Booking accommodation

I'm in the middle of booking a big road trip round America.

We're going in June and I know certain areas, especially around the National Parks like Yellowstone, can be booked up a year in advance so I'm booking hotels now.

I thought I'd share how I go about it with you.

Here is the list of websites that I'd recommend you sign up to before you start searching:

Quidco - www.quidco.com If you are not familiar with Quidco it is quite simple. You earn cash back on products and services you buy from companies that are linked to Quidco.

Trip Advisor - www.tripadvisor.com not only gives you reviews of hotels, restaurants and activites, it will also do price comparisons for hotels  if you put in your dates of travel.

These are the 2 main ones but I am also registered with booking.com www.booking.com, hotels.com www.hotels.com and expedia.www.expedia.com. Hotels.com gives you a free night stay for every 10 nights you book and stay for, Expedia gives you Nectar points (for those of us with a nectar card).

So here's what I did using my recent search for a hotel in New York.

1. Opened trip advisor and looked for hotels in New York for the dates I wanted to travel. You can view the hotels in various order ie price high to low, ranking etc. I usually look at hotels in price order low to high. I had an idea of the area I wanted to stay in (Times Square) so I looked on the map and found a couple I thought would be ideally located.
2. Read the reviews. I always think of myself as a middle of the road sort of person. That is I don't want the best or worst - just something in between. I read the best and worst reviews but tend to trust the more moderate, balanced reviews as they feel, to me, somewhat more believable. As you know from previous blogs I don't mind not having a view or a balcony but I really like an en suite so if I read "shared bathroom" I move onto the next hotel. 
3. Having chosen accommodation (Radio City Apartments in case you're interested) I looked at the price comparisons listed next to the dates I wanted to travel and noted that all booking agents listed (which co-incidentally were the 3 main ones I use) had the same price for my dates.
4. Opened Quidco and went through to each of the 3 companies to search via them and confirmed that the prices were all the same. They were. In the end I booked through Hotels.com because they were offering 12% cashback via Quidco (Booking.com was 6%) plus it was 2 more nights towards a free one.
5. I have a Clarity (Halifax) credit card which doesn't charge a currency transaction fee so always use this to book accommodation abroad.
6. I received an immediate confirmation from Hotels.com and within 24 hours I had an email from Quidco informing me the cash back on my £350 stay had been tracked and would be £42. 

Sometimes Trip Advisor can't list price comparisons and you have to book direct with the hotel. Always check if it's part of a chain and if so - do they have a loyalty scheme? If it does - register.

I did this for a hotel by Mount Rushmore. Simply by joining the loyalty scheme online I got $30 off the room I booked.

I really enjoy this whole process and can spend hours searching before I book anywhere.

Hope this may help some of you out there.

Boston next :-)

Jo