Compare Hotels

Lots of hotel websites now offer price promises. At sletoh we are cynical about price promises as we know that hotel prices vary widely and no one website is cheaper than the rest. Some are cheaper one day, others the next day, some have geographical strengths and some try to trick travellers by lowering prices one day and hiking them back up the next.

If an accommodation website wants to offer a price promise, sletoh wants to help consumers beat the promise and claim the refunds offered. We will be taking a look at the price promises made by various websites and giving you the lowdown. First up is LondonTown.com who offer a hotel price match and £100 refund.

When reading our price promise write-ups and when claiming a price promise from any website, please remember that price promises have tight Terms and Conditions attached to them so that the companies don’t have to pay out too often! Common restrictions include that claims must be made within 48 hours, offer must be from a certain type of hotel vendor (e.g. prepay bookings only; website operating from a certain country; no group, Corporate or membership rates). We offer a summary of the promise correct at time of writing - make sure you check the small print before booking rooms and claiming refunds.

LondonTown

LondonTown is offering a price promise with a hotel price match and £100 refund. On March 11th 2008, the terms and conditions of the price match state:

“Our guarantee is simple. Book any hotel on LondonTown.com and if you find the same package cheaper anywhere else online (within 48 hours) we will pay you £100 and match the rate yes £100. For independent/request hotels the 48 hours is from when the offer is made to you.

To claim your £100 bonus payment just click here and complete the easy to use web form. We will contact you within five business days confirming your bonus payment.

With LondonTown.com you pay with the hotel directly. You pay for your stay, often, at the time of checkout. LondonTown.com will make the £100 bonus payment as soon as the hotel confirms that you did complete your stay.

Payments will be made to your credit card within 14 days of the hotel confirming that you completed your stay.

The LondonTown.com £100 Pound refund is subject to the following standard terms and conditions.”

Reading the terms and conditions, reveals a few items to be wary of. Its relatively easy to find the same room for the same nights with the same board type but make sure that:

• Both websites have the same tax applied to the booking (one may include it and the other not).
• Cancellation terms are same on both sites.
• Payment terms are the same on both sites. LondonTown bookings are always paid for on hotel check-out so make sure that you only search sites that also allow post-payment (ActiveHotels, Laterooms, Venere allow this) but most sites take pre-payment (diytravel.co.uk, OctopusTravel, Superbreak, Reserveahotelonline).

So when searching for a London hotel, do this:

• Use sletoh to compare ActiveHotels and Laterooms in one search.
• Find a hotel that has same offer that is cheaper than LondonTown price.
• Check that tax and cancellation terms are same from LondonTown and the cheaper site.
• Book your room on LondonTown and fill in their claim form after hotel check-out and within 14 days.
• Collect £100 + the difference between LondonTown and cheaper site

Are you travelling to London and worrying about getting lost in one of Europe’s biggest and most hectic cities? Or are you one of the tourists who find it really difficult to read a street map and always end up on a bus going in the wrong direction? There is a simple way to get your bearings and keep abreast of London’s tangled streets to get the most of this wonderful city: stay in accommodation close to a tube station

London’s Underground rail network (the Tube) was the first of its kind in the world and is the perfect way to travel and navigate through the city in the shortest amount of time. The tube map is easy to read as all the lines are colour coded and the whole network is broken down into 6 zones. Zone 1 is Central London and the main tourist area, whilst zone 6 is outer London.

With 275 tube stations and 11 recognisable tube lines, tube stations offer a unique network of reference points. This station network is the perfect basis for a website to help London visitors find accommodation. The website is called www.TubeHotels.com.

Location, Location, Location

Tubehotels.com shows the location of London hotels, hostels, bed & breakfasts and apartments relative to London tube stations on an interactive Google map. The website incorporates accommodation from several leading hotel reservation websites to give users a huge range of places to stay. In fact, there are more than 800 hotels, bed & breakfasts, guesthouses, hostels and apartments to choose from.

