MisterBill

I booked a room at the Park Plaza in Beijing on Agoda.com recently. For those who don't want to read my whole story, I'll simply report that the price I was shown when I entered from Kayak was a couple of dollars cheaper than the price when I entered from TripAdvisor, and both were MUCH cheaper than when I entered from ebates (Rakuten). Has anyone else noticed this and found an even cheaper way in? The price when entering from Kayak and TA is definitely cheaper than other sites, at least for the hotel I booked. I read in another thread here that Agoda is owned by Priceline, and I recall from past experience that prices did go up if you came in from ebates, so I guess that part should not be surprising (and no, the rebate amount did not cover the increase in price).

Here's my story. I booked a room a couple of weeks ago and realized after I had booked that I had chosen the pay in advance rate (but with free cancellation). I then decided to cancel the reservation and rebook with the option to pay 2 days prior to my visit. Bad move! When I went to rebook, the price was higher than I had booked at! (I should have rebooked first and then cancelled!) So I didn't end up rebooking and went back to the site several days later to try again. Couldn't get the cheap price and found my open Trip Advisor tab and clicked Agoda from there again and voila -- cheap price! So I booked. I subsequently found that by going in thru Kayak I got an even cheaper price, but I wasn't up for cancelling and rebooking again to save $4 on a $300 charge.

Oddly on the original book/cancel transactions, Chase ended up refunding 15c (USD) less than they charged me on my CSR, even though the purchase and refund were dated the same day.

paperwastage

Yup, definitely noticed that for Agoda


Always use incognito window and test via different referrers. Some referrals give inflated prices,some actually give very good prices as well as global 10% coupon

Book/cancel, differences in fx rate definitely possible even on same day (refund transactions may take longer and hence incur different fx rate)

MisterBill

Where do I get the 10% off coupon? I keep getting them from hotels.com but they're only usable for fairly short term reservations, not for next March when I need it for.

SK AAR

Occasionally, I get this coupon when entering the Agoda webpage. More often it is a 5%-off discount coupon. You need to activate it and it will show up in your profile as a discount coupon available to you. However, for many Agoda rates you can't apply the coupons.

I definitely get different prices with Agoda as well. I tend to get the lowest prices by finding the hotel in Google map and searching for the rates for my dates - often Agoda provides the cheapest rate and then I follow the link in Google map to the Agoda webpage.

Tip: Always change currency to the local currency of the hotel (you do that in upper right corner on the webpage) rather than let Agoda charge your cc in your currency - the conversion/exchange rates applied by Agoda are quite bad (better to let your cc apply their exchange rates)

pickledtink

Thanks for the tip to change the currency to local. I'd never thought of this before and it makes perfect sense. Really helpful.