s card, and blocking is the “freezing” of funds, which will subsequently be “unfrozen” and returned to the account within 5-30 days (depending on the bank). The conditions and amount of the blocking amount are determined by each hotel individually (as a rule, the amount is equal to the cost of one night’s stay). The timing of blocking also varies - sometimes it occurs on the day of booking, and sometimes it occurs 5-10 days before arrival. In some cases, the hotel may block a symbolic amount (for example, 1 euro) just to check whether the bank card of the future guest is valid.

• booking.com - a booking system in which payment is made upon receipt of your stay;
• agoda.com and hotels.com are booking systems that require prepayment;
• ostrovok.ru is a booking system in which the client can independently choose one of two options (the price difference is 3-15%).

Of course, experienced tourists prefer to pay for hotel services upon their stay. This gives much more freedom, and most importantly, the opportunity to leave the hotel or get a discount if the living conditions and service do not meet the declared level. What awaits a tourist who has already paid for his stay? The maximum is a heartfelt and sincere apology for the inconvenience. There will be no talk of any compensation or the opportunity to get your money back to settle in another place. The hotel staff understands perfectly well that a tourist leaving in 7-10 days simply will not sue. Having made an advance payment, you will have to be content with what you have chosen. Although, there is a remedy for this - take the time to first study reviews and comments about the hotel on the Internet. View search results for photos of the hotel and its rooms. Some tourists even use Google Maps' Street View service to "wander" around the hotel. .

Important! Prepayment does not in any way affect the tourist’s right to cancel a room reservation. The conclusion from the conditions of prepayment, payment and blocking of funds on a bank card is the following - carefully read the conditions for booking a hotel online (if you don’t know a foreign language well, use only Russian-language services).

How do you pay upon arrival?

You can pay for hotel services in cash or by credit card. However, there is a nuance here regarding the part of the funds that were blocked (frozen) as a guarantee. Sometimes this is a relatively small amount, and sometimes it is a very substantial amount. The inconvenience is that you need to pay for accommodation services in full immediately, and the blocked amount will be returned only after a few weeks. For a tourist who often runs out of money at the end of a vacation, this can become a serious problem.

An excellent way out of this situation is to write off the blocked amount in favor of the hotel with an additional payment of the remaining amount. However, be aware that hotel employees are absolutely not obliged to do this. You can only ask for it in the hope that they will understand your position. In rare cases, such situations can go to extremes. For example, when the full amount for the stay has been blocked and is waiting to be unblocked (according to the rules of your booking), and you are required to pay for the room separately. Of course, the blocked amount will sooner or later be returned, but how inconvenient it is to feel “without money with money.”

Russian-speaking support service

We strongly advise novice travelers to book hotels only on Russian-language websites. This way you can significantly reduce the likelihood of missing important details. Even more significant is the presence of a 24-hour Russian-language support service, which you can call not only while at home, but also Abroad. As a rule, if a tourist encounters real difficulties, it happens at the time of check-in/check-out. This is why we recommend booking.com, ostrovok.ru and agoda.com. With them, you can always tell about what happened in your native language and not worry about solving the problem.

A good support service is the main argument in the eternal dilemma (but only for first-time tourists) of how best to book hotels - using a reservation system or on the hotel’s official website. Please note that the second option can only rarely cost you less, since almost all hotels sign agreements with booking systems under which they are required to adhere to a common pricing policy.

Regionality of different hotel reservation systems

Some online hotel booking systems differ in that they focus on one geographic region. It is here that you can find the largest database of hotels in a particular country. For example, venere.com specializes in Italy, hrs.com - in the Benelux countries, agoda.com - in Asian countries, sawadee.ru.com - in Thailand, expedia.com and hotels.com - in the USA.

Hotel reservation confirmation for visa

Confirmation of a booked hotel room is necessary primarily for obtaining a visa (if the country has a visa regime). It can also be useful to explain the purpose of your visit when crossing the border.

For an embassy (consulate or visa center), it is best to receive booking confirmation via fax, since not all such missions accept emails. It is recommended that you first write down the names of all persons requiring a visa on the hotel voucher, and then ask the hotel to fax it on letterhead. In rare cases, the embassy may request confirmation of prepayment for a hotel room.

Booking confirmation for check-in at the hotel

After booking a hotel room, the tourist receives a special hotel voucher(hotel voucher). It is available in your personal account on the reservation system website, and is also sent by email. Be sure to check each item on your hotel voucher. If you find any inaccuracies, please contact support. Some experienced tourists advise writing a letter to the hotel 7-10 days before the trip to clarify whether everything is in order with your reservation.

