After publishing my video review of Agoda last month, I have noticed a lot of traffic coming from search terms relating to Agoda’s cancellation and refund policy. It seems to be a topic of interest to many people, and there are plenty of forum posts with questions and complaints about their policy.

There also seems to be a lot of misunderstanding, with people making claims of being ripped off when they needed to cancel or change dates, so I thought it would be a good idea to delve in and clear up exactly what the policies are.

The first thing we should do is take a look at the official policy, which comes directly from their FAQ pages.

So it is clearly stated that a USD15 processing fee will be levied by Agoda in the case of all cancellations. Apart from this, the most important thing that you need to know about Agoda’s cancellation policy is that it varies for each hotel.

At first this may seem confusing, and a lot of people complain about the policy and fees not being site-wide, however each hotel’s individual cancellation policy is clearly stated in two different places before you make the booking as well as in the confirmation email.

When you first check the available dates of a hotel, each room type is displayed with the rate and any inclusions, like breakfast for example. There is also a small link labeled “conditions”, which, when clicked, displays the cancellation policy of the room.

Once you have decided to make a reservation, the very first screen you see after clicking the “Book It” button, where you input information such as name and credit card details, also has a link to the booking conditions in the middle of the page.

Upon clicking this link, a full explanation of the cancellation and refund policy appears.

Once you have made a booking, the cancellation policy is also included in the confirmation email for your records, and in case you missed it the first two times.

So each hotel’s cancellation policy is clearly stated twice before booking and again in the conformation email. Please note that each of the screen shots above are from different reservations at different hotels in Bangkok I have made over the past month, so the policies displayed in the examples vary.

Ok, so we have established that the policies are clearly indicated before and after making a reservation, but what exactly are the policies?

Typical Bangkok hotel cancellation policies at Agoda

There appear to be two types of reservations that can be made through Agoda, refundable, and non-refundable. The non-refundable are usually the cheapest and cannot be modified or amended. The policy is stated as such-

As is often the case in the travel industry, the cheaper you go, the more restrictive the policies. I would recommend only booking these rates if you were absolutely sure that you won’t have to cancel or change the dates. These non-refundable rates might be a good idea if you are booking closer to your travel dates.

The refundable policies vary depending on the hotel or resort, the city and the time of year. Here are some of the most common.

Most Bangkok hotels will fall into one of the above categories in relation to their cancellation policies. Once we start looking at hotels in places like Phuket, especially during the peak seasons of December-January, we start to see policies that are a lot more restrictive and may make you think twice about booking.

Check out this whopper of a cancellation policy at the 5 star Golden Tulip Mangosteen Resort & Spa.

Let’s just spell that out once again. 50% of the total booking amount if you cancel between 14 and 21 days before arrival, and FULL FORFEITURE of the total amount of your booking if you cancel less than 14 days before arrival! Wow!

With rooms starting at USD199 per night, I’d hate to have a family emergency after booking a week at this place!

Finally, along similar lines as the one above, some Phuket hotels (and other areas of Thailand, but I’m focusing on the main areas for these examples) have the 14 and 7 days policy.

Agoda is keen to point out the the above policies are set by the hotels and any unreturned monies are NOT kept by Agoda. Also, as you may be able to see in one of the screenshots of the cancellation policy above, if you incur a cancellation fee of one or more nights due to cancellation, the USD15 Agoda fee will not be charged.

How do I avoid hotel reservation cancellation fees?

It might seem like common sense, but a lot of the people you see complaining in forums about refunds simply neglected to read the cancellation policies. To be honest, until I started researching for this article, I never actually read the cancellation policy of any hotels before I booked them, whether at Agoda, or directly through a hotel’s website.

Here are some basic steps you can take to avoid onerous cancellation fees.

• Take the time to read the cancellation policy of each hotel BEFORE you make the reservation.
• Book only when you know for sure that you can travel on those dates and won’t need to cancel, or change dates.
• Book closer to your travel dates. The less time between when you make the reservation and your actual travel dates, the less chance that something will come up.
• If you really aren’t sure how long you will be staying and the hotel has an onerous cancellation policy like the two last ones listed above (50-100% forfeiture), start by booking only one night. You can extend once you are there for no extra fees, just the price of the room. Do make sure though, that if you booked through Agoda, that you contact Agoda to extend your dates, as the hotel will probably not offer the same discounted rates.
• Cancellation fees are another good reason to purchase travel insurance before you depart for your trip.

