When the need arises to finally get out somewhere in distant or not so distant lands, the question of accommodation arises acutely: which hotel or hostel to stay in, what conditions they offer so as not to make a mistake. Special sites come to help us - online hotel booking systems. There are many of them on the Internet now.

It is logical that tourists are looking for ways to optimize their travel expenses. I would like to get good quality for the same money. Loyalty programs can be a good solution to the problem. hotel booking sites. They make it possible to book rooms in hotels around the world and receive bonuses and other privileges for this.

Competition is high: service owners have to come up with marketing strategies to attract users. And this is a great option for us, dear travelers, because you can save your money well. AND even stay in hotels for free!

Yes Yes! This is true! But there are some things that usually need to be done. In most cases, you can live for free by writing off loyalty program points (covering 100% of the cost of your stay). Sometimes it happens that a profitable promotional code appears with an indecent discount, and we, of course, will tell you about it :)

The information in this article will help you get the most out of your price by using loyalty programs sites for booking hotels, guest houses, hostels and inns. In general, we share information on how to use reward points, miles, nights to reduce the cost up to a free stay. 🙂 By the way, accumulating these points is not so difficult if you carefully read and follow the advice from this article.


When searching for hotels, we try to optimize our time as much as possible, and therefore we use services where all information on prices and conditions for the same hotel is collected on one page in all popular booking sites. After all, you often have to pay less with points to live for free 🙂 This is a website.

We make a request and receive prices for the same number from, and many others. We recommend using them every time you search for a profitable booking service.

Book a hotel on Booking

What service most often comes to mind when we think about finding a hotel in Russia and abroad? Of course, ! One of the most popular services online booking hotels all over the world.

The search engine's database contains a truly large number of offers of not only hotels, but also hostels and guest houses - everything that is so necessary for the average tourist and on business trips. The strong point of the service is the European direction (if you are traveling to Europe, then the choice of options for where to stay overnight will be quite extensive).

How to get 1000 rubles for Booking as a gift?

Booking service user Vitaly shared with us a link that guarantees a cash reward 1000 rubles for the first booking from 8000 rubles in the equivalent of any currency. That is, in essence, this is cashback for a purchase: you receive a deferred discount of 1000 rubles for staying in a hotel or hostel in the form of a separate payment. We also note that this is a promotion of the Booking service itself. They also pay the money. Therefore, everything is safe!

Booking: important information about the 1000 rubles bonus

You can only get 1000 rubles once per account. If you have already received this bonus before and want to take advantage of the 1000 rubles gift from Booking again, then register a new account (no sanctions will follow for this) and only after that follow the link and book your stay. To receive rewards in this case, use a new bank card. Otherwise, Booking may not pay you anything. It will be very offensive, you will agree, so we warn you in advance.

To receive a bonus from Booking before booking a hotel just follow the link, and if the transition is fixed, you will see a pop-up window: “ Get 1000 rub. (And don't forget to thank your friend)". You can thank me in the comments to this article :)

Attention: It is very important to click on the link immediately before booking your stay, otherwise the bonus will not be awarded!

One more point: do not cancel your stay, otherwise you will cancel your bonus, and to receive a gift of 1000 rubles from Booking you will have to register a new account. Please take this into account! It’s better to check several times whether you can really go, and only then book.

An information window should appear after clicking on the link. But it could also just be information at the bottom of the page. Or a picture of a gift. This is a guarantee that you are doing everything right! Hurry up to book and get your 1000 rubles while the promotion is valid!

The money (cashback) will be transferred to the payment card linked to your Booking.com account (they pay in real money!) within a month after eviction From the hotel. This must be a card Visa or Mastercard(both credit and debit will do). You can pay at the hotel with the same card, any other card or cash. No difference!

The card linked to your Booking.com account is a guarantee that you will receive money ( cashback from Booking) after checking out from the hotel as soon as possible.

We confirm receipt of a reward of 1000 rubles from Booking.com!
Booking sends money by direct transfer to the card 2 days after check-out from the hotel. Online banking payment comment: "BOOKING.COM, BELFAST, GB". The payment comes from the UK (Belfast). In this case, they list Russian rubles. That is, there are no currency conversions. Feel free to link to your Booking account ruble map. Preferably Visa- money comes to her instantly(not always, but usually so), on Mastercard money becomes available for spending within 3 days from the date of transfer(also not always, but, in general, this is the practice).

Booking and Mastercard: joint promotion

You can also get cashback 8% from the cost of booking using your card Mastercard. To do this, make a reservation using this link, check the “I want to receive cashback” checkbox and save any of your Mastercard cards in your profile. Cashback will be credited within 64 days from the moment of check-out from the hotel.

Booking Genius: what is it and what discount does it give?

This is what a Genius discount looks like

Main bonus: genius traveler status (special premium conditions for service + 10% discount on some hotels). The usual method of receipt is from 2019 2 paid bookings(instead of 5), but you can get it for free thanks to a life hack (see below) :)
How long does it last?: constantly.

