by Though the tours were absolutely fantastic, the one thing I disliked were some of the hotel rooms we booked in these places. More often than not, it was small , dirty and wasn’t upto the mark. Though paying 1500+ to the hotel, it wasnt worth anything more than 200-300 a day. Booking a hotel was only through two ways. You find out about a hotel’s name through a friend or relative who stayed there. You contact the hotel and send a demand draft to book a room for the duration
The second option would be to contact a local travel agent who would end up booking in the most shady hotel possible at a very high price.
Thankfully those days are over and the choice is upon you to select any hotel across any city in the world, based on traveller’s review, star rating and tripadvisor reviews. Not only that, you earn loyalty points, wallet cashbacks, discounts for every booking you make with these fantastico travel sites
In fact you can become your own travel agent to consult others where they should stay, and which site offers the lowest tariff.
So here are my top fantastico travel websites that really gives a bang for the buck
Makemytrip.com : Without a doubt, one of my favourite travel sites, Makemytrip was founded by Deep Kalra in 2000. Since then it has tied up with several thousand operators across the world and managed to offer some amazing discounts which no one else could match. The best features of Makemytrip include:
Cleartrip.com : A site that offers great discounts on flights and also a great comparison interface for the best airline. Clearltrip was one of the initial entrants in the airline booking aggregator space. If you want the lowest fare across different airlines to a destination, clearltrip is the best bet.
One of their recent features includes Cleartrip activities that lets you book interesting activities in different cities like PaintBall, Temple Tour, Offroading etc
GoIbibo : A similar site like Makemytrip, it has really given stiff competition to all its competitors. Similar to a wallet concept they have a “GoCash” option which will store your cashback amount, and can be later used to retrieve it for further bookings
There are few hotels where GoIbibo offers more discounts while Makemytrip is cheaper in others. So its always good to compare the hotel rates after discounts in both these sites before booking
Pro Tip for Hotel Booking : Usually all these sites offer only a max discount of 2500. So its advisable to split your booking into 1 day each. Example if you are going on a tour for 3 days, make 3 bookings, 1 day for each and apply coupon code for each. This way your total discount will be equal to 2500*3 = 7500 and not just 2500!
Other sites that narrowly missed the mark in the top includes Yatra.com, Expedia.com, Booking.com and Hotels.com
This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.
