<h3>Booking in advance[edit]</h3>
Booking in advance gives the traveller peace of mind that they will have somewhere to sleep once they arrive at their destination.

• Over the Internet
• Through a travel agent
• Over the telephone

However, hotel managers have to fill beds so it’s not uncommon for travellers having booked a room, particularly at the lower end of the cost scale, to arrive to find that it has been resold. This is because hotels usually have a policy of overbooking (selling more reservations than they have rooms available), especially on high-demand nights, with the assumption that some guests will cancel or no-show. (As some hotels abuse this more than others, it pays to check online reviews before booking anything.)

If a guest has to be “walked” (told that there are no rooms available despite having a reservation), the hotel will usually offer to pay for a night’s accommodation at another nearby hotel — but if there is especially high demand for rooms throughout the whole area, even this may not be possible. Managers who overbook hotel rooms have been known to play favourites, with the lone voyager staying “just one night” as a first-and-only time visitor to the city taking lowest priority, along with clients of third-party reseller websites and any travellers the desk staff perceive to be “impolite” or “rude”. Turning away a loyal client who visits often, such as a business traveller or a convention vendor, would mean the inn losing that client’s future business. To reduce your chances of being walked, try to arrive at the hotel as soon as possible after check-in time begins.

Check carefully what you are booking. Search results often include offers even tens of kilometres from the location searched for. Marketers are infamous for touting accommodation as being “close to” attractions which are far away, sometimes even in the next city. Wikivoyage articles often provide coordinates and a locator map to give an idea of the relative proximity of lodging to key attractions; at minimum, a street address should be mentioned.

Beware of hidden charges, such as a non-optional “resort fee” or “destination marketing fee”; the hotel may have no intention of making any room available at the advertised price. Ask for the full cost before you book anything. If a hotel refuses to rent a room without a credit card, which happens frequently but not universally, they may be planning to bill all manner of “incidental fees” or hidden charges to your card. It sometimes pays to read the fine print.
<h4>On-line[edit]</h4>
You can book accommodation on-line, either at the hotel’s own web site or at the website of an agency. Depending upon where you are going, this can be extremely useful. Yet if you are travelling to somewhere a bit more out of the way, for example, a small city or town, you may find something, but there will be accommodation options not listed on the internet. In this situation, it is better to find accommodation “on the day”, as described below.

Metasearch websites aggregate results from numerous providers (Online Travel Agencies – OTA, Vacation Rental Marketplace, Booking Engines) that allow users to price compare. Metasearch is very useful in gaining an overview of the accommodations market of a given destination and to price compare the different properties.

Sometimes, a hotel has its own web site but doesn’t publish the dates for which it still has vacancies. Completing a “Contact us” form or sending an email should obtain every detail you need.

On-line reservation is increasingly becoming the most common way of booking accommodation (sometimes the only way); unfortunately the downside is that a credit card is required to complete the reservation – so you will be out of luck if you don’t have one (sometimes getting a debit or pre-paid VISA/MasterCard may work). Moreover, you will need to check the rate being offered if payment is needed immediately or upon arrival/departure. Discounted rates usually require that payment be made immediately, but regular rates will allow you to pay upon arrival or check-out at the property. In the case of the latter, you do not need to settle payment with the same credit card used for making the reservation; you can pay using cash in many establishments. However, you may still be required to present the credit card used for making the reservation (especially for pre-paid/advance purchase bookings to reduce card fraud).

