Today, I want to share with you some tips on booking your hotel accommodation overseas. After spending days searching for a good deal for my accommodation in San Francisco, I think I have found a way to cut short the time required to locate that perfect hotel.
1. Identify the area you want to stay in
For me, I know I wanted to stay in the Union Square area in San Francisco. Why? It is the main shopping area of course! Ha!
Don't know where to stay? Just do a Google search, say, main shopping area in that city as a start.
2. Identify nearby hotels using Google Map
Go to Google Maps and do a search of hotels in that area. For me, I just type in “Hotels in Union Square, San Francisco” and all the hotels around Union Square appear as pins in the map.
3. Check out the reviews
Shortlist a few hotels in the area and read the reviews from TripAdvisor.Com about these hotels. TripAdvisor.com is a travel information website, covering reviews from users for more than 212,000 hotels and 74,000 attractions in over 30,000 destinations worldwide. It even has pictures of the hotels taken by users. Definitely give you a more accurate picture of what you will be getting than the pretty pictures from the hotel's website! So if the hotel you shortlist is rated highly by the users of Trip Advisor, chances are it is pretty safe to book it if the rate is acceptable.