Here are some forum threads discussing the Agoda cancellation policy and refunds that you might find interesting-

• FlyerTalk A community of frequent flyers that share knowledge about just about anything to do with travel, mostly high-end. I particularly find the hotel threads very useful and interesting.
• Pattaya Talk – Starts off with a complaint but the group consensus seems to be favorable to the Agoda refund policy.
• Omgili.com
• Thaivisa.com forum – Typical reply to thread starter- “I have canceled with Agoda before and received my refund less penalty fee with no problems. “

Have you ever had to change dates or cancel a reservation with Agoda or any other hotel discount booking site? Were you prepared for the cancellation policy? Or were you unpleasantly surprised? Please leave any comments below.

You might also like:

• Review of Agoda

Here are this weeks newest deals on hotels in Bangkok. Click through to check your dates. Some nights have a minimum stay requirement. For such hotels, the promotional rate will be displayed once you have selected dates that cover the minimum number of nights required.

Twin Palm @ Sukhumvit

Location: Sukhumvit. 60% off if you book within 14 days of check-in. Rates reduced from USD93 to $37 per night

Shama Sukhumvit

Location: Sukhumvit. USD51 Off. Rates reduced from USD134 to $83 per night

Suphan Lake Hometel

Location: Bang Na. 30% Off. Minimum 2 night stay. Rates reduced from USD31 to $19 per night

Grand Sukhumvit

Location: Sukhumvit. 20% Off, minimum of 2 nights. Rates reduced from USD93 to $74 per night.

Centre Point Silom

Location: Riverside. USD29 Off, minimum 2 nights stay. Rates reduced from USD91 to $62 per night.

Arnoma

Location: Pratunam. 50% Off. Minimum 3 nights stay. Rates reduced from USD108 to $54 per night.

Chaba Suvarnabhumi Airport Hotel

Location: Bang Na. 33% Off. Reduced from USD41 to $27 per night.

Admiral Premier

Location: Sukhumvit. Stay three nights, pay for two nights only. Reduced from USD71 to $47 per night.

Grand Diamond Suites Pratunam

Location: Pratunam. 30% Off, minimum 3 nights stay. Rates reduced from USD83 to $58 per night.

Glow Trinity Silom

Location: Silom. 15% Off, minimum 2 nights stay. Rates reduced from USD55 to $46 per night.

You might also like:

• This week’s Thailand hotel deals- Bangkok & Phuket- Sept 29, 2010
• This week’s Bangkok hotel deals- Sept 23, 2010
• This week’s Bangkok hotel deals- October 6th 2010

I made a video review of the popular accommodation reservation site Agoda.com.

In this review I cover price comparisons with other popular reservation sites for hotels and resorts in Thailand, as well as their unique Agoda Rewards program, in which you accrue points which you can redeem for discounts on future bookings. I also look at their customer service, including their cancellation policy and finally I take a look at an area where I think they could improve.

Below the video you will find the transcript of the video, and at the very bottom of the post is the audio version, which you can listen to here on the site, or download and listen to at your leisure.

Transcript of Agoda Review video.

Hello, and welcome to my review of Agoda.com, which is a popular hotel reservation website. Agoda has a lot of hotels in Thailand, and throughout Asia, and in fact throughout the whole world. It’s a Thailand based company, so they have a lot of hotels in Thailand, but as you can see from the front page, there are many hotels throughout the world. You can see at the bottom here, it’s part of Priceline. Priceline purchased Agoda a year or two ago. That has given them a big advantage, because the large inventory of Priceline and buying power enables them to do great prices for hotels.

So, you can see here that the hotel site is available in many languages. You can choose from the drop‑down menu up here and you can visit the site in any language you like.

Now, when most people are looking for a hotel, the main concern for them is price. I thought that would be a good way to start off this review with comparing the prices that you can get at Agoda with other places.

Finding Hotels

So, when you want to book a hotel on the front page, you go to the top, the drop‑down menu, as you can see, there are many Asian countries and countries from all around the world. So, you choose here. I’ll stick with Bangkok. For this demonstration, I’ll put dates in the middle of December, because I didn’t want to do a review with off‑season prices and give unrealistic expectations for low prices, which is why I chose these dates here.

So, you can just choose a normal search without picking a hotel, and it will show you a list of all the available hotels for the city and the date that you chose. It comes up here. You can sort from most popular, which is the default, or you can choose to rank it from one to five stars, five to one stars, also you can sort them in alphabetical order.

