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Hotel and hostel booking in China
The purpose of this guide is to show you how and where to book a hotel (or hostel) in China.
Before we start
Before going on, you need to be aware of these two points:
Chinese hotels must register all of their customers with the police station. So, you will always have to show your passport when you arrive at the hotel.
Not all hotels in China have a license to lodge foreigners. Because of this, I recommend that you make a reservation in advance and avoid having to try several hotels before you find one that you can stay at.
Click here to read our guide on the best hotels in Beijing
Click here to find out the best cheap hotels in Hong Kong: Causeway Bay and Chung King Mansion
What online portal do you have to use to book a hotel in China?
There are a variety of online portals to book hotels, but in my opinion, for China, the three best are: Agoda, Booking and cTrip.
Why shouldn’t you use multiple-comparison websites?
While Booking and Agoda are included by the majority of multiple-comparison websites, such as Trivago, both Booking and Agoda offer exclusive deals to users who book directly on their website.
Agoda
Agoda is one of the best portals for Asia both for the number of hotels and their deals.
Pros: Agoda is normally the portal that offers the best deals on hotels in Asia. In addition, its network of hotels in China is much better than more widely-known international portals such as Booking.
Cons: Agoda’s coverage in some parts of China is still scarce.
Booking
Booking is one of the most widely-used platforms to book hotels in the world.
Pros: It offers a good selection of hotels, it has good deals and is one of the most popular platforms in the world.
Cons: Its selection of hotels in China is much smaller than the other two.
cTrip
cTrip is one of the main travel agencies in China and one of the few Chinese travel agencies that has a good website in English (and other languages) that allows payment with non-Chinese banks.
Pros: It offers very good hotel coverage in the whole country.
Cons: Many of the hotels displayed on it don’t have the necessary permits to lodge foreigners and it is missing some of the international hostels.
Comparison between the different platforms
Number of hotels:
If we consult the Agoda website, we see that in China, there are 16,537 possible hotels, on Booking 8,627 and finally cTrip 361,192 hotels.
If we use Beijing as an example, Agoda offers 1,243 hotels, Booking 734 and cTrip 5,406.
In conclusion, while Agoda and Booking offer a good selection of hotels in large cities, in second and third-tier cities without tourism, cTrip is the only one that offers a decent selection. However, keep in mind that cTrip includes many hotels where foreigners can’t stay, and it is because of this that there is such a large difference in numbers.
Source: http://www.saporedicina.com/english/hotel-booking-in-china/