It’s not difficult to get it, especially taking into account the popular function “” — “ Low price guarantee“, according to which you will be compensated for the difference in price for the same room with another online booking service.

Try genius status from BOOKING for free:
As it appears, all new accounts on Booking.com you get Genius status for a week free of charge. To do this, you just need to accept the invitation to try the “Booking genius status” on the main page of the service.

AirBnB Discount Coupons 2019

Click on the image and get 2100 rubles ($33) as a gift for booking accommodation For a present! You can spend the money immediately or wait (your bonus will be valid for a year).

The world-famous housing rental service "" can be very helpful when traveling around the world. The trick is that here you are not offered rooms in hotels and inns, but apartments and even entire houses for rent Worldwide. Accordingly, the price depends entirely on how much the owner takes. And you can often save a lot of money when traveling.

In general, the service is convenient. Many people use it. It would seem, what does the loyalty program have to do with it?

The fact is that the creators came up with a very cunning, but quite good diagram benefits when renting housing through this service. You can get a discount using special coupons. They are issued for a variety of reasons. However, there are also ongoing promotions.

Airbnb coupon for new clients: gift 2100 rubles ($33)

We would like to immediately warn you to register directly, as this is a direct path to overpayments for accommodation! What you need to do is: eat special promotion, according to which everyone new customers who register on Airbnb will be given a welcome gift 2100 rubles for rent in the equivalent of any currency ( Usually they give only 1500, but for our readers we managed to get an increased rate). This is very good, because a huge part of the budget when traveling is spent on accommodation.

Airbnb coupon applies automatically for first booking from 4,500 rubles($72 or equivalent in any other currency). No discount coupon code needed, just . From the moment the new account is activated, it is valid year to any countries. Can be used immediately. If you already have an account and didn’t take advantage of the discount, that’s okay. In system you can have multiple accounts. This is not prohibited by the rules! So feel free to get your money for travel :)

NOTE:
the terms of the Airbnb promotion often change in the direction of lowering the payment amount, so we advise you not to hesitate and quickly, so as not to lose your 2,100 rubles. Lock in the discount and you can book your stay later, throughout the year.

Is this not enough? There is an opportunity to get more!

You can invite your friends and get extra from each booking 1,500 rubles each, and if your friend decides to start a business and publishes an advertisement for renting his property for tourists, then you will receive more 3500 rubles. All this money are summed up, and they can be spent on any rental apartment or house. Just like that!

There is also permanent discount coupons for Airbnb, which will additionally help reduce the price tag. You can try those that have an ending in the Airbnb promo code 2015 And 2016 (strange, but they still work). There is also a promo code Paypal2000.

AirBnb Coupons for 2019. Universal. Can be applied to several countries.

Example: coupon POLOGNE2015(housing price is not less than $87) and NORVEGE2015(without restrictions) will give you $11 off for any booking in Europe and Russia. There is no official list, so substitute the names of cities and countries in French and get a discount using a brute force method. Most likely, in April it will be possible to use promotional codes with city names; it’s already over 2019 .

This is a list of current Airbnb promotional codes by city name (can also be applied to previously registered accounts). It is now 2019 and they are still relevant.

Often discounts are sent by email, so don't forget to subscribe to Airbnb news. We love Airbnb and maybe you will too!

Discount on tour booking from Travelata

Book a tour at - one of the best travel search engines on the Internet, where you can find options with instant confirmation, there is a special tracking of hotel prices. You no longer need to go to agencies around the city and waste time on it. You can buy a tour online over a cup of coffee, sitting on a cozy sofa next to a purring cat :)
Convenient system for searching and booking accommodation. Even before payment, you will already know who the air carrier is, what parameters the hotel has, reviews about it from real visitors, and the availability of a transfer. And yes, “” guarantees that the cost of the tour will be the same as the tour operator. They say that even if you find it more expensive, there your price will be reduced! When booking a tour, you can use promotional codes to receive a discount.

In particular, right now you can get a promotional code for discount 500 rubles when ordering a tour from 30,000 rubles. Promo code NICE2MEET — you just need to enter it into the appropriate form when you make a reservation.

Loyalty program "Island: Bank of Dreams"

The accommodation booking service "" is quite popular in Russia and the CIS countries. Its main focus is the domestic market, but you can book accommodation in other countries.

Main bonus: “dreams”, they can be used to pay for hotel stays. That is, living in hotels completely free of charge using dream points :) They are easy to save and spend. If you paid online, then the dreams become available for spending 5 days after check-out, if at the hotel, then after 60 days.
How long does it last?: no more than a year.