When checking into the hotel, only the reservation code is important. It is not necessary to print your hotel voucher, but it is necessary to have access to it electronically. If the room has not been paid for, and you plan to check in late, inform the hotel manager about this (otherwise your absence may be mistaken for a no-show, and the room may be given to another client). To do this, write a letter, or even better, make a change to your reservation (there is a corresponding field there). The period of time during which the tourist is required to check into the hotel is indicated in the hotel voucher (for example, “Check-in YYYY-MM-DD from 14:00 - 00:00”).

Best Price Guarantee

The realities of the modern struggle for clients are such that almost all hotel booking systems provide a best price guarantee service. Of course, there are many conditions and different “ifs” in it, but they are quite feasible. The standard sentence sounds like this: “ if you booked a hotel room through our website and then show us that you could have booked the same room, on the same dates, but at a lower price, which is available to view and book on another website, then we. ..

• ...we will give the same price» writes booking.com;
• ...we will offer you the same price or lower» lures agoda.com;
• ...we will pay you triple the difference in the cost of the room or provide this room at the lowest price ostrovok.ru states promisingly.

Bank card security when booking

Transferring your bank card number and CVV code from an online booking system to a hotel makes your card vulnerable. It is a fact. As an example, here is an excerpt from the rules of booking.com. What does this mean? - in hotels, especially mid-level ones, information leakage can easily occur. Therefore, we recommend opening a separate card for bookings and transferring funds to it only as needed.

excerpt from booking.com rules

Another important point. In those rare cases when the client indicated an incorrect card number or CVV code, the hotel, without much concern for the safety of the tourist, notifies about the incident in a regular letter and asks to indicate the correct card number and code in the response letter. This should not be done. Reply that you would like to be sent a special secure link for entering data and transmitting it via the secure HTTPS protocol.

Requirements for a bank card when booking a hotel

• the card must be a level higher than VISA Electron or Maestro;
• The card from which the prepayment or blocking of funds was made may be asked to be shown at the hotel. This rule has long been outdated and is rarely used, but theoretically it is still in force, so be sure to take the card with you (even if you expect to pay for your hotel stay in cash);
• It is allowed to use a third party bank card (for example, when one card pays for the reservation of several rooms at once), but read how to do this correctly (otherwise you may violate the previous paragraph). Previously, in such a situation it was necessary to present a “letter of authorization” (a mere formality);
• you must use a card whose validity expires only after your stay (even if the conditions clearly state that prepayment and blocking of funds will not be made). An expired (not valid) card may cause the reservation to be cancelled.

Financial responsibility of the tourist after booking a hotel

On travel forums you can regularly find interesting questions about the consequences of providing a “blank” bank card in cases where the hotel must write off money. Without going into the ethical side of the issue, we will answer that, at the request of the hotel, the bank can write off a payment even from a debit card with a zero balance. After the card goes negative, the bank will file a claim personally with the client. In practice, such developments occur extremely rarely, only in cases of penalty payments (for example, for failure to show up at a hotel). As a rule, if the booking system is unable to write off or block funds, this results in trouble for the tourist - the hotel room reservation may be cancelled.

How to book a hotel yourself

So, finally we come to the most important thing - online hotel booking. You have long decided on the type of hotel room and know what to look for when choosing a hotel and in the booking conditions. Now open both hotel search engines at once - roomguru.ru and hotellook.ru to compare the current offers of all major booking systems. Then proceed as follows:

• Fill out the hotel search form (indicate the city, number of guests, arrival and departure dates).
• Refine the search result by adding sorting by different categories (price, star rating, area, type).
• Carefully examine the search results after entering different categories. For ease of perception, they can be sorted. Check the hotels you liked the most from reviews on the Internet. Be sure to pay attention to whether the room is subject to cancellation and under what conditions.
• Select a room and start the booking process. Fill in your personal information in English (full name, email address, phone number), and also indicate your bank card number and CVV code (sometimes not required).
• Check for confirmation by email. A hotel voucher also becomes available in your personal account in the reservation system. Check the accuracy of filling out the voucher in detail.

Useful resources for tourists

roomguru.ru and hotellook.ru are hotel search engines that search through different booking systems and compare the results, helping to find the best deal

aviasales.ru and skyscanner.ru are airline ticket search engines that free you from the need to view the website of each airline separately

tripadvisor.ru - a resource with the largest number of useful and relevant reviews about tourist sites

booking.com is a world leader in hotel booking, distinguished by high quality services, transparent prices and prompt support service

Comparison of prices for tourist tours