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Hotel booking site reviews

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Last updated: 01 March 2019
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Checked for accuracy by our qualified fact-checkers and verifiers. Find out more about fact-checking at CHOICE.

We look for hotels in local and international urban and regional locations, using popular hotel booking services such as Booking.com, Trivago, Hotels Combined, Expedia and Wotif. 

Our hands-on test follows the same steps you would if you were looking for holiday accommodation, to find out whether these services offer as many rooms and day-to-day deals as they claim.

  • Our buying guide summarises our findings, outlines how these services work and investigates whether they're reputable or not.
  • How we compare explains our rigorous assessment methods. We look at these services through the same eyes as a typical Australian looking for holiday accommodation.

We compare claims, features and functions too including:

  • Did you know CHOICE test much more than hotel booking sites? Check out our top 50 reviews

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  • The search functions and filtering features that help you narrow down results to suit your travel preferences.
  • Access to additional tools to help with your holiday such as travel insurance, airport transfers and car rentals that can be bundled together.
  • General ease of use, from setting out with a plan, to finding and booking a room.
  • Search tools to help people with specific travel needs, such as accessible buildings and rooms.

You may notice we haven't recommended any of theses services. This is because there are ongoing ACCC investigations into alleged anti-competitive behaviour in the hotel booking services industry. However, you will encounter these websites if you're looking for accommodation, and many holidaymakers continue to use them. So, we chose to assess their performance and usability, on the grounds that many of our members will likely use a hotel booking service.

Matthew Steen
By Peter Zaluzny
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Brand

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List of brands we tested in this review.

    enter value/s in increments of 1 between 0 and 0

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    Type

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    Aggregation services take you to the hotel’s website, or a separate booking service. Booking services allow you to complete the booking within their site.

      Ease of use score

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      Ease of use score is made up of comparison (50%), search (30%) and general navigation (20%).

      enter value/s in increments of i between 58 and 83

      Performance score

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      Performance score is made up of total number of search results (70%) and price (30%). Assessed across all services at the same time per location, on 22 January, 2019.

      enter value/s in increments of i between 62 and 92

      Booking score

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      This does not contribute to the overall score, as aggregation services do not support booking within the website.

      enter value/s in increments of i between 67 and 80

      Travel insurance booking

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      Can you also use the service to book travel insurance?

        Airport transfer booking

          Car rental booking

            Accessible building/room filter

              Included in this review

              Members-only access
              • Performance score
              • Ease of use score
              • Good points
              • Bad points
              • Overall score
              • Recommended
              • Booking score
              • House or apartment rental
              • Hotel and flights package
              • Model
              • Flights and cars package
              • Cruises
              • Car rental
              • Multiple currencies
              • Gym
              • Pool filter
              • 24 hour desk filter
              • Advertising
              • Flight booking
              • TV filter
              • Accessibility filter
              • Hotels flights and cars package
              • Brand
              • Parking filter
              • Kitchen filter
              • Airport transfers
              • Type
              • Multiple languages
              • Internet filter
              • Hotel and cars package
              • Pet policy filter
              • Air conditioning filter
              • Availability
              • Restaurant filter
              • Travel insurance
              • Activities
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