Secure great hotel discounts at laterooms.com (laterooms.com)

Member Name: mrjoegoodwin

Product:	laterooms.com
Date:	29/07/09 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Big discounts, friendly interface, guest reviews

Disadvantages: Doesn't always feature all hotels in the city you are looking for, so other deals may be available

When booking holidays, and weekend breaks both abroad and in the UK, I tend to book travel and accommodation myself, rather than use a travel agent, as I can normally use my good friend Google to help me find the best bargains.

For hotels, there are few better sites than laterooms.com, an oft-imitated but rarely bettered site, offering discounted rates off the book price of hotels around the world.

The main homepage shows a variety of banners, with the current top special offers, links to 'secret deals' at top hotels, and the most useful function of the site, the search area where you enter your requirements. There are 4 things to enter before the site will go away and search for the best deals:

* Location - this can be a town/city, local attraction or post code
* Arrival date - the first night of your proposed stay
* No. of nights - length of time you wish to stay for
* Room sleeps - number of people sharing the room (e.g. 2 people, 2 people + 2 children, etc)

Having populated the relevant information, hitting the search button will go away and find suitable rooms for your stay. The search results are presented to you in a very user-friendly format, with the name of the establishment on the left of the screen, followed by information about its proximity to the city centre, the Star rating and guest rating of the hotel, and of course - the price. If you have selected multiple nights, then a price for each day will be displayed - these are often the same, but can vary, with weekend trips usually being more expensive than during the week, and prices can also be hiked if there are big events happening on that day in your chosen destination.

Listings are normally returned in a random order (though I suspect some hotels sponsor the laterooms site to get listed nearer the top), but I always click on the 'price' heading for the first day of my trip, which then sorts the available hotels in price order, lowest to highest. Click again, and it searches from highest to lowest, if you have enough money to pay hundreds of pounds for a room of course.

If you find a hotel that you like the look of, clicking on its name will take you to a dedicated page with more information about that hotel. This includes a photo gallery, links to maps and travel information, the hotel facilities and a section for guest ratings.

The guest ratings section is useful, and can be a good indicator of how the general public actually feel about the hotel, and should be used as a companion to the official hotel guide. Are the 'luxurious, spacious rooms' actually cramped and dirty? The guest reviews can help pick out the truth, although should be used with caution, as everybody has different tastes and experiences. Even the best hotel can have brilliant ratings from 99% of reviewers, but there always seems to be one person who gives it a terrible rating, and often without justification.

It's nice to see the prices on the site, because they show the listed hotel price, and the laterooms price - the discount can sometimes be as high as 70%, which proves that it's worth shopping around to get the best deals.

Having chosen your hotel, and assuming your desired room is available for the duration of your stay, you can proceed to the booking page, where entering all of your details will reserve your room(s) as required. You should receive confirmation by email, which can then be printed off and taken to the hotel in question when checking in on the first day of your trip.

A word of warning when using laterooms - it also includes hostels, so if sharing a room/bathroom with a bunch of strangers doesn't appeal, make sure you check and double check that your booking is for a private room with en-suite facilities! It's normally quite clear, but it's worth making sure for peace of mind.

I always have laterooms.com at hand when booking accommodation, and it's great to see such huge discounts on offer for everything from bed and breakfasts, to 5* luxury hotels. If you take care of your own travel arrangements for holidays and trips, bookmark laterooms to secure some great discounts!

Summary: Bookmark it!