The Ostrovka loyalty program is more interesting than that of , because it allows you to accumulate points (here they are called “dreams”) to be spent later on accommodation at the rate of 1 ruble discount = 1 dream. What’s interesting is that you can write off bonuses fully (100% of the hotel cost for points) or partially. Even for cheap hostels! Just imagine: you don’t have to pay money for a hotel! Spend your accumulated “dreams” and live for free! If saving is difficult or takes a long time, then get a discount for dreams! It's quite simple. This is what we like about Ostrovok. 😉

You can get your first “dreams” now: quite simply - 100 dreams. Install the mobile application and get 400 more dreams. For every hotel booking through "" you will also receive dreams. If you write a review about the place where you stayed, Ostrovok will reward you 100 points. As you can see, accumulating points is quite convenient, simple and fast. However, the validity period of dreams is 1 year from the moment of accrual. The maximum limit for the accumulation of “dreams” during a month is 5000 .

The bet is:
accrued 2% “savings” from the cost of booking accommodation, and 4% can be obtained if you pay for your stay online - on the website in 90 days before check-in, or book at " Mobile application » ( don’t forget about the welcome 400 dreams you’ll get just for installing this application on your gadget).

Note:
For new users, an initial spending threshold has been set (you need to accumulate a minimum 1500 dreams, to write them off to the hotel). In the future, the restriction will be lifted, and you will be able to spend 500 dreams. They can pay up to 100% of the cost of your stay (not in all hotels, but in most places this is possible). That is, in essence, live for free in hotels, hostels, hotels in exchange for dreams :)

Free hotel booking on Agoda with bonuses

The online hotel booking system is firmly among the leaders and can fully compete with its capabilities. And tourists appreciate it. After all, this is one of the few systems that does not transmit information about the number bank card hotel, thus the possibility of compromise is minimal.

Strength "" - Asian countries. The largest number of offers are presented in this region, but this does not mean that if you need another region, then you don’t need to look. On the contrary, you can often find even lower prices for the same rooms.

Main bonus: you can accrue miles from more than 20 airlines around the world (there are no Russian ones in the database), you won’t be able to live in hotels for free, but you will be able to fly on planes :)
How long does it last?: see the conditions of the airline whose points you receive. 🙂

The service has a kind of loyalty system PointsMax. Here you are not offered free nights, but... airline points! Yes Yes. "" has an extensive catalog of bonus air miles. We list only the most “fat” offers: topbonus Air Berlin, Iberia Plus, FlyingBlue (KLM + Air France), British Airways Executive Club, American Airlines (AAdvantage), AsiaMiles, Quatar Privilege Club, JetPrivilege, China Airlines, Velocity Frequent Flyer.

Points are credited one month after check-out from the hotel directly to your airline's rewards card. Follow the air carrier's rules so you can take advantage of them. In general, Agoda is great in this regard - it is implementing an atypical direction of the loyalty program, and they are doing it well.

HOTELS.COM: free nights in hotels (Rewards)

Dial 10 days for a year and get 1 free night. It can be spent on free booking and accommodation in any hotel that Hotels offers.

Another, albeit less popular, but interesting booking service is. It is mainly known abroad, but it has an extensive base of hotels, inns, hostels and guest houses. The online booking site is used daily at least 10 million users all over the world (in the database more than 275,000 hotels).

Main bonus: One free night for any 10 bookings.
How long does it last?: during a year.

For the domestic traveler, "" is an excellent alternative to its main competitor. Here you can often get good discounts on the same rooms that are presented on Booking and save a lot of money. Note that the program “ Guarantee best price “: they will compensate for the cost of living (By the way, we took advantage of it! We recommend it).

Please use the promo code ADMOCT- gives an additional discount 7% for any booking (until January 31, 2017).

The highlight of the service is bonus program““, according to which you can get free accommodation in one of the hotels in the world of your choice. According to the conditions, to receive this gift, you need to book at least 10 nights. This can be a day either in a separately selected hotel or in others. It is important to do this within a year, otherwise accumulated nights will burn. Naturally, any reservation must be confirmed 😉

The cost of a free night will be based on the average cost of the previous 10 nights. Please note: in it taxes and fees will not be included(they need to be paid separately!). The free night can be spent on any date.

Hotels.com Promo Codes

On this booking service, you can also use promotional codes that provide additional discounts and benefits when checking into hotels. We tested the following: RU1150 discount 1,150 rubles for bookings over 9,000, RU3580 3,580 discount on bookings over RUB 25,500. And RU5700 discount of 5,700 rubles for bookings over 38,000.

Promotional codes are a temporary phenomenon. Some of them may no longer work, but you can always test any of them for free. We will be glad if you, in your comments to the article, share with us current information about which Hotels promotional codes work, and also send us your finds! Thank you :)

Bot of abnormal prices for air tickets

We tested its operation and now use it regularly. Very comfortably! The New Year holidays are coming soon, you can fly somewhere very profitably :) The service is provided by a company - an air ticket search engine with good experience in this area. Additionally, we attach a video that clearly shows how the bot of abnormal prices for air tickets works.

Discount coupons for hotels, hostels and guest houses (2019)

In this subsection we will collect for you all the currently relevant coupons from various hotel booking sites. These services may be unknown on the market and may not even have loyalty programs, but their promotional codes and coupons allow you to really save money and even live for free all over the world.

