For us finding accommodation along the way is never a planned-out affair and we tend to only look one step ahead. Here are some of our favourite ways to find a suitable place to stay – whether it’s for a few days or for a few weeks.
These are the sites and tools we use on a regular basis to find and compare accommodation options.
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AGODA
If you are travelling in South-East Asia, we have found Agoda to be most useful. They have established direct relationships for more hotels, hostels and guest houses than any other booking site in this part of the world and is by far our most used option when travelling in Asia.
They have a fantastic selection of hotels and guest houses with useful filtering options to fine-tune your search. The smartphone app is extremely useful and offers even more options for filtering your search.
AIRBNB
As a full-time traveller or nomad, renting a furnished apartment is a must and Airbnb is the most comprehensive listing and booking site for short to medium term apartment rentals in the world.
Prices, however tend to be a little higher than what you could find in the local rental market due to service fees, but not having to learn the ins and outs of the rental market in a city where you’ll only stay for a few weeks or months usually justifies the higher cost. You can also get discounted prices by booking monthly or even weekly. And it also doesn’t hurt to negotiate a bit on the price, especially if you are staying for a while.
BOOKING.COM
If you are booking more traditional accommodations, i.e. hotels, hostels or holiday apartments, Booking.com should be your first stop. We use them all the time for ‘home-stay’ options in South East Asia as they have by far the best inventory worldwide, and hotels listed on the site are not allowed to sell rooms at a lower price elsewhere.
HOSTEL WORLD
Hostelworld is the number one resource for researching and booking hostels all over the world. They have a database of seemingly every hostel in existence with accurate ratings and reviews from real users, with a very easy booking system to boot.
TRIVAGO
In addition to Booking.com we usually check Trivago for hotel prices. It’s quick and easy to do a sanity check, just to make sure we're not overpaying when booking somewhere else. They compare the prices of all major (and not so major) booking sites and in the past, we've saved up to 30% by doing a quick search on Trivago. It primarily features hotels, but there are also some hostels and similar listed.