Major Japanese hotel chain says reservations via overseas booking sites may not be valid

14 comments

1. I see that Priceline is still struggling with its infrastructure.

2. I used Agoda and the guy behind the counter had to search for the reservation. I probably won’t use them again.

3. I booked three different hotels with Expedia during my trip with no problems.

4. Working in the hotel industry here, some OTAs are better than others. Generally Expedia and Booking.com are pretty straightforward and don’t have issues.

   My hotel has had issues with Agoda reservations not giving us all the reservation information or having completely wrong reservation information

5. i’ve never had an issue with hotels.com on any of my 3 trips (one of which WAS a toyoko inn, though due to extenuating circumstances i didn’t actually end up making it and and had to change plans day of arrival to something in narita due to an emergency)

6. I used Booking exclusively for a trip a couple of years ago and only had one issue: at an APA hotel, the order of my name was wrong, so it took a couple of tries to find the reservation. It was in their system, and they did honor it, though.

7. I used Expedia and my confirmation wasn’t available I sat there for an hr as they try to confirm it, even with my email and text confirmation they couldn’t find it. They had to check their financial records to see that a payment was made on the day I booked. Frustrating experience never doing that again.

8. Not a Japan specific issue but man if the chains would actually do their best price direct nobody would ever use the aggregators. Maybe as a search device…

   But nope. 20%+ cheaper than direct booking. Sometimes with more perks.

9. You should always call or email the specific location you booked to confirm reservations anyway

10. I always book through the hotel’s Japanese website but for the first 4 days of my trip in Tokyo I used booking dot com and I’m afraid it’ll be dropped by the time I get to Tokyo

11. agoda is heavily advertised in japan so i expect they have local office here

12. Never had issue with Agoda for over 10 years

13. Work in a hotel, in the kitchen not reservation or front desk however i know a bit. As far as i know, this has always been the case. Sometimes OTA overbook, sometimes they have special discount that we didnt know about. The hotels has always have thw ability to deny your booking. My advice if you use OTA sites and not book with the hotel directly is to double check eith the hotel directly if your reservation is active. 

14. I booked 10 hotels thru Agoda for Japan last month and they all were good.