Venice, here I come! (expedia.co.uk)

Member Name: steedandpeel

Product:	expedia.co.uk
Date:	30/07/09 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use website, good interface, good selection of destinations, pricing and holiday options

Disadvantages: No compare or save function, some gripes in the booking process, credit card surcharge

I've just finished booking a break to Italy in September via Expedia, so I thought I'd write a review whilst it's still fresh in my mind. I've not used the website before, but I've heard good things about it. This review is focused on my experience of using the website itself, and not the actual holiday (as I've not been on it yet), or customer services, as I haven't had any problems.

I started today by looking at the EasyJet website to see where I could fly to from Bristol Airport - we weren't really that fussed where we went, but were drawn to either Rome or Venice for obvious reasons! Once I'd priced up the flights (Rome was astronomical), I then thought I'd have a look on Expedia for the cost of flights and hotels for both destinations for a 4 night stay at the start of September. There was a wide selection of hotels for both cities, covering a wide range of prices. I was surprised to find that the flights were courtesy of Easy Jet, as I didn't know they offered packaged deals like this.

As well as flight and hotel deals, the website offers flight only, hotel only, packages, car hire, and general excursions, as well as offering sales and late deals, to a wide variety of destinations.

I found that there were certainly some reasonably priced hotels in both Rome and Venice - the quality of hotel was about the same at my price range in both cities, despite my Easyjet research revealing the flights to Venice being about half those to Rome. Does this mean that Expedia is skimming money off for travellers to cheaper destinations, or are hotels a lot more expensive in Venice? I'm not sure.

The website is relatively well laid out. It was very easy to use the search function to enter your preferred departure airport, destination, dates and times etc. The search was very quick, bringing up a wide selection of hotels. You can then further filter your search of hotel by star rating, price, popularity, amenities etc which is useful. You can also filter the search by area. Whilst this is very useful, ensuring your hotel is in the right place and not out in the airport, you do need to have a little local knowledge before this is really useful, as there isn't a mapping option showing you where these areas cover.

In terms of the hotel information, this was relatively comprehensive, detailing the features of the hotel, plenty of photos, a map and customer reviews which as you all know, are always useful! I wanted to save details of some of the hotels to show my boyfriend when he got home from work, but there didn't seem to be an obvious save or compare function, so I copied and pasted the hotel names into Word so I didn't forget them. I may have overlooked an obvious function, but I couldn't find it.

When we did go back to the site later on, one of the most tempting deals in Venice had risen in price by about £50 each. This put it out of our price range, unfortunately, but having settled on Venice, we searched again. We managed to find a nice looking 3* hotel near St Marks Square for £300 each (including flights), so we took the plunge! We were slightly uncertain as it wasn't clear if we were booking a twin room or a double, but thought we could always ring to make sure once we had booked to ensure we got the one we wanted.

The website then brought up a selection of excursions we could book. Although we'd like to do some of these, as we hadn't done any research on the cheapest and best options, we left these out. We also unchecked the automatic insurance Expedia signs you up for (cheeky of them!), as we have it already. We did offset our carbon though, for the price of just over £1.

We didn't get a chance to register our baggage with Easy Jet, unfortunately, so we'll have to do that at the airport. This will be a pain, so it would have been nice to have the opportunity at the time of booking. However, on a later screen we did get to confirm that we wanted a double room and also got to confirm our smoking preference (helpful, as it is usually automatically assumed that everyone wants non-smoking rooms, but my boyfriend is a smoker).

I had to register my details with the site, as the main traveller and then enter both our details for the E-Ticket. I chose to pay by credit card - there was a surcharge of £8.11 for whichever payment method I'd chosen, which although steep, was expected. Once I'd read the terms and conditions, which were actually written in plain English, I confirmed the booking. This only took a few seconds and appeared to be secure.

I had an email come through confirming my details very shortly after confirming payment. I'm assuming this is my E-Ticket, similar to booking on an airline. I booked through Quidco, but I haven't had my cashback track yet. It's still early days, so hopefully that will track later - it's 3.5% so worth doing, I presume it's the only way to get cashback on Easy Jet.

I had spent several hours on the site looking for hotels earlier today. Once we'd decided which hotel to go to, it took approximately 20 mins to complete the booking - this was because I was rechecking all the details to ensure no mistakes, and I had to register with the website. It is likely this would be quicker in the future.

So all in all, once I'd started using Expedia to get an idea of the pricing, I found it had a user friendly interface, and offered good value for money. I haven't had to deal with their customer services department, so I can't comment on that, and obviously I haven't been on the holiday yet, so I can't comment on that either. However, apart from a few minor grumbles which I've outlined above, I found it to be an excellent website and would use it again.

Summary: An easy to use online booking agent, with an excellent selection of holiday options.