How to search for hotels?

Just like researching flights with reasonable values, the search for hotels always causes a bit of stress. After all, it is not easy to fit the dates of the hotels with the same flight dates you will be travelling, within your budget and the location of your preference.

So it is best to actually use the search engines again to get a good comparison and have an idea of where and which hotels best suits your needs.

To begin with, I go at TripAdvisor website, and I search for the city where I’ll be going to. By going to TripAdvisor, you can get a good idea of which travel companies are at a fair price and, mainly, which hotels have better reviews among guests.
You can refine your search by setting which category of hotel (stars) you want to go, whether breakfast is included or not, what scale of cost per night, how it is rated between guests (from 1 to 5), etc.

After this research, I choose some hotels and see which travel agencies have availability and I start to visit the indicated sites.
Usually here in England, I end up visiting the following sites:
www.booking.com
www.hotels.com
www.expedia.co.uk
I compare the values between them and I always go to the hotel’s website to check the rates as well (usually, they are more expensive, but it doesn’t hurt to take a look).
After that, I’ll book the one which has the best night rate.

What I like about these sites is the possibility of seeing other people’s reviews, such as if these hotels are well located and especially if they are clean (most important to me, personally).

If you usually travel a lot, it’s worth making a loyalty card from some hotel chain. In that case, the hotel rates are more competitive.

In Brazil, the most used search engines, besides TripAdvisor, are:
www.booking.com
www.hoteis.com
www.decolar.com

If you are a first-time traveller, I suggest doing everything through a travel agency in your city, because although you pay a little more, you will not have any work and they will find you the best flight tickets, hotels, etc. Besides, if you have any problems during the trip, they will be responsible for organising and assisting in most situation.

And as always, if you need more help or more tips, do not hesitate to contact me and I’ll help you the best way I can.
An excellent week for all!

Ps: this is not an advertising post and all tips are how and what Butterandfly uses for research.