Accommodation booking websites
When booking many months ahead accommodation websites such as AirBnB and Booking.com can have inexpensive options available, and country pubs in the UK can offer great food for not a lot of money – see our UK Road Trip posts for more info.
Many bookings on Booking.com and AirBnB, or direct with the property, have free cancellation up until a few days or weeks before your arrival. So if you see a good deal on dates that will probably suit, don’t hesitate, book it! You can always change or cancel it as your plans evolve, and it can pay to remain as flexible as possible.
When booking at the last-minute there can also be low prices available as venues try to fill vacancies, although this is unlikely to include the most desirable options, and if demand is high there may only be highly priced venues still available.
Accommodation website issues
Over time accommodation sites in general can evolve a few listings issues. My experiences with AirBnB ten years ago were almost entirely excellent and great value, but a few years later that became a mix of excellent and dodgy – but note that this was mainly experienced in Italy. These days homestay properties generally seem less competitive than they once were, and we often find hotels and guest houses that offer better value, although there can be some great deals on AirBnB if you get in early.
Booking.com
Since travel from Australia kicked off again after Covid my mix of bookings has shifted strongly to Booking.com due to finding good value, plus the convenience and simplicity of the platform. Even so, with hotels it pays to check prices and options directly – sometimes you get a better deal by going direct to the hotel, sometimes through Booking.com.
I have also been disappointed recently with a small number of Booking.com listings that list an option as “free cancellation, pay nothing until xx date” then when you get to the confirmation page you have to pay immediately to get that price – if you select to pay at the later date the price goes up substantially. This seems deceptive to me, so I look for another accommodation option. The same goes for prices that state “inclusive of all taxes and charges” then add these on at the end.
Fake accommodation websites and scams
On the topic of deceptive practices, be very, very carful to avoid scams, including fake websites. They can be very convincing!
Read any website address (URL) very carefully to make sure that it is what it claims to be, and never click on links in emails or messages unless you were expecting them and are absolutely sure that they are valid. On a computer you can hover the mouse pointer, or equivalent, over any link and the URL it connects to should be displayed at the lower left of the computer screen. On a mobile device you can press your finger or stylus on the link and hold it there until the destination URL is displayed. But there is some risk of accidentally “tapping” and opening the link while doing this..
A valid URL should be the actual website address with only necessary text following it, although this can be very hard to determine. For example, you plan to stay at the Valid Hotel, and you receive a message with the link: “https://ValidHotel.com.confirm-booking.click” – but this is a fake URL!
The website it would take you to is actually “confirm-booking.click”, and in this example that would probably be a scam website.
A suggestion: do not click or tap on a web link or go to a website unless you are absolutely sure it is genuine.