As Agoda increases in popularity with people traveling around Asia and particularly in Thailand, it has come under closer scrutiny from travelers. After writing about the review of Agoda done recently over at ReserveThaiHotels.net, I have been looking into their cancellation policy and have come across a lot of posts in forums and such, on the subject.
I also became interested in this topic just this week as I was planning my year-end vacation. I have Royal Orchid Plus miles in my Thai Air frequent flyer account that are expiring at the end of the year (why do they do that? so annoying).
We decided to go to Ko Samui and started looking at hotels on Agoda. I was just about to book our first night of accommodation when I checked the cancellation policy of the hotel. It stated that the reservation was non-refundable and could not be canceled. Since we hadn’t secured the flights yet I decided to do that first, and I’m glad that we did.
Thai Air only has two flights a day to Samui and there were no award seats available to Samui for a week either side of the dates we wanted to travel. If I had booked the hotel first I would have had to either pony up 300 dollars for the flight to Samui and let 17000 miles expire on December 31st, or cancel the hotel reservation on forfeit the money I paid for the reservation.
We ended up choosing to go to Phuket, which had plenty of award seats since they have numerous flights a day to Phuket.
The point of this little story is, that most of the people that you find complaining online that “agoda is a scam”, “Agoda’s cancellation policy sucks” and “I got burned by Agoda, will never use again”, could have easily saved themselves the stress and trouble, not to mention the money if they had just taken the time to read the cancellation policy of the hotel at the time of booking.
The cancellation policy is examined closely at Agoda’s cancellation policy examined over at the Thai Hotels Blog, ReserveThaiHotels.Net
If you are going to book through a discount reservation site at the lowest rate possible, you should expect a little inflexibility. So much aggravation can be avoided if you just follow what seems like common sense:
- Read the cancellation policy of each hotel before you book it.
- If the hotel cancellation policy is restrictive and doesn’t allow for changes or refunds, DON’T book until your travel plans are final.
- If you think that you may need to change your plans but really need or want to book anyway (perhaps to secure a room in peak season) choose a hotel whose cancellation policy will accommodate changes and not be so restrictive.
There is no point complaining about a policy that is clearly stated and which you agreed to (whether or not you took the time to read it) when you made the booking.
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