Best and Worst Hotel Booking Sites for 2024

1

Priceline.com

Frommer’s regularly dives into the data to determine the best hotel sites, and this year produced quite a shakeup in our top 10. Three onetime stalwarts (Priceline, Expedia, and Hotels.com) were driven off our list by newcomers, including one site that had never before earned a Frommer's Top 10 slot after eight years of trying. Meanwhile, one formerly mighty booking engine that once dawdled in the bottom half of our ranking has unexpectedly come roaring back and this year, it nearly nabbed the top spot.

#Travel #Vacation Rental #Travel & Tourism 27 social mentions

2

Expedia

Frommer’s regularly dives into the data to determine the best hotel sites, and this year produced quite a shakeup in our top 10. Three onetime stalwarts (Priceline, Expedia, and Hotels.com) were driven off our list by newcomers, including one site that had never before earned a Frommer's Top 10 slot after eight years of trying. Meanwhile, one formerly mighty booking engine that once dawdled in the bottom half of our ranking has unexpectedly come roaring back and this year, it nearly nabbed the top spot.

#Travel #Vacation Rental #Travel & Tourism 45 social mentions

3

Hotels.com

Frommer’s regularly dives into the data to determine the best hotel sites, and this year produced quite a shakeup in our top 10. Three onetime stalwarts (Priceline, Expedia, and Hotels.com) were driven off our list by newcomers, including one site that had never before earned a Frommer's Top 10 slot after eight years of trying. Meanwhile, one formerly mighty booking engine that once dawdled in the bottom half of our ranking has unexpectedly come roaring back and this year, it nearly nabbed the top spot.

#Travel #Vacation Rental #Online Bookings 527 social mentions

4

Trip.com

Congratulations to Trip.com, the international-facing arm of China’s Ctrip, for finally making it into the Frommer’s Top Ten after eight years of testing! Trip.com’s results were scattershot, and to be honest, it really only excelled at finding good prices and numbers in Paris (and, to a lesser extent, Rome), so maybe consider checking it for European adventures. We were impressed that Trip.com includes the full prices, taxes and fees included, on its results page, and by the fact that you can even sort properties by that true cost, which was unusual among websites. Then again, Trip.com also committed some unforced errors, such as telling us one particularly Philly hostel was sold out when all the other sites we checked there were beds available.

#Travel & Location #Travel #Vacation Rental 114 social mentions

5

Tripadvisor

Only Tripadvisor came close to Agoda’s results in Asia, and that's only because it quoted Agoda's own rates. Oddly, not all aggregators could do that, even if they did check Agoda. The flip side: Agoda fails pretty hard in Europe, where it came up with the worst prices across the board in Paris. Agoda found about 20% of the options in central Rome that other top sites did. What’s more, Agoda claimed one Paris hotel would charge us €92, which dropped to €83 for Agoda members. That sounded great—until we discovered that many other sites offered €73–€76 for the same hotel. Most frustrating of all, Agoda doesn’t even mention taxes and fees until it adds them to the total on the final booking page. Boo! We should also note that Agoda has also sometimes received poor marks from consumers for customer service.

#Travel #Vacation Rental #Travel & Tourism 74 social mentions

6

trivago

While Trivago has recently improved its filters—you can now get granular on things like price ranges or distance from a desired address (though it still lacks a handy “neighborhoods” filter)—Trivago was frankly more annoying to use than other top sites. It was also the only aggregator in our top 10 that never gave an indication of how much taxes and fees were—you have to click over to the booking site for that. What good is a hotel search site that won’t tell you how much you’ll end up paying?

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7

Skyscanner

So why is Skyscanner just #7? Aside from mostly middlin’ price discoveries, it seemed to get its lowest rates from less-than-reliable sources like shifty online travel agencies. Some results were even culled from other aggregators and weren’t actually available once we clicked over. (To its credit, Skyscanner posts a disclaimer about this practice at the top of its results.). On the other hand, unlike some other search engines, it has partnered with a reputable OTA to offer direct bookings: Trip.com.

#Travel #Travel & Tourism #Vacation Rental 2 social mentions

8

Momondo

HotelsCombined was also one of only three sites, along with Kayak and Momondo, that never once returned a price or hotel count that ranked below average. Even our top two sites stumbled a few times on those metrics. What’s more, HotelsCombined has, hands-down, our favorite set of filters, which all come in the form of checkboxes, sliders, or fill-in text boxes, not radio buttons, so you can use several of them at once. You can even fill in any tourist landmark or address to center your search on that area. Like its corporate siblings at Momondo and Kayak, HotelsCombined even has a filter for Booking Providers that allows you to exclude any OTA that you hear is shady.

#Travel #Travel & Tourism #Vacation Rental 12 social mentions

9

Agoda

Only Tripadvisor came close to Agoda’s results in Asia, and that's only because it quoted Agoda's own rates. Oddly, not all aggregators could do that, even if they did check Agoda. The flip side: Agoda fails pretty hard in Europe, where it came up with the worst prices across the board in Paris. Agoda found about 20% of the options in central Rome that other top sites did. What’s more, Agoda claimed one Paris hotel would charge us €92, which dropped to €83 for Agoda members. That sounded great—until we discovered that many other sites offered €73–€76 for the same hotel. Most frustrating of all, Agoda doesn’t even mention taxes and fees until it adds them to the total on the final booking page. Boo! We should also note that Agoda has also sometimes received poor marks from consumers for customer service.

#Travel #Vacation Rental #Online Bookings 36 social mentions

10

KAYAK

HotelsCombined was also one of only three sites, along with Kayak and Momondo, that never once returned a price or hotel count that ranked below average. Even our top two sites stumbled a few times on those metrics. What’s more, HotelsCombined has, hands-down, our favorite set of filters, which all come in the form of checkboxes, sliders, or fill-in text boxes, not radio buttons, so you can use several of them at once. You can even fill in any tourist landmark or address to center your search on that area. Like its corporate siblings at Momondo and Kayak, HotelsCombined even has a filter for Booking Providers that allows you to exclude any OTA that you hear is shady.

#Travel #Vacation Rental #Travel & Tourism 79 social mentions

11

HotelsCombined

HotelsCombined was also one of only three sites, along with Kayak and Momondo, that never once returned a price or hotel count that ranked below average. Even our top two sites stumbled a few times on those metrics. What’s more, HotelsCombined has, hands-down, our favorite set of filters, which all come in the form of checkboxes, sliders, or fill-in text boxes, not radio buttons, so you can use several of them at once. You can even fill in any tourist landmark or address to center your search on that area. Like its corporate siblings at Momondo and Kayak, HotelsCombined even has a filter for Booking Providers that allows you to exclude any OTA that you hear is shady.

#Travel #Vacation Rental #Travel & Tourism

12

Booking.com

Booking.com has returned from the wilderness of the bottom half of our ranking to nip at the heels of the number one spot. It easily smoked the competition when it came to the volume of city-center properties it could find, especially ones charging under $200 a night. All the sites on our ranking offered the same cheap hostel as the only place to stay in Philly for $100 or less. But like a trained dog nosing up rare truffles, Booking.com found not only that hostel but also five more places that cost even less.

#Travel #Vacation Rental #Travel & Tourism 833 social mentions

13

Google

#1: Google.com/travel/hotels Our top spot goes to the mightiest of search engines, which has built the most nimble hotel aggregator in the business. Sure, you can Google a hotel’s name directly to see rates from various sites, but type the less-than-catchy Google.com/travel/hotels, and you get Google’s full-fledged aggregator interface.

#Search Engine #Internet Search #Web Search 3746 social mentions