Just imagine for a moment that everything is back to normal and you’re about to book a flight and a hotel. You know you deserve this trip, and you go online to find the best deals on flights and accommodations.
Which website do you go to? You ask yourself, “What is the best travel website?” Well, if you’re among the millions of people worldwide who have tried Booking.com in the past, you know that it’s the best place online to book your next vacation.
What? You haven’t heard of Booking.com yet? If that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, I’m going to give a review of Booking.com and give my thoughts on why I believe it’s the best travel website among the many I have tried.
Booking.com
What Is Booking.Com?
Booking.com started from a small Dutch travel agency that has grown to become one of the leading names in the travel industry. Just to give you a little of background about the company, it first started as bookings.nl. It was established by Geert-Jan Bruinsma in 1996, but four years later, it merged with Bookings Online, which was founded by Sicco and Alec Behrens, Bas Lemmens, and Marijn Muyser. From Booking.org, the URL and name of the merger became Booking.com, with Stef Noorden being appointed as the CEO.
The company went through several changes over the years. In 2005, Priceline Group, which is now called Booking Holdings, acquired Booking.com and cooperated with ActiveHotels.com, another company bought by Priceline several months prior. A year later, Active Hotels Limited changed its name officially and was since called Booking.com Limited.
Fast forward to 2020, Booking.com is now one of the best, if not the best, digital travel company in the world. The main mission of the company is to provide people with a convenient way to experience the world.
True enough, the company is now available in 43 languages, offering nearly 30 million accommodation listings, which include 6.2 million listings of homes and apartments. I know this is beginning to excite you, so I won’t mind if you decide you want to use Booking.com right now.
Booking.com
By the way, Booking.com has a mobile app, which the company launched in 2010. It’s available for iOs, Android, Microsoft Windows, and Kindle Fire. You can also download it from Amazon. Now that we know how Booking.com has started and what its status is today, let’s proceed to talk about how the website works.
Booking Process
The entire interface of the Booking.com website makes it straightforward and very easy to use. Upon arrival at the site, the first thing that will get your attention is the search box. There’s a “Where are you going?” box where you can enter the place of your travel. Next to it is a box for your check-in and check-out dates, and on the third box is where you enter the number of people who need to be accommodated.
You can also browse by property type if you wish. Just scroll down and choose among hotels, apartments, resorts, villas, and cabins. Once you click the search button, you’ll be taken to another page where you’ll see a list of all recommended accommodations by Booking.com. Here, you can choose from Booking.com’s top picks or filter your search by price, review score, a star rating.
If you click on any of the recommendations, you will be taken to a page dedicated to that option where you can check the hotel’s room prices, facilities, house rules, fine print, and guest reviews.
The Info & Prices Tab
Booking.com
On this tab, you will see the availability of the rooms of the accommodation, how many people may be able to sleep in a room, and what the prices of the rooms are. You can also pick right away how many rooms you want to book and whether you want to reserve right then and there.
Facilities Tab
This tab will show you everything the hotel of your choice has to offer. All the services are conveniently listed here, and it’s here you’ll find out whether the hotel offers an airport shuttle service, a fitness center, room service, a bar, a laptop-friendly work space, a pool, and all those kinds of things.
House Rules
The house rules tab is where you’ll find some reminders on the check-in and check-out times, as well as on cancellation and prepayment policies. It’s also here where you’ll see policies on children and beds, as well as age restrictions, and which cards they accept for payment. Want to know if you can bring your pet with you? You can also check out this tab for information on that.
Guest Reviews
This is where you’ll find all the guest reviews of the particular lodging you’re viewing. Here, you’ll have an idea about the quality of the location, the cleanliness of the place, how accommodating the staff members are, or whether the place has excellent facilities and the like.
In the next section, I’m going to talk about the pros and cons of using Booking.com, so make sure you read until the end.
Booking.com
Pros and Cons of Booking.Com
Despite being the best travel website for me, Booking.com does have its downsides, too. Well, every travel website does, but that simply means they still have room for improvement. First, let’s check out the top three pros of Booking.Com
High-Quality Customer Service
This is what I love the most about using Booking.com. As I’ve mentioned, the customer service of this travel website is pretty good. They put their customers first, so in the event that you’ll have some issues with your accommodation, you can rest assured that they are going to fix the problem for you.
