Agoda - How do I know for sure I have a room?
 

I recently booked a hotel in Thailand through Agoda. Hotel may be a bit of a stretch, it's a small mom-and-pop type operation (i.e. bungalows on the beach). I don't have to pay anything until 2 days before the reservation and can cancel for free.

I am a bit worried as I had an experience with Hotels.com where I showed up to a hotel I had already paid for and they said there were no rooms. Eventually Hotels.com set me up at a different hotel but obviously it was a hassle and a bad experience.

How do I know for sure that Agoda actually has the reservation? I am worried because the hotel on their website mentions an affiliation with Booking.com but it was showing no availability when I searched on that site.

Is flipping an e-mail to the hotel an option to confirm? Any other ideas?

I've used Agoda about 50 times, and have only had one conflict, which was actually similar to what you described with hotels.com.

Print or at least, take a screen shot of the confirmation email. If the hotel/hostel did end up being sold out for the night, Agoda will certainly help you (in my case, I got a refund within two business days). As a back-up plan, take down a few addresses of alternate places to stay, preferably in the local language too.

This is a valid concern for some of the smaller places and your best bet would be to email or call the hotel to confirm.

I've had 3 "surprises" out of 50+ Agoda bookings - all 3 of which involved very small mom-and-pop hotels and last-minute booking (usually early morning of the day of arrival with the arrival being in the evening) - it was usually a question of the hotel not keeping the inventory up-to-date in Agoda's system .

In all 3 cases either the hotel or Agoda were able to resolve the problem promptly and with very minimal inconvenience .

I would definitely try to reach out to the hotel to get a confirmation..... at a minimum.