Travel smart—compare hotel prices!

“The same hotel, the same experience, but two different prices…” Recently, this catchy ad has been playing nonstop on TV, and it’s stuck in my head. But is that UrV ad really legit?

In reality, the relationship between each travel website and each hotel varies, or different travel websites might offer different promotions, which can lead to the same hotel having different prices at different times. As a consumer, price is definitely important when booking a hotel, so it’s essential to use a hotel price comparison site. However, these hotel price comparison sites do not handle bookings themselves—they simply help users compare prices across various platforms and find the most cost-effective option. Apart from comparing hotel prices in Hong Kong, there are also other choices. I’ve tested the hotel price differences among several platforms.

Round One: Basic Information

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Although Trivago claims to have the fewest partner travel websites among the three, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s inferior. Trivago offers more filtering options, allowing users to directly filter by ratings, price, hotel facilities, and even personal preferences such as whether the hotel is LGBTQ+ friendly. The level of detail is impressive. When it comes to language options, Trivago also provides more choices. So in the first round, I think Trivago wins. As for which site has the most hotels, we’ll have to test that out to find out!

Round Two: Number of Hotels Tested

Every price comparison site claims to list millions of hotels. But is that true? I set some specific conditions and checked how many hotels were displayed. On the day I tested, I looked up the number of hotels shown for a particular location.

From the test results, you can see that in some regions, Trivago displayed a decent number, but in other areas, HotelCombined showed a significantly higher number of hotels compared to the other price comparison sites. In Australia, the numbers were quite similar across the board. So if you’re planning to travel abroad, it might be worth trying out different hotel price comparison sites.

Round Three: Hotel Price Comparison

The purpose of this test is to check whether the lowest prices found vary depending on the number of partner sites, and whether you can find lower prices through sites with more partners. The following test used five different hotels that all three price comparison sites could find. The search criteria were set as: check-in on August 1, 2015 (Saturday), check-out on August 2, 2015 (Sunday), one room for two adults (tested on the evening of July 2, 2015). Let’s see if it’s really “the same hotel, the same experience, but two different prices…”?

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(Prices may fluctuate over time)

Even I was surprised by the test results—the price differences between different sites can be huge. Different locations and different times might also come with different promotions. So overall, I’d say the test results are quite revealing. Among the five locations tested, HotelsCombined showed a lower price than the other sites in four of them (all three sites display prices including taxes). So in this test, I’d say HotelsCombined wins. But that doesn’t mean the other sites are useless—if you’re booking a hotel, you can compare prices across different sites and might even find more options or better prices.