850 Nights Later, This is Where We Book
Ep.147 After 850 nights on the road, here’s how the top booking platforms really stack up.
We’ve stayed in Airbnbs, boutique hotels, ryokans, chain hotels, and more — and in this episode, we’re sharing the real pros and cons of Airbnb, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Agoda, and direct hotel bookings. Pssst, we saved A LOT of money using one of them!
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Chapters:
00:00 – Start
01:49 – Common Pros and Cons
03:56 – Hotels.com Pros and Cons
06:34 – Booking.com Pros and Cons
09:21 – Agoda Pros and Cons
10:19 – Booking directly with a hotel Pros and Cons
11:57 – Airbnb Pros and Cons
15:48 – Final thoughts and Costs
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Agoda is selling rooms with FAKE pictures and FAKE specs. And your money is gone!!
Which app do you recommend for making reservations to the poor house for poor people ?
I mostly use Airbnb when outside of the U.S. Ridiculous extra fees in the U.S.
Is Agoda a legit website?
Can’t wait for more!
Thank you for your useful information! We really love your videos. 👍👍
Thank you, helpful content. Unfortunately, Airbnb is complicit with Israel's genocide in Palestine. I can't use Airbnb any more.
We're screwed then. AirBnB is literally killing rental markets and making the lives of locals miserable. All over the world.
Can't blame people for taking the most reliable and cost effective method for their circumstances, but do any of us really have the right to a convenient service that also accidentally screws everyone else over?
Your cheap holiday stay was my inflated rental bill.
Moreover. Do any of us have a right to negotiate prices if we don't speak the language of the place we're going to? Do we have a right to be treated the same as the people actually living there? Are we actually respecting the places we visit if we don't put in the effort to learn the lingo and cultural mores?
Personally I might add Ive found airbnbs unreliable and not worth the money. I'm on holiday or business. I don't want to deal with cleaning, cooking for myself, or your poor maintenancr issues. At least in a hotel, if your loo is broken you can be moved to another room!
I used AGODA almost exclusively in the UK also. I had Zero communication issues. This sounds a bit racist.
The problem with AirBnB is that the owners often tack on exorbitant fees so that a place that is listed for, say $85, winds up costing more like $400 or even more.
How do you do to get discount from host for long stay..?!🙏🏻
A big negative for Airbnb is that they displace the locals by raising the cost of homes and rents.
We are full time travelers, 3 months in Europe, 3 months in Central America and planning 6 months in South East Asia. I dumped Air BnB, a year ago and exclusively use Bookings and at Genius 3 level. I totally love it. All my booking in one place, everything is up front including cleaning fees, many free breakfasts, many free room upgrades and I didn't even know until we got to the property, sometimes if you want to the day cancellation you do pay more but that is fine with me. I love the loyalty program and a trick I use is that I look thing up on my computer and then many time if you are using your phone app to book, you get a mobile discount as well. I never have been disappointed with my booking and many times i was with AirBnb. Also never did a chore with my bookings but on Air bnb they want me to almost clean the room with a 70 dollar cleaning fee on top of that. Also Bookings keeps everything in one place, by rooms, cars, activities, flights (but I usually book with the airline although some airlines are hard to get in English so then I use Bookings) Easy cancelations with just a couple clicks and no payment. I will never go back to AirBNB.
We tried staying in Nantes, France for a month to get a local feel of French society. After two nights, we were scrambling to get a flight out of the country. Kevin and Judith have given me reasons to give Airbnb another look but getting a photo of the front door with forced entry damage is not something that is typically offered online. And finding a French city with French people who live near the property is also trickier than it used to be.
I don’t get why hotels don’t offer discounts if you stay longer.
This is so obviously sponsered by AirBnB. No mention of the real problems up and to and including cancellations
I only had good experiences with airbnb until my last trip to the south of France.
No problem with the accomodation whilst there met the host/owner for key handover at start and no problems during my week long stay.
Left the apartment in clean tidy condition when I departed and left a positive review.
All of my own previous 14 reviews have been positive usually commenting on how clean I had left the apartment.
Owner then left me a negative review saying I had left the apartment dirty and untidy.
I contacted the host asking why the review and she mentioned a couple of minor things that were totally false.
I believe she had been lied to by her cleaner to get some extra hours of work.
Airbnb simply didn't want to get involved when I contacted them basically saying it was my word against hers.
The complaints system is so inflexible as they want to categorize everything and put things in neat boxes.
I complained twice before using the automated system before contacting a human but was denied both times.
When I eventually spoke to a supervisor who was going to deal personally with my complaint he then noticed that I had already tried to get the review removed twice before and so couldn't help a third time, twice was the limit.
I did reply to the host's negative feedback saying I believe she had made a mistake but the feedback still remains.
The come away is that I will now film a short video of every apartment when I leave.
airbnb is straight garbage. sorry. cancelled and weird properties and or owners we didn't expect.
if you think airbnb's customer service is poor wait till you have an issue with booking. Booking's customer service is virtually non-existent, if there is a problem they will not help you. I am going through this right now with a flight I booked that was cancelled by the airline and getting a refund has been virtually impossible as they give me the run around. It just gives me an idea of what would happen if I booked an apartment through them and I have an issue and the host is unresponsive or uncooperative. Booking in this case simply washes their hands off and tells you there is nothing they can do.
With hotels that risk is much lower as a decent sized hotel is always going to be reachable. So if you're going to use Booking then use them only for hotels and nothing else.
Y’all have really done a magnificent job! It’s too bad there are some of these nit-noid comments having nothing to do with the topic. Most of us really appreciate your efforts in detailing all these helpful tips😊
It’s easy to see why you would get a better price if you deal with an owner directly, but how do get their information to contact them directly? If you use BnB, would the owner be willing to negotiate?