Hotelopia

mustardtree6

Hotelopia seems to be selling hotel rooms significantly cheaper than other OTA such as expedia, booking.com, hotels.com etc. I see that they are now based in Spain and owned by hotelbeds group, which is owned by Cinven; a private equity group. Has anyone used them before? What is their customer services like in the event of having to contact them? If I booked direct with the hotel, the room is £300 more. I'm a bit worried with the recent events involving lowcostholidays and alpharooms. I am only booking the hotel rooms.

richardw

Is it the same type of room being sold by the hotel or a nicer one?

mustardtree6

It is the exact same room as far as I can tell.

Westin

In some destinations Hotelbeds do what are called 'pre-buys' and they contracted a guaranteed room block at a particular rate with a hotelier. These are often in more popular and high demand areas.

It could well be that you have found a hotel with such an arrangement and Hotelbeds/Hotelopia are able to offer it cheaper. It can happen although if a chain hotel then chain's don't like it as it can violates their rate guarantee policy.

Another option is that Hotelbeds are chasing an override payment with a hotel and they are discounting the rate to a small or even negative margin in order to hit a larger override. This normally would however only result in a small rate difference.

I suspect my first reasoning is more likely.

I would see no reason in not using Hotelopia/Hotelbeds and would happily do so myself if they were coming up cheapest.

dj1471

I used them recently, there was a discrepancy with the booking (didn't correctly specify in the booking that it was prepaid, which confused the hotel) but they sorted this within an hour on the next working day.

They were quite a bit cheaper than the next-cheapest agent. Also cashback is available from the usual sites.

mustardtree6

That is the sort of thing that I worry about, turning up having prepaid already and the hotelier demanding more payment and having to phone Hotelopia to "hopefully" sort it out the next working day, which could be two days later. Are there any other positive experiences of Hotelopia?

SW17

mustardtree6 wrote: »

That is the sort of thing that I worry about, turning up having prepaid already and the hotelier demanding more payment and having to phone Hotelopia to "hopefully" sort it out the next working day, which could be two days later. Are there any other positive experiences of Hotelopia?

You should not have any greater issues with Hotelopia than any other OTA. Their parent Hotelbeds is the biggest wholesaler in the industry, and while the safety of any company cannot be guaranteed 100%, there is very little comparison between them and the likes of LowCost.