Now, I’m going to sort them from five to one stars. I just want to show you something. If you were looking to do a five‑star holiday, but you were put off by the price, because five‑star hotels are very expensive, Bangkok is an excellent place to go. Look at this, you’ve got five‑star hotels in the middle of peak season, and look at these prices ‑‑ $82!?

What kind of place in the world can you get five‑star accommodation, at the peak time, in the middle of the city for such low prices? It’s an excellent choice if you’re looking for a five‑star holiday.

Price Comparison

If you’re looking for a specific hotel, you can go down here and you can choose from the drop‑down list that lists every hotel in the city that you’re looking for. We’re going to do the Anantara Bangkok Riverside Resort and Spa, which is a popular place on the river. I also did a Google search for the hotel name, Bangkok Marriott Resort and Spa, and we’re comparing the prices of the top five search results that come up for that hotel.

So, we’ll click it here and we’ll see what comes up. OK, so here is the page that comes up when you do a search. You can see we’re doing a deluxe room only, and it’s $138 per night. I’ve chosen four nights from December 14 to December 18. Now, let’s have a look at the other results from Google.

Booking.com has the same dates for $557. It’s four nights, and that comes to $189 per night, which is a little bit more expensive than Agoda. Let’s have a look here. Here we have Hotel Club, $225 a night. That is a lot more expensive than Agoda.

Now, we’re going to check out HotelTravel.com; they’re $189 per night. If you go to the Marriott website, they have a rate of 4130 Thai baht per night. Now, this works out to be USD132 per night, which is $6 less than Agoda. But, what you will find is the big hotel chains like Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt, and maybe Starwood, they have a best price on the web guarantee where they either match or they lower the prices.

But, what you will find, is the rates are quite restrictive for these deals. Have a look here. For the Marriott one, it says it’s an advance purchase rate, prepay in full, non‑refundable if canceled more than one day after the booking, and absolutely no changes.

So, while they may match or beat the price by a couple of dollars, if you make changes or if you want to make any changes after 24‑hours of making the booking, basically you’ve lost your money. So, you have to decide if that’s worth the price.

Another one that comes up often is Asia Web Direct. I did a search for them and they have basically no availability on these dates. Actually, this company, I’ve found, has that a lot. I was going to do another price comparison of another hotel, but I thought it would make this video too long.

So, if you’re interested, what I’ve done is I have made a grid showing the prices at a number of different hotels with a number of different booking engines. If you’re interested, you can pause and take a look, otherwise we’ll just keep going on with the review.

Agoda Rewards

OK, now that we have taken a look at prices, I’d like to show you another feature of Agoda, and that is the Agoda Rewards system. So, basically when you book a hotel, they give you Agoda points, which is between the value of four and seven percent of your booking. You can use these to get discounts on future bookings. Sometimes hotels have double and triple point promotions, which you’ll see when you do a search.

So, you can see here, an example is if you book a hotel and it’s worth $625, you’ll receive 12,500 points. This is worth a $25 discount next time you make a reservation. So, say you have 12, 500 points, if you book $100 hotel, you can redeem your points and get a $25 discount.

I must point out that the minimum amount that you can redeem is 12,500 points, so you need to spend $625 on the hotels in order to get a discount. Also, these points expire at the end of the following year that you earn them, so any points that you earn in 2010 will expire December 31, 2011, so you need to watch that as well.

Also, what is cool is that they have self‑service, so you can log in here, and you go to self‑service. You can do a number of things. You can change your booking dates and you can make a special request. If you have lost your hotel voucher that they send to you in an email when you get the booking, you can have that re‑sent. Or you can cancel your booking or get a receipt, so, just clicking here.

Also, this is where you’ve got to check your points balance as well. So let’s have a look at my transactions and points. Here, you see. I have 20, 199 points. You can see I’ve earned them for staying at hotels. See, I stayed at Z Through by the Zign in Pattaya…was $149 and I received 2, 996 points. I stayed at the Four Seasons in Bangkok for $243 and I got 4,865 points, and there’s some other hotels I stayed at as well.

Rewards for hotel reviews

But look at this: 500 points for a review. And that’s one of the cool things also about this, is after you’ve stayed at the hotel, you get an email from Agoda asking you to write a review for the hotel. And if you do, you get 500 points. You get the 500 points if you write a good or a bad review; it doesn’t matter. So have a look here. This Four Seasons Hotel ‑ when you first arrive on the page it looks like this, then you can click on “See Reviews of this Hotel.”

