There are three systems available that try to
automate the comparing of hotel prices from multiple Booking
Services. Two of these,
Travelaxe and Sidestep
require downloading of software (Windows only not Macintosh) to your own computer, while
ASE.net is all done at the server end - a
better solution in our opinion.
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Travelaxe
is a free downloadable Microsoft Windows program that searches
multiple travel websites at that same time for hotel rates in over
425 cities from 30 different countries and lets you compare the
prices from each travel website side by side, highlighting the
cheapest prices found for each hotel. The most comprehensive
information is for the USA. The amount you can save for
each hotel is also displayed so you can see the savings! When you
find the price you want, Travelaxe takes you right to the booking
page at the cheapest travel website to complete your reservation
with that website. Our review shows
consistently that you can get cheaper results than Travelaxe
produces because it is limited to using only up to half a dozen US
based Booking Services, often not the cheapest and most of them
ultimately utilising the same GDS Systems underneath. It is
also quite limited in the cities where hotels are listed, although
this is increasing all the time. It provides the best results for
USA hotels and is a good place to start for anywhere they have
hotels listed.
We recommend you downloading Travelaxe and get
it to find a hotel for you, but then check our recommended
Best Booking Services to see if you can
improve on it.
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SideStep searches for the
best value selections of flights, hotels, and car rentals. It
downloads add-ins to Internet Explorer and you need a computer
with Windows
98,NT 4,ME,2000 or XP and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5
and above.
Sidestep is also limited in the Hotel Booking Services it utilises
and again we found that it is by far best for USA hotels and
relatively poor for elsewhere, but
it is still usually beaten by manually utilising
our recommended Best Booking
Services.
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The Accommodation Search Engine Network (ase.network)
is a web-based search engine developed in the UK
that interfaces many of the best Accommodation Booking sites
into a very
clever service which makes it easy to compare prices.
This service
is good and gives a quick way of comparing prices for the
same establishment, however our tests show they do not necessarily
always utilise the best-value Booking Services.
We recommend start by using ASE.NET and get it
to find a hotel for you, but then check our recommended
Best Booking Services to see if you can
improve on it.
An interface to ASE.NET is below. To access it just click the region or country links listed below.
North America...
USA,
Canada,
Mexico |
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Europe...
UK,
Italy,
Spain |
Caribbean...
Bahamas,
Jamaica,
Barbados |
Australia & Pacific...
Australia,
New Zealand,
Fiji |
Central America...
Costa Rica,
Belize,
Guatemala |
Middle East...
Egypt,
Israel,
Saudi Arabia |
South America...
Argentina,
Brazil,
Chile |
Asia...
India,
Japan,
China |
Africa...
South Africa,
Kenya,
Zimbabwe |
Far East...
Singapore,
Thailand,
Indonesia |
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