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.