The Inside Word
City apartments
It is very rare for us to recommend one of the bigger Internet hotel booking sites, but it is worth pointing out that www.booking.com (part of Priceline) is a particularly good resource for anyone looking for self-catering in cities. Plenty of specialist companies list rentals, but many of these are more suitable for longer stays. Equally, most of the main hotel booking sites also list some apartments (normally of the ‘hotel suite’ type). Booking.com scores by listing quite a wide range of properties, varying from what are basically hotels but with small kitchenettes in the rooms through to individual apartments. They are all available for short stays. Just tick the appropriate box on the left-hand of the front page where you can select your hotel category. The company is also good at showing the individual facilities of each apartment and the property overall, whereas most hotel booking sites simply use a pre-set list of information which is more appropriate to a hotel. Of course, most of these properties can be booked direct and may be cheaper but not all of them are particularly adept at marketing themselves and booking.com does not appear to load its rates unduly.
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A site you may never use
But, if you need it, you will find it very useful indeed. The site is www.between9and5.com. It is a hotel agent that only books rooms for day use. If you find yourself stuck at an airport for a long time, or you have a full day in a city and want somewhere to rest, this is the place to go. Not all city hotels offer rooms for day use (though most airport hotels do), but this site does a good job of producing a wide list and it seems to have somewhere available in most major cities. The hotels listed are all between the three- and five-star categories (mostly around four-star) and rates average from £45 to £65, though some are more expensive. There is little point in searching out the prices direct from the hotels, because few of them quote prices online, and the ones we checked were the same on this site as direct. Payment is made at the hotel. We make a point of warning against using hotel agents but this company has found a small niche in the market and manages it very well. It could take an awful lot of searches on Google or random phone calls to hotels to find a room for use during the day in Düsseldorf, Watford or Brussels, so this site will save you time.
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PayPal and airline tickets
You may have noticed that a few airlines have started to accept payment by PayPal. While PayPal is regarded as a safe means of payment, it does alter the relationship between you and the airline in the event of failure by the airline...read the rest of this article by signing-up for a free trial issue of Inside Traveller - Save 50% by ordering now! SUBSCRIBE NOW! CHOOSE ONE PAYMENT OPTION AND SAVE £48.50! |
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