The Internet has ushered in with itself a number of opportunities that includes but is not limited to being able to make hotel reservations at just the click of a button. Online booking has become one of the most convenient methods of booking a hotel room for your vacation. Not only does it eliminate the role of the middlemen like travel agencies who bag half the money themselves, but it is also fast and hassle-free.
Besides the convenience of it, the websites also dish out loads of attractive discounts that ultimately helps to save a penny or two of the travel budgets. However, the grass is not as green as it looks. With the numerous upsides of online hotel booking, there are a few downsides of it as well.
Here are a few Pros and Cons of Online Hotel Reservations:
Advantages
• Making reservations online would often allow you to avail attractive discounts on the Hotel Booking. In fact, the listed price of the hotels on the online websites is often lower than the actual price of the rooms. How does this often? To advertise their brand, the hotels are known to slash down their prices to appeal to a larger base of customers. With discounts on top of an already slashes the price, you are looking at a sweet deal.
• In the busy life schedule, it is not always possible to take the time out to call up the front desk or go to the office of a travel agent to make arrangement for your vacation’s Accommodation that you are planning to take perhaps three months from now. Online hotel booking provides you the ease by letting you book the hotel rooms at the touch of a button. This saves you a lot of hassle and lets you concentrate at the job at hand. The website interfaces are user-friendly and many websites give you the option to compare the prices as well.
• When you book your hotel rooms online, you get an exhaustive choice of options that can perhaps perplex your mind. Right from five-star hotel chains to smaller, quaint hole in the walls, every kind of hotel is listed on the websites. This makes your travel plans a lot more flexible by providing you with a plethora of options.
Disadvantages
• When booking your rooms online, there is the huge danger of being cat-fished. While you might be lured in by the prices tags of the Discount Hotels and the available photo on the website, the truth might be far away from it. After checking in, you might be greeted with an unpleasant situation where the grand hotel room that you had booked looks nothing like reality. A faulty toilet flush or a damp room is enough to turn your vacation into a disaster. Hence, it is always advisable to check the Hotel Reviews left behind by other customers that can give you a true scenario of the room.
• While booking your room, you need to furnish your credit card or debit card details to make the payment. While the websites take some precaution to make the transaction secure, you are potentially making your sensitive information vulnerable to cyber-hackers who feed off such online transactions.
• Most third-party websites lack in the customer care service. Often times, due to unforeseen reasons, you need to cancel your reservation. However, getting through the customer service alone takes hours, if not days, and by the time your request goes through, half of the money is gone. A similar scenario occurs if you run into a problem during your stay and you need to wait for hours in a call to get your problem sorted.