SINGAPORE, 1 April 2022: Frommer’s, a guidebook company celebrating its 65th this year, offers insights on the best hotel booking sites when planning summer vacation travel.
Earlier this week, it released the latest edition of its Best Hotel Booking Sites, saying the top 10 has been shaken considerably since the previous ranking in 2020.
Using a complex, weighted system involving 60 different room reservation scenarios, travel expert and analyst Reid Bramblett put booking engines through the wringer to determine which sites deliver the lowest rates, the most options, and the easiest user experience.
Frommer’s explained it involved tallying the number of choices each contender could rustle up in seven major tourist cities: Orlando, New Orleans, San Francisco, Rome, London, Bangkok, and Buenos Aires.
Then, for each city, it searched for the lowest rates each site could find at four specific downtown hotels in varying price ranges for a mid-week, shoulder-season stays three months out.
For the first time, Google tops the best list, but the search giant only narrowly edged out previous winner HotelsCombined, showing a keen ability to find the most affordable rooms.
Other heavy hitters, including Tripadvisor and Kayak, only managed middling scores when put to the Frommer’s test, ranking 5th and 7th, respectively. After falling out of the top 10 five years ago, Hotels.com clawed its way to the 10th slot, displacing Hotwire from the list entirely.
The complete top 10, along with detailed analysis, a rundown of each site’s pros and cons, and money-saving warnings about sneaky tactics and outright rip-offs, can be found at Frommers.com/BestHotelSites.
The top 10 booking sites
- Google.com/travel/hotels
- Hotelscombined.com
- Trivago.com
- Agoda.com
- Tripadvisor.com
- Booking.com
- Kayak.com
- Expedia.com
- Priceline.com
- Hotels.com
Frommer’s latest ranking of the top sites for finding affordable airfare will be updated later this year.
About Frommer’s:
One of the most venerable brands in travel, Frommer’s has been in continuous publication since the 1957 debut of Arthur Frommer’s Europe on Five Dollars a Day, which changed the way the world travelled. The Frommer’s collection of travel products has expanded to include nearly 100 award-winning guidebooks, a popular podcast.
(Source: Frommer’s)
