hotel booking - best to use local currency?

norricorp

Hi,
assuming one has a credit card with no foreign currency fees, is it better to book a hotel using the sterling price or the local currency price?
Or are the prices much the same? I wondered how good the rates are that websites translate to sterling are.
Regards

Voyager2002

You would have to see the two prices offered and use a separate converter to see which was better.

Of course, if you are offered a sterling price that is no higher than the foreign currency price then you can use a 'Cash-back' credit card or one that rewards you in other ways for spending -- I am not aware of any such card that does not charge for foreign currency transactions.

norricorp

The Halifax Clarity card does not charge - apparently it uses perfect rates. It is the card that is always mentioned by Martin Lewis.

eDicky

norricorp wrote: »

The Halifax Clarity card does not charge - apparently it uses perfect rates.

Yes, so to have that prefect MasterCard rate applied you must pay in the local currency, then the card does the conversion. The rate applied will be that of the date of settlement, usually a couple of days after the actual transaction.

MasterCard determine their daily rate on the following day, so you can only see yesterday's rate and this is not so easy to compare with the current rate imposed by whoever you are booking your hotel with. But you can compare that rate with the current mid-market rate (which will be more or less followed by MasterCard in determining their daily rate). This is displayed and refreshed every 60 seconds on xe.com - so using this is probably the best way to check and compare with the current rate any website is giving you.