Receive 1000 rubles in cash as a gift for any booking on Booking from 2000 rubles!

Users of the service can save a lot of money by booking hotels using each other’s affiliate links. All you need to do is follow the link and book your hotel. . Can return 1000 rubles for booking. The Booking service will pay you money after you check out from the hotel. Pays directly to the card you link in your account. Real money! In the article just above we provided such an economical one. It is unknown how long this promotion will last! We need to take advantage of it :)

Promo code from OneTwoTrip

The hotel and ticket booking service offered its visitors a profitable promotional code in 2017 EAH3LL0W33N. This code allows you to get 1000 rubles as a gift when booking a hotel through this service. The hotel must be booked for the amount from 5000 rubles. Can be applied on any date.

Also within the site there is bonus program, allowing you to accumulate and spend points (“tripcoins”) on your travels. A very nice saving opportunity!

You can also buy a ticket or book a hotel in interest-free installments for 3 months at the service by free map " ". IN the Velvet season and on the winter vacation especially relevant :)

How to competently search for hotels through booking services?

Now we will share with you a very useful life hack, which we ourselves actively use and recommend to you. 😉 Going through each booking service is, of course, interesting, but at the same time quite tedious. It is much more effective to immediately find out the prices and living conditions on most sites for the selected hotel in one go. Fortunately for travelers, there are special services where this can be done easily and naturally: for this purpose we invariably use the website (the “Hotelluk” search form at the bottom of the article).

We make a request and receive on one page prices for the same number from, and many others. Beauty! 🙂

When you find the best price offer for your desired hotel, continue following the instructions in this article to also get benefits from loyalty programs 😉

All of the above loyalty programs for booking services are perfectly combined with cashback on Visa and MasterCard payment cards. If you have a card that will accrue cashback (especially increased cashback for travel), then they can and even should be used when booking hotels.

Loyalty programs can greatly simplify a traveler’s life and save a lot Money. In this article, we tried to collect as much practical information as possible about all the benefits of booking hotels around the world “smartly.” Congratulations! You are now a professional traveler!

An important point: we are not official representatives of the sites that we write about in the article, so if you have an individual question (for example, problems logging into your account / not receiving bonuses or cash / identification, etc.), then it is better to ask them directly to the service representatives themselves.
Did we manage to uncover the topic? Share your opinion or question in the comments to the article. We will help, tell you in more detail, and discuss!

Every passionate traveler participates in one or another airline loyalty program. For example, I have cards of the three largest airline alliances in the world - Star Alliance, SkyTeam, Oneworld. For all of them, during my trips I collect miles, which can be spent on free tickets, class upgrade, partner services.

What is the situation with hotels? Many people simply look for a hotel (for example, through Booking.com) and book it without the possibility of any kind of cash back. So, the team of the online hotel booking service Ostrovok.ru came up with and launched an unusual loyalty program - Dream Bank. They asked me to sort it out. Let's try to do this together, see how to use it and what benefits it can get solo traveler when booking hotels.


Step 1. Find a hotel and make a reservation. We go to the service website, log in through your favorite social network or register in almost one click: enter your email address and instantly receive a password for it. Next, as usual, enter in the search field the right direction, dates and find a hotel using various filters. Ostrovok is not a metasearch engine for hotels: search, booking and payment are made here, on one site.

The number of so-called dreams that will be credited to your personal account is indicated next to the hotel price.

For one night booked, depending on the hotel price, you can get from 100 to 300 sleeps. 1 dream is equal to 1 ruble.

We book a hotel and receive confirmation of the reservation by email along with an electronic city guide. Everything is as usual.

Step 2. Travel. At the second step, we go on a trip, get a lot of impressions and see real dreams, spending the night in hotels, for example, these:

Step 3. Crediting points to your Dream Bank account. Dreams are credited to the account after a trip of four to forty days.

When your account accumulates 1500 dreams, they become “colored”, i.e. from that moment they can be exchanged for rubles/coupons and spent on partner sites. It's simple. In addition, Ostrovok promises to give away two rides in Mercedes from an Uber partner. Other partners in the infographic:

Minuses:
- Unfortunately, dreams cannot yet be spent on booking hotels through the service itself, but the development team promises to enable this feature in the near future.
- Waiting for dreams to be credited may take up to 40 days. It all depends on how quickly the service receives confirmation from the hotel. You always want to go faster.

Pros:
- An unusual and fresh idea for a loyalty program.
- The bank’s project has just been launched, and in the program you can already find a number of interesting partners from whom you can get discounts and gifts for dreams. The project team promises even more: “In the near future, the company plans to launch the second stage of the program, in which clients who travel a lot will have access to exclusive benefits, such as VIP exits at Moscow airports, participation in closed events and other pleasant bonuses.”
- Possibility of cash back, which is usually not available on hotel booking sites.
- From 100 to 300 dreams/rub per night - this is very good, up to 10% of the cost.

