Schweden

What is the best website to book hotels in China? Does Ctrip often mess up bookings or is it the best OTA?

I'm considering between IHG hotels and local 4-5 star hotels. It seems that IHG is nearly double the price. Generally, how are the local hotels? I'm mainly worried about my stuff being stolen and bookings not being honored.

xnknown

Depends if you can read Chinese or not lol, if your booking 4 or 5 star hotels you shouldn't have any problems with stolen baggage or unhonored reservations

JPDM

Why not just book direct with the hotel. For IHG hotels I see no advantage in having a middleman who has a probability greater than zero to screw it up.
There is no reason for your booking not being honored more than a booking in the US. And your stuff won't be stolen. This is not a third world country. I often leave my laptop on the desk.

Meng Fan

Ctrip is reliable, but I think you'd better book hotels on the official website.

PTravel

I find that 4-5 star local hotels (as opposed to western chains) offer fine accommodations and are an excellent value.

moondog

1. Many of us here dislike Ctrip foolery, but they continue be a great resource for hotels

2. I often book hotels on ctrip for one night, and ask the hotel staff if they can offer me the same rate directly for night #2; the answer is typically "no"

3. I specifically advise against hotels.com/elong
-I prepaid for a room in Nanning two weeks ago
-I arrived at midnight
-the hotel was not able to find my reservation because hotels.com had referred my reservation to elong without telling me
-in order to check in, I was required to visit an ATM (not so close), and pull out 1000
-Ctrip does NOT play this game

JPDM

Why didn't you book with elong in the first place? In any case, as reported all over the web, ctrip has its own issues.

Ambraciot

I'm rather fond of IHG hotels in China, I'm staying at one right now. I book them through an AA eshopping link to IHG that gives me 3 miles/$ on top of the 20 IHG points/$, combined with the quarterly promos my IHG stays net a ~40% point rebate and almost half my stays are awards.

I'd also be wary of what counts as "4-5 stars" I stayed at a HI earlier this month which was locally considered a 5 star hotel, but would be 3 stars back home. I like the reliability of IHG and knowing I can get a decent meal at the hotel if I can't or won't figure out more colorful local options.

moondog

1. Booking directly with the hotel would cost me y150/night

2. Hotels.com was y139/night

3. Hotels.com allowed me to pay with my credit card (not true in the end, unfortunately)

4. Hotels.com provides a free night for every 10 nights booked

5. Elong is worse than Ctrip; had I known it was part of the equation, I would have booked directly with the hotel

jiejie

Booking hotels directly with elong.com has never let me down. Not once. I use them only for China bookings. Hotels.com on the other hand, has screwed me up plenty of times when I've used them (outside of China). For worldwide hotel travel sites, I'd rank booking.com or expedia.com experiences as better. Or in Asia, agoda.com though not if cancellation or amendment is likely. Ctrip.com has too many issues with their hotel booking model these days to make it recommendable for this purpose. Booking with the hotel property itself is usually quite reliable but same discount prices per the OTA's may or may not be obtainable, one just has to check. If the price is similar, I usually book directly with hotel.

anacapamalibu

China has created a new level "7" star hotels.
Unique architecture adds a few extra stars.

Schweden

I probably need to use Ctrip for a few bookings as I am forced to buy those 50 RMB hotel vouchers when purchasing train tickets. Are there any major advantages to using eLong over Ctrip? Do they not charge a foreign transaction fee?

As well, how can I book directly from local hotels without resorting to a phone reservation? It seems that most of the hotels that I'm interested in don't maintain any websites at all. And lastly, it seems that you guys are saying Ctrip prices are normally better than booking directly, right?

moondog

1. In most cases, it's possible to opt out of ctrip vouchers

2. The vouchers are usually pretty hard to use, to the extent that having doesn't give me much incentive to book with ctrip

3. That having been said, ctrip remains my channel of choice for hotel bookings (I am willing to tolerate their trickery because their rates are usually quite good)
-I usually avail of "pay at the hotel" rates, so the 3% cc surcharge is not really an issue

4. I prefer to book directly at hotels I know, but I've found that most (Chinese chains) are simply unable to match online prices unless you buy their platinum cards
-while this might seem illogical (I.e. why encourage customers to 网购?), ensuring that front line employees have no control over pricing is a critical element in the business model

BOShappyflyer

Planning my first trip ever to China.

ctrip has a lot of local hotels that doesn't appear in the larger hotel search engines. I was looking for a hotel that is close to a specific destination.

Booked it and got an email from ctrip that they tried to contact me, but the "hotel does not have the qualifications to serve foreigners" so my reservation got cancelled. It wasn't a great hotel anyway, but it was just better in terms of location.

It's fine. In the end, I ended up booking a hotel that's more to my liking (but just a little further away) on agoda. I don't usually book agoda and don't have much experience with them, so I hope it works out. I normally book direct or on expedia.com, so so I hope there aren't any issues with agoda (hotel doesn't have a direct website)

The only reason I am a little weary with agoda is that the hotel is showing availability whereas hotels.com/expedia.com/and the likes are all showing the hotel as sold out for my dates. So I hope there aren't any issues with overbooked situation, etc, because that just wouldn't be cool.

ctrip got super great rates but that didn't work out for me, so just beware.

889

Usually, but not always, ctrip, elong and agoda will either not list those hotels on their English sites or mark them somehow as Chinese-only in the listing. Sometimes you'll get a cancellation as you did, even though there was no problem evident when you booked. Worst of all, sometimes you won't discover there's a probiem till you arrive at the place, late at night naturally.

In any event, if you read Chinese, you should nonetheless steer clear of the Chinese-language versions of the booking sites -- which do indeed have far more listings than the English versions -- or you'll probably find yourself booked into a Chinese-only hotel.