“The same hotel, the same experience, but two different prices...” Recently, there’s been this catchy ad playing on TV nonstop, and it’s been stuck in my head. So, is the ad really telling the truth about UrV being reliable?
In reality, each travel website has a different relationship with each hotel, or different websites may offer different promotions or discounts, which can result in the same hotel showing different prices at different times. As travelers, price is definitely an important factor when booking, so that’s why we’re introducing hotel price comparison websites today. However, these websites do not handle bookings directly; they simply help users compare prices across various booking platforms and show which ones offer the best deals. Besides comparing hotel prices in Hong Kong, there are also other options available. I’ve gathered some of the more popular hotel price comparison websites for you. But which one offers the best deals? Let’s take a look!
Round 1: Basic Information
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Although Trivago claims to have the fewest number of partner travel websites among the three, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s inferior. Trivago offers more filtering options, allowing customers to directly filter by ratings, price, hotel amenities, and even personal preferences such as whether the hotel is LGBTQ+ friendly—a level of detail that’s impressive. When it comes to language options for Chinese users, Trivago also provides more choices. So, in the first round, I’d say Trivago wins. As for which site lists the most hotels, you’ll have to test it out to find out!
Round 2: Test Hotel Quantity
Each comparison website claims to have millions of hotels. But is that really true? We set the same conditions and checked how many hotels were displayed. Below, we report the actual number of hotels shown.
From the test results, we can see that in terms of the number of hotels displayed, Trivago only shows a limited number in certain regions. However, in the region of Hong Kong, HotelCombined displays a significantly larger number of hotels than the other price comparison sites, while the numbers are quite similar in Australia. So, if you’re planning to travel to other regions, you might want to try different hotel price comparison websites.
Round 3: Test Hotel Prices
The goal of this test is to see whether the lowest prices found vary due to the number of partner websites, and whether more partners lead to lower prices. The following test looked at five different hotels that all three comparison websites 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 (the test was conducted on the evening of July 2, 2015). So, is it really true that “the same hotel, the same experience, but two different prices…”?
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(Prices may fluctuate over time)
The results surprised even us. It turns out that prices can vary significantly across different websites. Also, different regions and different hotels may come with different promotions, so it’s wise to carefully consider which platform offers the best deal. Based on our test results, among the five locations, HotelsCombined showed lower prices than the other comparison websites in four of them (all three websites display total prices including taxes). Therefore, based on our test, HotelsCombined wins. However, don’t just rely on one website—when booking a hotel, be sure to check multiple platforms. Not only can you find the cheapest price, but you might also discover more options and better deals.