Result: Now, when booking hotels on a well-known online service, customers will receive points equivalent to rubles and can use them to buy goods from partner companies. Despite the fact that after the trip you need to be a little patient to see your points in your account, the program is interesting and deserves attention. In fact, nothing has changed in the usual hotel booking process, only additional bonuses have appeared. And it’s always nice to receive an additional discount or gift!

Friends, travel wisely, it's very simple.

In Europe, paying for services by card has long been the norm, but Russian people always have questions: How safe is this payment method? Is it possible to pay by card in rubles? Why does the hotel need card data if the reservation is free? Why do people sometimes charge money when making a free booking? Which card is better to pay, debit or credit, Visa, MasterCard or American Express? How to indicate card details if the owner’s last and first name are not indicated on it? Do I need a fully paid hotel bill to obtain a visa? In this article we will explain why such situations may arise.

So, let's look at each question separately.

Is it safe to pay for a hotel reservation online? It is completely safe if you make a reservation directly on the hotel website or a trusted search engine site (aviasales, hotellook) - just make sure that the secure connection settings are in place (the image of a lock in the browser line). Also, for payment security, we recommend activating the Mobile Bank service, which makes transactions only after confirming the password sent to your mobile phone in the form of an SMS message.

Is it possible to pay bills in euros in rubles? Yes. Please note that when always paying for purchases with a card in rubles, currency conversion occurs at the bank’s internal rates, which may differ slightly from the official rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation plus a 1-2% payment system commission.

Why does the hotel ask for all the card details even when making a free booking? First of all, this is necessary to confirm your solvency. In this way, the hotel checks whether the card is valid, and the reservation system can also check the account balance to see if the amount required to pay for the stay is available.

Why do people sometimes charge money when making a free booking? This may be one of the ways to check whether the card is valid.

More often pre-authorization of payment carried out in three ways:
- debiting the cost of one night’s stay from the card and returning it in a few minutes;
- blocking funds on the card to pay for one night’s stay (in rare cases, the entire amount is blocked as a reserve (deposit), and it is unblocked at the time of cancellation of the reservation if you decide to change the hotel);
- no action occurs, that is, the system had enough of your card data for pre-authorization.

What is the difference between a debit or credit card? Which one can be used in Spain? Both, but preference is still given to a credit card.

We all know that a debit card is a card issued for the use of your account, often called a “pay card”. A credit card is an opportunity to use a loan, the amount of which is set by your bank. Almost everything credit cards have a grace period for payment; when you pay accounts payable during this period, you do not pay interest on its use, that is, as a client, you will not notice much of a difference.

What is the best way to use when making a reservation? Credit card.

First, some banks have special fees for currency conversion for debit cards.

Secondly, when checking the balance on the card at the time of pre-authorization of the payment, with credit cards the procedure for pre-authorization of payment is simpler, rarely with the withdrawal and return of funds to pay for one night of the hotel, usually the system simply receives confirmation of the available limit. In short, European companies are more loyal to credit cards than to debit cards.

What to do if the owner’s details are not indicated on the card? Cards that do not contain the owner's information are called unembossed. Typically these are credit cards issued by banks as an additional bonus to their clients, or express credit cards where client personalization is not provided. When filling out the booking form in this case, you enter the surname and full name of the card owner yourself in Latin letters.

MasterCard, Visa, American Express - What is the best way to pay for a hotel reservation and what card is better to take with you? A few years ago, the main differences between Master Card and Visa were different exchange rates. For Master Cards the main currency was the euro, for Visa - the dollar. When paying for services in euros from a ruble Visa account, rubles were converted into dollars and dollars into euros. Now there are no fundamental differences between them.

We would especially like to note that American Express is a less common payment system due to its rather expensive annual service, but it is thanks to this that American Express is considered one of the most reliable systems in Europe. You yourself can cancel your payment in controversial situations, for example, if the airline where you bought the ticket went bankrupt, and the refund procedure is a very long process (alas, we had a similar experience when traveling around Russia).

Do I need a fully paid hotel bill to obtain a visa? No, this is not necessary.

When booking a hotel, you need to consider two factors: you can book a hotel and pay for the entire stay at once, or just make a room reservation, with payment on the spot upon arrival.

With a regular booking, the price may be slightly higher than if you pay immediately, but in this case you have a number of advantages:
- by tracking prices on offers from other hotels, you can find better price/quality closer to your travel date;
- by taking out travel insurance, you reduce the insured amount;
- without travel insurance in case of visa refusal, you simply cancel your reservation.

We draw your attention to the booking conditions, whether cancellation of the reservation is paid or free. Usually, free cancellation of a reservation is possible one or three days before the expected entry date, depending on the conditions of the hotel. If this condition is violated, the hotel may deduct from your account an amount equal to one night's stay.

What should I do if, during a free booking, money was withdrawn from my account and did not come back?You need to review the booking conditions again.