Excellent Website Interface
Booking.com is a one-stop-shop that will save you a lot of time. They allow an apples-to-apples comparison, and they make sure all the information you need about a particular lodging can be found in one place. The entire booking process is also smooth, and you can have your booking with just a few clicks of a button.
Guest Reviews
This is another aspect of Booking.com that I love. We all want to make the right decisions when buying something online. It’s the same thing when we’re booking a place to stay. And the best way for us to find out whether a hotel is worth our time and money is to get some advice from people who have gone before us.
Cons
Guest Reviews May Not Be Reliable At Times
This is a con with any travel website, so I wouldn’t be surprised that it happens with Booking.com, too. We all have our biases, so what may be great for me may not be favorable to your tastes. If in doubt about a particular guest review, seek a second or third opinion. The good thing is that Booking.com receives enough reviews for its partners to help you make an informed decision.
No Real Person To Assist During Booking Process
This is another downside of Booking.com. The Q&As; on the website are detailed and thorough, but they may not always be able to answer your questions or they may deal with it in a hasty manner.
Prices May Not Be Competitive At Times
Finally, while Booking.com can guarantee you the best prices most of the time, there are some instances when this is not the case. There are some cases when they offer the same exact prices for accommodations as their competition. Nevertheless, I believe they are fixing this, and based on my experience, Booking.com has the best prices 99% of the time.
Now, these pros and cons are simply based on my experience with the company. If you wish to find out more for yourself, I highly encourage you to try Booking.com right now.
Is Booking.Com Reliable?
There’s really no question of how reliable Booking.com is. The fact that millions of people worldwide use it regularly is a testament to its unending commitment to provide high-quality service to people. The kind of service they offer is just them showing how committed they are to their mission of making it easy for people to see the world through travel.
I personally use Booking.com, and I can tell you that it is more than dependable. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t able to use the site because its servers were down. Every time I needed to book my trips online, I could rest assured that I could use the site without any hassle whatsoever.
There was a time I had a problem with my accommodation when I arrived at the hotel. The receptionist told me I had no reservation with them at all. I didn’t waste any time and called Booking.com right away. And after just a few minutes, the situation was taken care of.
That’s high-quality customer service right there. And I’m the only one who’s experienced this treatment from Booking.com. I have friends and colleagues sharing how Booking.com fixed problematic situations for them during one of their trips.
This trait of Booking.com of making their customers their number one priority is the reason they now have 28 million listings and counting in nearly 150,000 destinations on their site.
Conclusion
What is the best travel website? I have been using Booking.com for years now, and I can assure you that you’ll find the best prices here most of the time. When the time comes for you to book a trip, simply go to this link right here to find the best flight and hotel deals.
Thank you for reading this post. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us and we will get back to you within 24 hours but in most cases much sooner.
Here’s To Great Travel Bookings,
Richard
Hello Richard, I have been getting on the road a lot in the past few years and I have to say it’s not been easy because I don’t have a fixed or trusted agency that I can travel with and that makes it a bit more stressful after every journey. I really feel so much joy seeing how you’ve talked well of the booking agency and I will be a pleasure to enjoy their services
When millions of people decide to opt for a particular platform then it just goes on to show that there is so much to it. For example, it shows that one would be able to rely on the services they render. I’m really optimistic about things going to normal because I have a number of trips to make and I’m sure I’ll use this platform. Looks super awesome
Thank you for your take on Booking dot com, a service that I am sure we have all used at some point. I have used their services in the past, but found them to be quite expensive compared with a platform like AirBnB, but of course it does depend on where you are travelling to.
On the occasions that I have used Booking dot com, the service was very good and friendly so I will use them again when required.
Hello there. I also use Booking every time that I need to move abroad for vacation or work. I fact, I didn’t know the history of the company and how they developed and grow in their business until I read your article. Thank you very much for this helpful review. I have been happy with my choices in Booking, and I agree with you in all you say about the features and the services that the company offers for her customers. I recommend Booking to everyone.
Hi Alketa
Thank you for reading my review of booking.com and for taking additional time to leave us your feedback. I also have used Booking.com of a number of years and thought it appropriate to write a review about it since I personally have used it on so many different occasions. If you have any questions about this article or Booking.com please feel free to contact me and I’ll get back to you quickly.