And the good thing about this is, only people that have actually stayed at the hotel and have booked through Agoda are able to write reviews. How many times have you seen a really unpleasant hotel and it’s got 100 bad reviews but then two or three excellent reviews pop up which are obviously from the owner or the staff or the owner’s friends? So, on Agoda’s reviews, they’re all by people that have actually stayed there so they tend to be a bit more honest.

So if you write a review, you get 500 extra points, and which can be used towards your discount, which I think is another good thing.

Agoda customer support

OK, next I’d like to talk about the Agoda customer support. If you look on every page, they have 24‑hour, seven‑day‑a‑week support, which you can click on here. So here they have the Agoda self‑service menu, which is what we talked about before, where you can cancel your booking, change the dates, or get another copy of your hotel voucher and so on.

Cancellation policy

Now speaking of cancellation policy, if you’re wondering where it is, here it is. You can cancel your room, paying the booking…there is a $15 U.S. dollar processing fee for each booking that is canceled. Now you can also change the period of your stay. If you shorten your stay while you’re there, there may or may not be a cancellation fee or a processing fee, which is by the hotel, not by Agoda.

Also, you can contact them by telephone 24 hours a day in English. Or if you want to contact them in a language other than English ‑ the languages that were up here in this drop‑down menu ‑ you can call them between nine am and 10 pm Monday to Friday, Bangkok time. Click here, on this link here, to see what time in your country is between nine am and 10 pm Bangkok time.

So you can also contact them through this link, where you can contact them by email or by telephone. Or click here for a chat window where you can speak to a lovely sales assistant, where you put in your name, your address, and the reason for contacting them. So once you’ve made a reservation and you need to make a change, Agoda makes it very easy for you to contact them to make changes, which I think is another good aspect of the Agoda system.

Star rating inconsistencies

OK, finally, if there was one thing that I had to say critical about the Agoda site, was that the star ratings of the hotels can be inconsistent sometimes. For example, I was looking at some Chiang Rai hotels the other day, and looking at some hotels. The Dusit Island hotel is listed here as a five‑star hotel.

Look at the pictures. I don’t know about you, but that to me does certainly not look like a five‑star hotel. At best, a four, but more like a high three to me. And when we scroll down here to the description, it says here, “The four‑star hotel is just a 10‑minute tuk‑tuk ride from Chiang Rai.” So what is it? Is it a four‑star or a five‑star?

Also, the Phu Chaisai Hotel in Chiang Rai, listed as a four‑star hotel. But look at the pictures…maybe a four‑star hotel, I don’t know. But down in the description, again, it says, “This is our leading five‑star hotel.” Which one is it? Five‑star or four‑star? And the Tacola Resort and Spa Khao Lak is mentioned as a four‑star hotel. Pictures? It may be a four…yeah, it’s probably a four‑star, I would say. But the description says it’s a three‑star.

I mean, they have a lot of hotels and they have a lot of descriptions to write, and sometimes hotels change, but this can be a little bit disconcerting sometimes when you have inconsistent star ratings. That would be one thing that I would say that they could probably improve in.

So that is my review of Agoda. I hope you liked it. I hope you found it informative. If you have any questions or any observations, or maybe even a correction, please feel free to leave a comment below and I will address it. Thank you very much.

Transcription by CastingWords

What booking sites do you use when you plan your vacation? Have you used Agoda in the past? If so, how was your experience? Would you use them again? Please leave a comment at the bottom of this post and share your experiences.

You might also like:

• Agoda spills “secrets” on low hotel rates
• Agoda’s cancellation and refund policy examined
• Agoda best price Guarantee

News Release from PRWEB- Getting low hotel rates may not be enough, according to Agoda.com, a leading hotel reservation site. Many customers remain skeptical of the low rates they see on sites like Agoda, where rates can often appear lower than those found on a hotel’s own site. The Internet is still growing around the world, but the fastest growth can be found in emerging markets like China and India and in new demographics such as customers over the age of 55. These new demographics are often the most skeptical.