If the reservation was free, you must contact the customer service center (contact details are indicated on the websites) to clarify this issue. In practice, 90% of such cases, unfortunately, are inattentive booking, but a technical factor also cannot be excluded. If funds are illegally debited from your account, their return takes only a couple of days.

Did you travel a lot in 2017? Personally, I have already had to travel around Russia 4 times, in particular: Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. Moreover, this year I went to Moscow for the 4th time. When making my first trip to the capital, it became necessary to book a hotel, since I had to live there for almost a week. Among the huge mass of official websites of hotels, I came across an interesting and convenient hotel booking service - Ostrovok.ru, which, to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised by. Without further ado, I will say that the service is really convenient and has a number of advantages: 1) Prices on Ostrovok.ru are lower than on the official websites of hotels (although not very significant, but it’s better than paying the full price). 2) Payment for the reservation can be made by using the special currency “Dreams” in the ratio 1 dream = 1 ruble. In fact, when the required number of Dreams is accumulated, payment for the reservation can be made up to 100% of the cost. To be honest, I have always loved services that award internal points for using their services. 3) As a safety net, Ostrovok.ru offers everyone additional service- the “Calmness” package, which is useful for those who, for example, are traveling somewhere for the first time and are very worried about their reservation. If you activate this service, the manager of Ostrovok.ru will contact the hotel and check all the details of the reservation and inform you, as well as perform a number of other useful functions. 4) As indicated on the website, when booking you are shown the final cost for the entire period of stay. This is true. All 4 times I paid once directly upon booking and that’s it. Ostrovok.ru has other advantages, but I have listed the main ones above. In addition, at the beginning of December I went on a business trip to the Russian capital and after returning, the accounting department demanded documents confirming my stay at the hotel. This issue was resolved within 2 days. We called the Ostrovok.ru help desk and we didn’t even have to fully explain the situation - we were immediately informed that the accounting documents would be sent by Russian Post and duplicated by email (since the hotel booking was made through a third-party site, the hotel itself does not issue any documents). The service staff is very friendly (without false modesty), they know what the client needs. This means no need to hang on the phone line for hours, waiting for you to be switched from one manager to another! In addition, when booking my first trip (July 2017), Ostrovok.ru, together with the hotel, provided me with a luxurious room for a price that was almost half the actual cost of a room of this category. This takes into account the fact that in the summer everyone goes on vacation and the demand for hotels actively increases. We haven’t made any bookings abroad yet, but I hope it will still happen)))

Publication date: 2013-07-05

The information in the article is periodically updated; it is currently current as of August 2016

Welcome, tourists and travelers! In this article we will dwell in detail on the question of how to book a hotel yourself. There is nothing complicated about it. First, it is important to decide what type of number you want to receive. Next, you need to understand the difference between booking systems and hotel search engines.

content:

Hotel reservation systems- huge catalogs containing hundreds of thousands of hotels. There are at least several dozen such systems. The largest brands in the Russian-speaking market are such brands as booking.com, ostrovok.ru and agoda.com, and the leader of the international one is the same booking.com (expedia.com, hotels.com and venere.com come close to it). As you can see, we have already counted six systems, although there are others - not so popular, but this does not mean that they do not have interesting offers. Therefore, in order not to visit every booking system (in the hope of finding the best price), special hotel search engines have appeared.


Hotel search engines- aggregators that search for hotels using booking systems, compare and select best deals, so that the tourist can quickly make the final choice. That is, search engines are not involved in providing booking services - their job is to search and compare hotels. The booking procedure itself takes place on the corresponding website of the booking system. There are only two similar Russian-language hotel search engines - roomguru.ru and hotellook.ru. Naturally, their use allows you not only to significantly save time, but also to book hotels cheaper.

Room rate

When searching for a hotel room, pay attention to any information, especially small print. Be careful, some online hotel booking systems indicate room rates without taxes and fees. Such tricky tariffs are very common with agoda.com and hotels.com. To find out the real cost of the room, you need to start the booking procedure, but stop at the stage of entering your bank card details (if you need personal data, you can enter obviously incorrect ones).

Cancellation of hotel reservation


Booking a hotel online does not exclude the possibility of canceling the room. If canceled in advance, the service is free. However, if there is little time left before check-in (usually 5-10 days before check-in), then the tourist must pay a cancellation fee. There are options when the date is set to the penultimate day of arrival. These are the booking conditions that are most in demand among experienced tourists. The amount of the fine is usually equal to the cost of one night's stay at the hotel.

Booking special discount offers or promotions

Such offers are always attractive in terms of cost, but they include two serious drawbacks - the need for full payment at the time of booking and the inability to refuse reserved room. What does this mean? You may be denied a visa, you may cancel your vacation, or other circumstances beyond your control may arise, which means your reservation will turn into a waste of money. Agreeing to special offer, you must be 100% sure that the trip will take place.


