Safer way to pay for hotel rooms online?

longwalks1

We are planning to visit thailand later this year, 3 or 4 different resorts and by booking through to hotel websites themselves, prices are approx 10% cheaper than on Hotels.com and other booking websites. Is there a 'safer' way to pay for the rooms? Or is debit and credit card pretty much the same? Am i likely to need any protection that comes with CC payment?

They're all higher end and reputable hotels, so doubt they'll be going out of business, but wasnt sure of anything else that may cause me to need to use any protection offered?

[Deleted User]

Credit cards provide much more protection than debit cards

eskbanker

On the comparison between booking direct and going via consolidators, going direct preserves your section 75 credit card rights but you might find (as I have sometimes) that hotels' own websites exclude taxes and fees from their headline prices, whereas these tend to be included on aggregator sites, so make sure you're comparing fully-loaded costs on a like-for-like basis.

Many websites will also levy surcharges for credit cards but not debit cards, so the extra protection often isn't free....