{"id":14,"date":"2018-02-17T10:57:09","date_gmt":"2018-02-17T10:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/backup\/?p=14"},"modified":"2018-02-17T11:07:52","modified_gmt":"2018-02-17T11:07:52","slug":"how-to-find-cheap-hotel-rooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/how-to-find-cheap-hotel-rooms\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Find Cheap Hotel Rooms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As much as I love hostels and other forms of cheap accommodation, there is something nice about the luxuriousness of a hotel: the clean room, comfy bed, desk, iron, strong shower, and bottled soap for the taking (errr\u2026I mean borrowing). They are quiet, relaxing, and a respite from the world.But luxury comes at a price. Hotels certainly aren\u2019t cheap, and I <em>hate <\/em>spending money on a room I am only going to be in for a few hours. After all, it\u2019s just a place to sleep (and take soap). It\u2019s why I mostly avoid hotels \u2014 I don\u2019t think they are a good use of money.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>A few years ago, I was traveling to conferences and other work-related events a lot and staying in a bunch of hotels. I decided to see which hotel booking sites came back with the cheapest results.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, the complete opposite of the previous results. Back in 2014, Booking.com was terrible, TravelPony showed promise, and Agoda was only good in Asia.I found the best deals and largest variety in all the destinations I searched for on Booking. <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/02\/side3-193x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"193\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2018\/02\/side3-193x300.jpg 193w, https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2018\/02\/side3.jpg 270w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 193px) 100vw, 193px\" \/>For example, in my September search in Paris, it listed over 2,300 results, including 250 2 star listings and 750 star listings (and it told me the place was over 60% booked when I searched). Agoda still had the best results in Asia (it returned 2,900 results in Bangkok compared to 2,500 for Booking) but had definitely expanded their listings around the world \u2013 it roughly tied Booking in Paris, Buenos Aires, and Sydney for overall listings, though they had fewer budget listings than Booking.There are a lot of hotel websites and I\u2019ve tried many over the last few years as I\u2019ve started to book hotels more and more, but this test just proved\u00a0 If you\u2019re booking a big-name, global-brand hotel (think Starwood, Marriott, Hilton, etc.), book directly with that hotel. They often have the best deals on their website, but if you find a better deal elsewhere, they\u2019ll match it. The big benefit to direct bookings at these global hotel chains is that you only earn loyalty points and status when you book directly, so if you love points, don\u2019t book their rooms elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As much as I love hostels and other forms of cheap accommodation, there is something nice about the luxuriousness of a hotel: the clean room, comfy bed, desk, iron, strong shower, and bottled soap for the taking (errr\u2026I mean borrowing). They are quiet, relaxing, and a respite from the world.But luxury comes at a price. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cheap-hotels"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2018\/02\/pexels-photo-271634.jpeg","post_comment_count":100,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20,"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/20"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listing.downtown-directory.com\/dwt-shanghai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}