We would especially like to draw the attention of first-time tourists who, as a rule, do not distinguish a special offer from a regular one. You can regularly find topics on travel forums where one or another reservation system is condemned for refusing to cancel a reservation. Let's explain. Even if you read " NNNNN.com does not charge any fees for changing or canceling reservations", this does not mean that the rules of the reservation system do not indicate the following " The cost of the reservation is refunded if you cancel it no later than X days before your arrival date, provided that your reservation is not marked PREPAID/NOT REFUNDABLE." The term “PREPAID/NOT REFUNDABLE” is where the nuance lies.

Payment for hotel reservation

When paying for a reserved room, there are two options: prepayment (that is, payment at the time of booking) and payment upon stay (on the day of arrival or on the day of departure). At the same time, for bookings that are paid upon check-in, a forced measure is used such as blocking a certain amount of money on a bank card (in order to verify the tourist’s intentions, as well as guarantee payment for a possible cancellation of the booking). We remind you once again that prepayment and blocking are different things. Prepayment is the debiting of funds from the tourist’s card, and blocking is the “freezing” of funds, which will subsequently be “unfrozen” and returned to the account within 5-30 days (depending on the bank). The conditions and amount of the blocking amount are determined by each hotel individually (as a rule, the amount is equal to the cost of one night’s stay). The timing of blocking also varies - sometimes it occurs on the day of booking, and sometimes it occurs 5-10 days before arrival. In some cases, the hotel may block a symbolic amount (for example, 1 euro) just to check whether the bank card of the future guest is valid.

  • booking.com - a booking system in which payment is made upon receipt of your stay;
  • agoda.com and hotels.com are booking systems that require prepayment;
  • ostrovok.ru is a booking system in which the client can independently choose one of two options (the price difference is 3-15%).

Of course, experienced tourists prefer to pay for hotel services upon their stay. This gives much more freedom, and most importantly, the opportunity to leave the hotel or get a discount if the living conditions and service do not meet the declared level. What awaits a tourist who has already paid for his stay? The maximum is a heartfelt and sincere apology for the inconvenience. There will be no talk of any compensation or the opportunity to get your money back to settle in another place. The hotel staff understands perfectly well that a tourist leaving in 7-10 days simply will not sue. Having made an advance payment, you will have to be content with what you have chosen. Although, there is a remedy for this - take the time to first study reviews and comments about the hotel on the Internet. View search results for photos of the hotel and its rooms. Some tourists even use the Street View service from Google Maps to “wander” around the hotel. .

Important! Prepayment does not in any way affect the tourist’s right to cancel a room reservation. The conclusion from the conditions of prepayment, payment and blocking of funds on a bank card is the following - carefully read the conditions for booking a hotel online (if you don’t know a foreign language well, use only Russian-language services).

How do you pay upon arrival?

You can pay for hotel services in cash or by credit card. However, there is a nuance here regarding the part of the funds that were blocked (frozen) as a guarantee. Sometimes this is a relatively small amount, and sometimes it is a very substantial amount. The inconvenience is that you need to pay for accommodation services in full immediately, and the blocked amount will be returned only after a few weeks. For a tourist who often runs out of money at the end of a vacation, this can become a serious problem.

An excellent way out of this situation is to write off the blocked amount in favor of the hotel with an additional payment of the remaining amount. However, be aware that hotel employees are absolutely not obliged to do this. You can only ask for it in the hope that they will understand your position. In rare cases, such situations can go to extremes. For example, when the full amount for the stay has been blocked and is waiting to be unblocked (according to the rules of your booking), and you are required to pay for the room separately. Of course, the blocked amount will sooner or later be returned, but how inconvenient it is to feel “without money with money.”

Russian-speaking support service

We strongly advise novice travelers to book hotels only on Russian-language websites. This way you can significantly reduce the likelihood of missing important details. Even more significant is the presence of a 24-hour Russian-language support service, which you can call not only while at home, but also Abroad. As a rule, if a tourist encounters real difficulties, it happens at the time of check-in/check-out. This is why we recommend booking.com, ostrovok.ru and agoda.com. With them, you can always tell about what happened in your native language and not worry about solving the problem.

A good support service is the main argument in the eternal dilemma (but only for first-time tourists) of how best to book hotels - using a reservation system or on the hotel’s official website. Please note that the second option can only rarely cost you less, since almost all hotels sign agreements with booking systems under which they are required to adhere to a common pricing policy.

Regionality of different hotel reservation systems

Some online hotel booking systems differ in that they focus on one geographic region. It is here that you can find the largest database of hotels in a particular country. For example, venere.com specializes in Italy, hrs.com - in the Benelux countries, agoda.com - in Asian countries, sawadee.ru.com - in Thailand, expedia.com and hotels.com - in the USA.

Hotel reservation confirmation for visa

Confirmation of a booked hotel room is necessary primarily for obtaining a visa (if the country has a visa regime). It can also be useful to explain the purpose of your visit when crossing the border.

