Outside of FT, I honestly don't know many "nationals" who buy airplane tickets through direct sales channels.

On the subject of notoriously bad customer service, what is Trip.com English like when it comes to “self transfer” itineraries? I haven’t seen any in my searches but I’m asking in advance as I am searching some Air Asia routes and sometimes they even for their own customers to book on separate PNRs and refuse to connect their sectors.

I was only looking previously at direct flights. Adding transits complicates matters. When things go wrong what is Trip.com like or do I just utilise travel insurance and make a claim for it?

I personally wouldn't be using trip.com for any low cost carrier bookings, like AirAsia and others. But for legacy carriers it's different.

I don't think trip.com adds any value for LCCs, there is little or no customer service via either route other than online, and you run the risk of some of the unbundled add-ons not being offered during the booking process. And you then might not native have access to booking direct with the airline to adjust the booking before you depart.

As for self-transfers you seem to be aware of the risks, so doing your own insurance so you fully understand if those risks are covered is probably the sensible way to go.

Regarding the few posts above:

1) Sometimes trip.com does not list parther FFP in the drop-down list, in which case its possible to ask them to do input it manually.
2) Its very important to set the region correctly in trip.com, the fares can differ significantly depending on the region and there may be some local offers.
3) Never had a problem with their English, although on my last enquiry, it was answered by a Korean agent with auto translate. Was not a problem
4) Generally agree regarding the LCC, in my case I often book very last minute and certain that there will be no changes/extra purchases to be made and trip.com lets you pay with local currencies without any markups, which is convenient.

Efficient direct distribution is pretty much an operational prerequisite for LCCs. As such, I'm usually happy to use their sites/apps.

This is not the case with legacy Asian airlines. Agent commissions are simply a cost of doing business. And, there's no point investing big resources in websites that nobody uses.

Hi sorry for the low level question but does anyone know if Trip.com charges my home-NZD-New Zealand Credit Card in CNY or NZD for a China hotel booking? The website displays NZD but that's a setting that I can change. Online searches are inconclusive.

My experience is that Trip.com charges in foreign currency, not CNY as Trip.com is only intended for non-mainland Chinese users.

What matters is what is shown on the final payment page once you have selected your payment method and you put your card details in... Some payment methods may force specific currencies e.g. AliPay or WeChat pay will probably convert the cart total into RMB, other methods will support other currencies.

You should be charged in whatever currency is shown on that final payment stage - just have a careful look at what is shown there and you should have confidence that if the currency presented is NZD then that's what you will be billed in.

Also check the wording of the ctrip NZ terms of use (they might be different to what I see where I am).

I get charged in USD when I use their US site and CNY when I use their Chinese site.

Thanks, I guess the secondary question (since everyone seems to have established that the displayed NZD is the currency the transaction will be charged in) is - does Trip.com do similar to Amazon and other sites and give you a terrible FX rate? I haven't played enough with the site to compare CNY and NZD displayed prices but will do this after my work.

When I compared ctrip (CNY only) and trip.com (EUR) for various hotels, there was not a major abuse of FX rates. Would not worry about that. After all, trip.com is not an American company trying to rip people off like Paypal or Amazon.

I've also never noticed any fx rate abuse, but I've seen a limited number of cases where different regional sites offer slightly different prices, This isn't something I usually worry about, though.

In Japan many of the terminals make a "kind offer" to process your transaction in your home currency. On the second to last day of my trip, tired and in a rush, I accidentally accepted a 5% FX exchange fee to process in NZD. Never forget!

That's just DCC:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cred...on-2026-a.html

It's been going on for 30 years, but isn't especially prominent now. I've only been offered it once during the past month in China, and the opt out was super easy.

Agree that it's super easy but fat fingers and rush can lead to expensive mistakes.