I use only booking.com. Their service is second to none and I have always and everywhere found good hotels, in all of Europe, the USA, in Japan … even in India!
This year I have accidentally booked a hotel in San Francisco the wrong way by clicking on one of the cheap non-refundable rates. when I learned that our dates would be different I called booking.com and they called the hotel and fixed it within a couple of minutes.
In very few cases where booking.com had nothing I used Google Maps or Google.
I also have an airbnb account, but I have only used it once.
So, should ethically minded pilots, staying in Germany, not use airb&b?
What if the same person puts their second home on booking.com?
Back to the topic however, are there other sites which are relevant to pilots, especially for areas where the above two are not widely used?
Peter wrote:
So, should ethically minded pilots, staying in Germany, not use airb&b?
That really depends very much where you are in Germany. If you book via airbnb in sought-after and touristically interesting places it must be clear to you that this is at the expense of normal people trying to live and work there. Elsewhere, especially in parts of Eastern Germany or the Ruhrgebiet airbnb might be the only way some property owners can generate at least a little income from their rooms – at the expense of course of the local hotels.
Peter wrote:
Back to the topic however, are there other sites which are relevant to pilots,…
For us, the most relevant “site” is usually the handling agency or the airfield operator in case of small airfields. They usually get good deals from local hotels, collect feedback from other crews and can arrange transportation as well.
I always take bookings with same-day cancellation.
In the UK, “Premier Inn” is the best for this.
Ibis in France will also offer the same service.
Booking.com is good for some places also (check conditions).
I use the hotels.com app. I hear it is similar to booking.com.
We tried using air b&b once, the owner initially accepted our reservation but cancelled the next day because we were staying only 2 nights. Hotel it became.
That is indeed the problem sometimes with airb&b. Some of the hosts are greedy bastards and cancel you if a bigger group turns up. It happened to me once. But they can’t keep doing that because eventually they will be kicked off airb&b. I suspect it is more of a risk with a property which has only just come onto airb&b.
I’ve just had a funny one with Airb&b…
On a holiday in Greece, Justine and I booked a string of places, mostly on Airb&b. The bookings were done a few months ahead. As usual, most were great but we got one really “good” one. The location showing on Airb&b was in the town centre (in Githio). I should have suspected something strange because the photos showed a bit too much “countryside”, but that was not anything unusual… Airb&b photos are always done to not reveal the location, because most of the hosts are evading tax, and/or don’t want to reveal empty properties, so don’t want to make it too easy to be located on a casual search. When time came to drive there, I emailed the host and asked her for the exact address. She replied with “meet us at the stadium”. So I thought “oh well, the usual airb&b subterfuge again” and did a google search and found what looked like an oval sports stadium. Got the coordinates (they are in the google maps URL) pasted them into satnav, and drove there. Then emailed her again (bizzarely, airb&b said they do not accept SMS from Vodafone, so email was the only way) and some other woman arrived in a car and asked us to follow her. It fairly quickly became obvious that the road was not leading into town… it became a very narrow road leading up into the hills. I got rather worried about what this was… Eventually she stopped at a remote and isolated house. One could not turn around on that road (or pass another car) and it was starting to look rather dodgy… Anyway, to cut a long story short, I pulled out the airb&b booking with the location map printed off, the host started gesticulating wildly saying this never happened before… we looked at it anyway, found the aircon was duff which was a no-no, and drove back and got a hotel in the town. The host said she will refund the money (so far has not). Later that day I saw that the location map had been “fixed” 
But not entirely. The link for driving there took you to Dubai (Middle East). She fixed that after I told her. Later, when I posted more or less the above on airb&b in the property review, the host (it was 2 women running this) launched into a bizzare tirade about the whole thing. She is now offering to refund the money which, taking what she got from airb&b, minus a £52 “cleaning fee” results in only about 1/2 being returned.
I don’t know where it will lead but the lesson is to print off the property details and location when you make the booking and bring this on the trip with you, preferably save them electronically, and if possible contact the host before travelling to check the location, unless it is somehow otherwise obvious.
It is somewhat tricky, because the “location subterfuge” is common on airb&b. I had it in Paris, Burgos, Cambridge, other places which turned out to be great apartments. Actually most airb&b bookings involve concealment of the address. A lot of the time you are staying in an apartment where the people actually live the rest of the time (so they put locks on the wardrobes etc). I know one family in Brighton which gets all their overseas holidays paid for by putting their house on airb&b when they go away.
