Hotels in China
 

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/...62_634x412.jpg

http://beijingcream.com/wp-content/u...tar-hotel.jpeg

https://cdn.kiwicollection.com/media...erior-dusk.jpg
http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/epap...17129e2e05.jpg

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?

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

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.

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.

These "no foreigners" rules are actually largely BS; the laws restricting where foreigners can stay were done away with long ago, and any hotel that can register 身份证 holders can also register a foreigner (though whether they know that is another issue entirely).

Sometimes I don't have the energy to fight them on it, but with one exception, every time I have done so I have prevailed in the end. There's a rather excellent guide explaining how to do this over at LostLaowai and explains how to register yourself using the hotel's computers. A few times, I've called the police, who even in the most backwater places have confirmed that absolutely no such law or regulation exists. Success obviously requires solid Mandarin skills. Alternatively, find someone (use your imagination here) to register the room for you.

The vast majority of foreigners won't WANT to stay in one of these kind of places, of course, but if you get off the beaten path, sometimes it's the only option.

Not sure what "star" rating this place has. :p
minimalist industrial decor

https://i1.wp.com/www.lostlaowai.com...3099.jpg?ssl=1

https://i0.wp.com/www.lostlaowai.com...3102.jpg?ssl=1

(For those of us on mobile, those joke jpegs make this thread hard to load but don't add much content.)

Just use their English language sites to book.

I have always found more hotels on elong, especially in remote places, than Ctrip. And elong's prices are often slightly lower.

Agoda is the one I have had more issues with. Hotels have asked me for vouchers when agoda said it was purely a prepaid booking with no voucher necessary (hard to say who is at fault, agoda or the hotel). In all three cases the hotel wanted me to pay and then address it with agoda. I refused, I have other things to spend countless hours of time on. ;)

Just one word of caution, if you are looking to book hotels without regard to earning points and night stays then these OTA bookings are fine. However, if you book through them and not the program's website you generally will not get credit for your stay.

I use Agoda quite a bit, and when I prepay there's always a .pdf attached to the confirming email; open it and it says "Hotel Voucher" at the top. (Sometimes email clients block attachments.)

Ugh. I've used Agoda roughly eighty times, and only once did a hotel - the Mandarin Oriental Manila - force me to email them a voucher upon check-in. Very stuffy hotel anyway.

My failure rate with Agoda is around 5%. It seems that they have no real means to prevent properties from selling their rooms to other people. Of course the same can be said for ctrip and elong, but Agoda's market clout is trivial by comparison.

Before scaring the OP too much, I'd like to state that problems aren't especially common, and I've never once been completely hosed (my worst experience yet was a night in a windowless room)

Is there anyone here from the other side of the front desk? I'd be very interested to know how the different booking sites vary in terms of quality control, assuming there's any control at all.

Over on ebay, for example, a seller whose feedback ratings fall too low is liable to suspension. Do any of the booking sites have a similar policy? Do any of them do any sort of diligence at all to insure descriptions and such are accurate?

In short, do they list just about any place, with no real continuing oversight, or do any of them at least try to keep some sort of standards up? How bad does a place have to be to get kicked off?

My impression is that there's very little if any quality control, but it would be interesting to know if that's true, and if any particular site has a reputation for being more strict.

I believe that merchant processors may have strict excessive chargeback policies and perhaps bans for merchants that face an unnormal rate of credit card chargebacks.

It is common knowledge that OTAs have high charge back rates, but they always seem to figure out ways to stay in business.

This is not really related to the OTA-individual property dynamic 889 was talking about.

I was talking about customer feedback, not chargeback. That is, if too many buyers consistently give a seller low ratings on ebay, the seller will be suspended. Judging by the bad reviews some hotels get time and again, I suspect the booking sites either don't have such a policy or have one that applies to only the very worst cases. But I don't know, hence the question.

Personally I'd prefer that they keep the awful hotels in their system and let users decide whether or not to endure. Reasoning: in certain parts of China, I want to at least have the option to stay as close to the client/supplier/factory as humanly possible. I am fully aware that the hotel next door may be close to unbearable, but I want to know that it exists.