Taipei Hotel Booking with Agoda – Review

If you’re looking to get away this year then you might be able to use a helping hand. The vast majority of travelers use travel sites to help them plan their holiday. Not only can they make the booking process easier, but they can also help you to save big. One of the biggest sites in this category is Agoda, and in this article we will tell you how to save big on this site when booking a holiday in Taipei.

What is Agoda?

The Agoda company categorizes itself as an online travel agency, offering a range of services for global travelers. They are owned by the Priceline Group, who trade on the NASDAQ and also own Booking.com, along with a number of other travel sites and companies.

Agoda was established in Thailand and has been going strong for a number of years. Their services can be accessed through the web or through the Agoda app on your smartphone or tablet. They take bookings on hotels around the world and offer discounts on most of them, with thousands of hotels listed in all major cities.

Booking a Holiday to Taipei

As soon as you open the Agoda webpage or app, you’ll be faced with a search engine. This is the main feature of the Agoda software and can be used to search for hotels all over the world. Just input the city that you want to holiday to, along with the dates and the amount of guests. As soon as you enter the city then a drop-down menu will appear where you can make your choice. In the case of Taipei, you will also be given the option of searching for individual districts. If you know what district you want to stay in, then by all means select it from this list. If not, just click on “Taipei, Taiwan” and see what it comes up with.

The results will show a list of hotels that are available on your chosen dates. They will be sorted by the user ratings, which is a good indictor, but you can sort them however you prefer. There are also hotels listed as “Agoda Recommended”, but you shouldn’t give too much merit to the sites that are listed here.

If you know exactly what you like and what you expect from a hotel, then you can also search via Facilities. Once you do this then Agoda will eliminate hotels that do not have the facilities you have requested, such as free Wi-Fi, a swimming pool, a car park, a spa, a fitness center, etc., You can even search for hotels that have designated smoking areas and ones that allow pets (which accounts for a very limited number of hotels in Taipei).

You can also search by area, if you have an idea of where you want to stay in the city. The most popular regions tend to be Xinyi, Zhongshan, Beitou, Da’an and Shilin, and Ximending. Two of the most popular search features that help you to find the right hotel quickly, are the Price Brackets, which lets you narrow hotels down via the price per room per night, and the Star Rating, which is where you tell Agoda to show only 1-star, 2-star, 3-star, 4-star or 5-star hotels.

Making Big Savings

One way to save big is to leave your booking until the very last minute. You have probably already learned that when it comes to booking a flight or train tickets, the later you leave it then the more it costs. In this case, a flight booked 1 year to 18 months early can save you ten times as much as one booked on the day of departure. This is not the case with hotels though, as there is a desperate rush to try and fill all of their rooms, and if they think that there will be a number of rooms empty on any given night, they will offer huge discounts to try and make sure that doesn’t happen.

If you book a day earlier, you might be able to save 20% or so, but if you book on the same day, it is not unheard of for you to make a saving of as much as 50%. If you want the very best savings, you can also get in touch with the hotel directly, negotiating a deal. You might need to forgo breakfast, as this is typically included with hotel rooms and it is one of the only costs that a hotel has to burden. It doesn’t cost much for them to quickly turnover and prepare a room, but allowing you a seat at a buffet or cooking you a full breakfast will set them back a bit. There is no shortage of cheap and great food in Taipei, so when breakfast time comes around you can simply leave the hotel and indulge in some local street food or a local restaurant or cafe.