How do you guys find and book your accommodation when planning your travels? Do you go straight to booking.com/ lekkeslaap.co.za etc.? Do you scroll around on google maps to find a place? Do you use the businesses website directly skipping the 3rd party booking sites?
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One of the AI tools for initial suggestions. Lately I’ve been using Gemini a fair bit. Tell it to act as an experienced [your destination] travel expert. Give it your dates, budget, minimum service levels and ratings. Tell it to give you top five suitable suggestions.
Then take those suggestions to Tripadvisor and confirm with real people reviews and see the current prices.
Then go directly to the establishment or central reservations if it’s a franchise property, and book directly with them. Always better to deal directly with the accommodation venue if you can - fewer middlemen to mark things up and less run around if you need to make changes.
Oh, and if it is a major brand property, always install their app and sign up for their reward programme and then book through the app. Even if you never go back or use that chain again, there’s very often specials available to rewards members or app only deals.
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Yeah, we’ve used Booking.com and Lekkaslaap and Airbnb for our most recent holidays and had no issues. Though they add their surcharges on it takes the hassle out of being scammed or other ahit.
Rather go to the site of the places, call to book, triple check it’s legit. My partners family vacation home has been used as a scam, people load real places on Airbnb and rent it out, renters show up and we had to tell them the place is not for rent…
Its happened a lot of the time now. Worst is to try and get the ads removed, neither Airbnb nor lekkeslaap and Facebook removes fake ads
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