AirBrokers Review and Booking Hotels

We recently got a question from someone who read my review of AirBrokers on Yelp.

Q. Hi Jason. I was looking at your Air Brokers review. I am thinking of using them for a trip. Your review was helpful. I have a question – when you book a trip like you did to Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc how did you arrange your hotel stay? Thanks i’ve wanted to use these guys but have always been worried about the hotel arrangements.

Here’s the answer:

I used Trip Advisor to find the hotels and booked everything online. I have a couple of suggestions:

1. I only booked hotels on TripAdvisor with a lot of reviews. There are some hotels with only three or four reviews, and I’ve heard that people that work at the hotel try and manipulate the reviews. They usually post three really good reviews to a hotel that has none. So, if the hotel you’re considering doesn’t have that many reviews (at least 10 I’d say), beware.

2. When you do find a hotel you like, use the hotel’s website first to get the best room rate. The rates are usually best on the hotel’s website, but every now and again I found a better deal thru TripAdvisor.

3. If you can stand the uncertainty, you can find great deals once you’re in the city. If I had to do it over again, I would have booked a hotel for the first night or two and then found a new place to stay. There are a lot of “local” hotels that are cheaper that don’t advertise. Of course, having said that, Hong Kong and Shanghai are a lot like US cities and hotels there are about as expensive regardless. BUT, if you go to the other places (Penang and Xian were both places I could have saved $$$), you can find better deals on foot.