Booking tips – how best to research and book hotels

Posted on November 8th, 2013. Written by bookingbusinesstravel.

Finding flights can be relatively quick and easy compared to the task of narrowing down a choice of hotel.

Hotel search includes so many variables:

Category
Star Rating
Amenities
Location
Price
and of course, Availability!

I suggest using the following tools, also featured on the Booking Business Travel hotels page:

For Category, Star rating, Amenity, Availability and Price

Use HotelsCombined to compare properties, to find availability and compare prices

Also check with Booking.com as they are the only company not working with HotelsCombined

For location

Do use normal Google Maps if you are searching for a particular hotel

But if you’re unsure of the destination or need to find hotels within a specific area, Google has a maps tool, of which you may not be aware.

It is tailored to hotels only and is called Google Hotel Finder

This link, (also on the hotels page for convenience), will provide much needed help with your hotel search.

You do need to first select the city and dates and search, as if you were using any other search engine.

Please note, that you cannot search for a same day reservation (e.g. for tonight!) So just make up fictitious dates.

When Google responds with the results page, click on the link below the map “Expand map for hotels in…”

You may be impressed by the number of hotels!

This Google service does have limitations. I have occasionally noticed a hotel to be missing completely so don’t rely on this tool 100%

It does however show hotels – even if they appear to be fully booked (through Google’s travel providers) Which is good, because you’ll probably find availability via HotelsCombined.

Summary

So, whilst Google Maps is a fantastic idea and a helpful tool for research, don’t rely on it completely.

And use our other search engines for availability and bookings

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