Improving Travel Preparation - Reviewing HotelReservations.com

Traveling is fun and personally rewarding. Preparing for travel is time-consuming and frustrating. It can also be expensive.

That's the way it's always been, anyway. Now, however, it looks like there's a way to avoid all of the annoyance and inefficiency of booking your trip. They also promise lower-than-expected prices.

HotelReservations.com is a one-stop solution for travel planning. As the name suggests, they specialize in giving their users an awesome selection of Hotel Reservations and resort offerings. HotelReservations.com doesn't stop there, though. You can also shop for vacation rentals, arrange airline reservations and secure rental cars with their simple and intuitive interface.

TESTING HOTELRESERVATIONS.COM

There are scores of travel assistance sites out there and it can be hard to tell whether any particular one is actually a great option. So, I put HotelReservations.com to the test. I live in the Kansas City, Missouri area and am familiar with accommodations and costs in this part of the world. I decided to create a mock vacation with HotelReservations to KC in order to test the quality of their service.

HOTEL SPACE: The service did very well in this department. HotelReservations.com gave me listings and more-than-competitive prices for some of the best hotels in the area. I was impressed to find that some of the first listings were for respected and desirable properties in the Country Club Plaza shopping district--a top travel destination.

RENTAL CAR: You can't get around this neck of the woods without a vehicle. HotelReservations found a rental option for well under $15 per day through a major vendor. That's a bargain!

AIR FARE: The site gave me a range of viable air travel options between New York (my hypothetical "start city") and Kansas City. I'm accustomed to making that trip myself and felt that the prices returned by the service were very competitive with other bargain rates I've found elsewhere in the past.

CONCLUSION: After putting HotelReservations.com through the paces, I give it a "thumbs up". It may be possible to shave a dollar or two off your total cost by working each individual aspect of travel planning completely by yourself, but the time and energy wasted in the process would probably swamp any financial benefit that might be gained.

Travel can be fun. Preparing for travel can be enjoyable, too.