In summary, we make it easy and profitable for hotels to offer more special deals to our customers, but we do have a challenge in convincing newer more skeptical customers

“We deal with skepticism by building trust in our brand and by attempting to explain the source of these deals to our visitors”, says Agoda CEO Michael Kenny. “There are several keys to the discounts you find on our website. First, Agoda has established close relationships with thousands of hotels, and these hotels have access to an online system in which specials and deals and the latest rate reductions can be entered in real-time. Often by the time a traditional agent finds out about these deals, the offer period is over. Also, hotels frequently prefer to release a deal through its third party suppliers like Agoda, instead of through its own channels in order to protect all the customers who might have previously paid a higher rate directly with the hotel.” Last minute offers,

There are a variety of offers to find on Agoda.com, some of which are triggered by customers who are willing to book a bit earlier, accept a more restrictive cancellation policy, or alter their plans to stay an extra day. Last minute offers often mean a hotel received a block of rooms back from a reseller at the last minute and has little time to sell these rooms.

“In summary, we make it easy and profitable for hotels to offer more special deals to our customers, but we do have a challenge in convincing newer more skeptical customers”, says Kenny. Fortunately, the growth in online bookings is sure evidence that more customers understand this every day.

Below are some samples of published offers in that are available for reservation on www.agoda.com.

Last Minute Offers

Dream Hotel, Bangkok, (4 star), Classic Room
Book within 15 days, stay1 night, get 30% discount per night
67 USD per night (normally 96 USD)

S Sukhumvit Suites Hotel, Bangkok (3.5 star), Deluxe Room
Book within 10 days, stay 1 night, get 20% discount per night
51 USD per night (normally 63 USD)

Early Bird Offers – (book more in advance).

Shangri-la Hotel, Tokyo (5 star), Deluxe King
Book 14 days in advance, stay 1 night, get 15% discount
475 USD per night (normally 559 USD)

Fairmont Hotel, Singapore (5 star), Deluxe Room,
Book 14 days in advance, get 30% discount per night
158 USD per night (normally 225 USD)

Free Night Offers – (stay a bit longer)

The Luxe Manor Hotel, Hong Kong (5 star), Premier
Stay 3 nights, get 1 night free,
112 USD per night (normally 168 USD) 33% more savings

Majestic Grande Hotel, Bangkok (4 star), Grand Superior Room
Stay 3 nights, get 1 night free
59 USD per night (normally 89 USD) 33% more savings

You might also like:

• Review of Agoda
• Agoda’s cancellation and refund policy examined
• USD50 back per booking with Agoda/Paypal.

Agoda just announced this morning that they have partnered with Paypal to become Paypal’s Asian hotel partner and are offering USD50 dollars back if you choose Paypal as your payment method.

The offer is good for reservations made at any Agoda site between September 23 and September 30 2009, for bookings worth USD200 or more. It doesn’t matter when the period of stay is. Below are the details of the offer straight from Agoda.

Book a hotel on any Agoda site and pay using Paypal between 23 September 2009 and 30 September 2009 and receive $50 cash back into your PayPal account when your booking value is $200 or greater. Limited to the first 800 eligible bookings. Limited to one cash back per eligible booking. All eligible bookings will receive their $50 cash back into their PayPal accounts by 31 October 2009.

As you can see above, the offer is limited to the first 800 bookings so you had better hurry. As the offer places no restrictions on the dates of stay, you can book now for the Christmas/New Year period and save yourself some money. The offer is 50 dollars back per booking, so if you stay at 2 different hotels, you can get 100 dollars off. And that’s on top of the already ridiculously low prices of hotels in Thailand at the moment. What a great opportunity!

Head on over to Agoda now and claim your discount.

Btw, this offer is for all hotels throughout the world, not just Thailand.

You might also like:

• Agoda spills “secrets” on low hotel rates
• Thailand’s Hotels Want Their Tourists Back!
• Review of Agoda

Agoda, one of the biggest names in online hotel reservations has consistently offered some of the lowest rates to be found online for hotels and resorts not only in Thailand and around Asia, but also for all other regions of the world as well.

Their Agoda Rewards system, which awards points worth between 4 and 7% of each booking, allows for even greater discounts on their already famously low prices. Their new Best Price Guarantee raises the bar again and practically cements them as the first choice for online hotel reservations.

The basic details of the guarantee are as follows. After booking a hotel room through Agoda, if you find the same room for the same dates at a cheaper price on another website that is viewable and available, within 48 hours of booking your room, let Agoda know and they will match the rate or beat it.

Check out the Agoda website for more details of their Best Price Guarantee and to check out their low rates for your self.

You might also like:

• Review of Agoda
• Agoda’s cancellation and refund policy examined
• USD50 back per booking with Agoda/Paypal.