One hazard of online bookings that are not directly through a hotel’s website is that the reservations are sometimes lost in online transit between the booking site and the hotel, so consider calling the hotel directly to see whether they will match the rate you saw online, and if not, you might want to call them in advance to confirm that they got the correct information from the booking site. Also, consider the costs of required taxes and fees when comparing room prices, as the same price may be represented differently, depending on whether taxes and fees are included in the price that’s shown or simply charged later. As well, when using an aggregator, keep in mind the hotel is making less money on your room than on those booked directly through them (hotels sell rooms at a steep discount to the aggregator, who then increases the price to the end user back up to the rack rate and profits on the difference). This often translates to poorer service from hotel staff, being considered lower priority for available-on-request amenities that the hotel may only have in limited quantities <i>e.g.</i> rollaway beds and minifridges, and the like.
<h4>Email[edit]</h4>
For booking by email, the sequence of events is roughly the same, with some steps omitted when not applicable:

• first, ask whether your dates are available; ask for up-to-date prices
• inquire on your preferred rooms and other essential details
• ask to reserve for your dates
• ask for confirmation for your embassy; provide all personal details (passport details of every visitor etc.) they may need to issue the confirmation
• in the end, ask for cancellation policy, directions to the hotel and other practical details that don’t affect your decision to stay there.

When you use a non-native language for writing to a hotel, it works best to ask one or two questions per email, get answers and then choose your next questions. Asking all questions at once frequently results in huge delays that can be broken only by a telephone call.

Avoid giving sensitive financial information such as credit card details through email. Use the website’s booking engine for that instead and make sure you see in your browser a padlock that is locked (which should appear when using http<b>s</b>:// at the start of the URL).
<h4>Travel agent[edit]</h4>
Travel agents often have deals with specific hotels, although you may find it possible to book other forms of accommodation, like camping grounds, through a travel agent. Travel agents usually offer packages that include breakfast, transportation arrangements to/from the airport or even combined flight and hotel packages. They can also hold the reservation for you if you need time to think about the offer or procure other documents for your destination (e.g. visa). Any amendments or requests though should be coursed through the travel agent first and not directly with the hotel.
<h4>Telephone[edit]</h4>
Consumers often find the best lodging rates by calling travel suppliers directly. Contacting the specific property, rather than the chain’s main toll-free telephone line, provides the best opportunity to negotiate discounts and ask about specials (advertised and unadvertised). In the U.S., hotel and lodging listings can be found for free either by name or category via 1-800-Free411.
<h4>Cancelling a reservation[edit]</h4>
You might have to change or cancel a reservation. For example, if your plane/train/bus is delayed or cancelled and you therefore arrive a day later.

Depending on how you booked the accommodation, you may be able to contact the hotel or pension directly by phone or internet to make the necessary change/cancellation. If it was booked through a travel agent or consolidator, you may need to go through them.

Pay attention to the cancellation policy when you make the reservation. Most hotels will require a credit card number to guarantee the room. They will usually charge you for one night if you cancel less than 24 hours before arrival. In some popular tourist destinations such as Hawaii or Las Vegas, this minimum notice may be as long as 72 hours, or you may be charged for the entire stay. This can happen even when you make reservations through a travel agent and your delay is caused by transportation also arranged by that travel agent.

<h3>On the day[edit]</h3>

If you have planned your trip yourself, which means you have not decided to use a package from a travel agent, sometimes finding accommodation when you arrive is the best option.

If you have not made reservations in advance, this should be your first priority upon arriving. The best and/or cheapest hotels have a tendency to fill up most quickly, and looking for a place to sleep as darkness falls can be an anxious – and even dangerous – experience.

It is sometimes frustrating to be reading a guidebook and looking for the listed recommendations trying to decipher an unfamiliar map having just travelled for several hours. Walk around and inquire at the first few places you see. Courage and confidence are required for this type of thing, especially if you are not using your native languages. However, it is sometimes easier to do this rather than tracking down listings, especially for the first night.

Larger cities and popular tourist destinations may have “tourist information offices”. These may be operated by the local government, a consortium of local hotels and attractions, or independent parties (of varying trustworthiness). These frequently offer listings of hotels and other lodging options (e.g. hostels, bed-and-breakfasts). Some act as booking agents for hotels, placing visitors in facilities with vacancies (though there may be a fee for this service).

Looking at last-minute accommodations may not be feasible if your intended destination country requires a visa be obtained in advance; many such countries require that visitors have already arranged accommodation before approving a visa or admitting a traveller into the country.