To help users decide which accommodation to book, each one has a description, photos, a map showing the exact location and distances to the three nearest tube stations. Many websites describe location as ‘it takes 5 min from here to there’ but this is very subjective as everybody walks at a different pace. TubeHotels gives distances in miles from accommodation to the nearest tube stations and with the map you can calculate for yourself the actual time to get there.

Compare Hotel Prices

When users check availability, TubeHotels compares prices from several websites and presents a table of prices for each hotel ordered by price, with the cheapest price first. Links to each website’s booking page are provided for a quick and easy reservation.

TubeHotels compares prices from these accommodation sites:

• ActiveHotels.com
• diytravel.co.uk
• Laterooms.com
• OctopusTravel.com
• Reservahoteonline.com
• Superbreak.com

Tubehotels.com is a free service and there are no hidden costs or fees added to the accommodation prices.

How To Book London Accommodation

6 easy steps to booking accommodation in London:

1. London is a big city so you need to have some bearing on where to stay. Ask friends for advice or research the things you want to see and do on the web. When you know where you want to be, note down the Tube Station.
2. Enter the Tube Station into TubeHotels.com 
3. Decide how many stars you want your accommodation to have: 1-3 stars are budget hotels, hostels, bed and breakfasts and guesthouses. 4 and 5 star are upmarket and luxury hotels and apartments.
4. Decide how far you want to be from the tube station and enter the distance.
5. Enter your dates and room requirements and search.
6. Available accommodation will be listed with prices from each web site. You can sort the list by price, distance, star rating and hotel name. TubeHotels does not list reviews but the sites we link to do provide them so click through for reviews. When you find the right hotel, click the ‘Book’ link next to the prices to reserve your room.

Accessibility

For hard of sight users, TubeHotels includes a text resizing tool at the bottom right hand corner of the site.

Price comparison is made difficult by hidden charges. sletoh displays the prices that supplier websites give to us but some websites exclude local country tax (VAT in the UK), credit card charges and other fees. Its similar to the airlines adding on fees for priority boarding, meals, baggage and even sitting next to each other - but that’s another can of worms for a separate blog!

In this entry I am going to focus on the after sales part of the equation and what happens when you want to speak to the website you booked with. Is it in the same country or do you have to call abroad at great expense? The scope of this matter is very wide so I am going to limit this blog to UK based websites and UK based customers. How much does it cost to call your travel company?

0870 Numbers

A friend of mine complained to me that he spent 45 minutes calling his bank to have an incorrect £11 fee removed from his account. The call cost him dear and a portion of it goes into the banks already bulging coffers. Its no wonder the banks are making record profits when they hide behind semi-premium rate numbers, keeping their customers waiting whilst clocking up more revenue.

0870 numbers are a problem because on average they cost a lot more than calling a normal UK phone number such as 0207 (London), 01422 (Halifax), 0113 (Leeds). 0870 are also excluded from most free call plans on mobile phones and landlines. Whenever you call 0870 and its cousins 0845, 0871 you are paying more than you should for the call.

Sadly, all but one of the websites that sletoh currently compares use 0870 numbers:

• ActiveHotels - 0870 7120689
• diytravel - 020 7183 7183
• Laterooms - 0870 300 6969
• OctopusTravel - 0870 1624033 or 020 7760 6051
• Superbreak - 0870 234 0354

I had a scout round the web and found more companies using 0870 and profiting from customers calls:

• reserveahotelonline - 0870 4215081
• Alpharooms - 0871 911 0030  or 0200 200 9366  
• HolidayNights - 0870 027 2096

This is very disappointing! The use of 0870, 0871 is widespread in the travel industry and its not just for after sales care as I thought it would be - its for sales lines too. As soon as you make an enquiry with many of these companies you are paying too much for the phone call.

If you know of any other UK based travel websites that I should add to this list, please add a comment to this blog.