For an embassy (consulate or visa center), it is best to receive booking confirmation via fax, since not all such missions accept emails. It is recommended that you first write down the names of all persons requiring a visa on the hotel voucher, and then ask the hotel to fax it on letterhead. In rare cases, the embassy may request confirmation of prepayment for a hotel room.

Booking confirmation for check-in at the hotel

After booking a hotel room, the tourist receives a special hotel voucher(hotel voucher). It is available in personal account on the reservation system website and also sent by email. Be sure to check each item on your hotel voucher. If you find any inaccuracies, please contact support. Some experienced tourists advise writing a letter to the hotel 7-10 days before the trip to clarify whether everything is in order with your reservation.


When checking into the hotel, only the reservation code is important. It is not necessary to print your hotel voucher, but it is necessary to have access to it electronically. If the room has not been paid for, and you plan to check in late, inform the hotel manager about this (otherwise your absence may be mistaken for a no-show, and the room may be given to another client). To do this, write a letter, or even better, make a change to your reservation (there is a corresponding field there). The period of time during which the tourist is required to check into the hotel is indicated in the hotel voucher (for example, “Check-in YYYY-MM-DD from 14:00 - 00:00”).

Best Price Guarantee

The realities of the modern struggle for clients are such that almost all hotel booking systems provide a best price guarantee service. Of course, there are many conditions and different “ifs” in it, but they are quite feasible. The standard sentence sounds like this: “ if you booked a hotel room through our website and then show us that you could have booked the same room, on the same dates, but at a lower price, which is available to view and book on another website, then we. ..

  • ...we will give the same price» writes booking.com;
  • ...we will offer you the same price or lower» lures agoda.com;
  • ...we will pay you triple the difference in the cost of the room or provide this room at the lowest price ostrovok.ru states promisingly.

Bank card security when booking

Transferring your bank card number and CVV code from an online booking system to a hotel makes your card vulnerable. It is a fact. As an example, here is an excerpt from the rules of booking.com. What does this mean? - in hotels, especially mid-level ones, information leakage can easily occur. Therefore, we recommend opening a separate card for bookings and transferring funds to it only as needed.


excerpt from booking.com rules

Another important point. In those rare cases when the client indicated an incorrect card number or CVV code, the hotel, without much concern for the safety of the tourist, notifies about the incident in a regular letter and asks to indicate the correct card number and code in the response letter. This should not be done. Reply that you would like to be sent a special secure link for entering data and transmitting it via the secure HTTPS protocol.

Requirements for a bank card when booking a hotel

  • the card must be a level higher than VISA Electron or Maestro;
  • The card from which the prepayment or blocking of funds was made may be asked to be shown at the hotel. This rule has long been outdated and is rarely used, but theoretically it is still in force, so be sure to take the card with you (even if you expect to pay for your hotel stay in cash);
  • It is allowed to use a third party bank card (for example, when one card pays for the reservation of several rooms at once), but read how to do this correctly (otherwise you may violate the previous paragraph). Previously, in such a situation it was necessary to present a “letter of authorization” (a mere formality);
  • you must use a card whose validity expires only after your stay (even if the conditions clearly state that prepayment and blocking of funds will not be made). An expired (not valid) card may cause the reservation to be cancelled.

Financial responsibility of the tourist after booking a hotel

On travel forums you can regularly find interesting questions about the consequences of providing a “blank” bank card in cases where the hotel must write off money. Without going into the ethical side of the issue, we will answer that, at the request of the hotel, the bank can write off a payment even from a debit card with a zero balance. After the card goes negative, the bank will file a claim personally with the client. In practice, such developments occur extremely rarely, only in cases of penalty payments (for example, for failure to show up at a hotel). As a rule, if the booking system is unable to write off or block funds, this results in trouble for the tourist - the hotel room reservation may be cancelled.

How to book a hotel yourself

So, finally we come to the most important thing - online hotel booking. You have long decided on the type of hotel room and know what to look for when choosing a hotel and in the booking conditions. Now open both hotel search engines at once - roomguru.ru and hotellook.ru to compare the current offers of all major booking systems. Then proceed as follows:

  • Fill out the hotel search form (indicate the city, number of guests, arrival and departure dates).
  • Refine the search result by adding sorting by different categories (price, star rating, area, type).
  • Carefully examine the search results after entering different categories. For ease of perception, they can be sorted. Check the hotels you liked the most from reviews on the Internet. Be sure to pay attention to whether the room is subject to cancellation and under what conditions.
  • Select a room and start the booking process. Fill in English language personal data (full name, email address, phone number), and also indicate your bank card number and CVV code (sometimes not required).
  • Check for confirmation by email. A hotel voucher also becomes available in your personal account in the reservation system. Check the accuracy of filling out the voucher in detail.

Useful resources for tourists

roomguru.ru and hotellook.ru are hotel search engines that search through different booking systems and compare the results, helping to find the best deal

aviasales.ru and skyscanner.ru are airline ticket search engines that free you from the need to view the website of each airline separately

booking.com - the world leader in hotel booking, is distinguished by high quality services, transparent prices and prompt support service