With a relative man mountain of hotel booking sites on the web it’s tough to know where to get started when it comes to snagging the best deals at the best prices. Here at DontFlyGo.com we believe that supporting useful travel sites is key to delivering you the best information while still in-keeping with our principles of promoting green, alternative and environmentally-friendly ways to travel. So when we were approached by the team at EasyToBook.com, to check out their site and give our opinion, we were only very happy to rise to the challenge.
First Impressions
EasytoBook is a bit different to most other hotel booking sites as it isn’t crowded with information and links taking you here there and everywhere. The site places emphasis on the “Find Hotel Deals” section to communicate exactly what it does and to deliver a user experience that doesn’t frustrate. What’s also good about the site at first glance is that it, unlike other staid and tested sites, it actually has some personality. Informing you about how many people have used the site to book a trip to a specific destination and highlighting a currency conversion tool, landing on the page instantaneously gives you confidence enough that you will actually find decent results.
Homepage
Great for the user, the site’s main page has a sleek and clean design with the brand presented boldly in the colour palette and with the logo. In terms of navigation, the interface serves the site well, with the destination city box easy to find and use. From there you only need enter your required dates, the number of rooms and guests and then hit the search button. Very quick, very intuitive and, most of all, very simple!
Searching
The site makes searching for hotels a relative joy, delivering lightning-fast results on available places in the city you’re searching for. There are many customizable options in this regard which make whittling down your choices even easier. You can sort the search results retrieved by the distance from the centre and the city’s main attractions, you can search by price and you can even search by guest reviews or the websites recommended favourites. All this information is presented in one window which you can scroll down and pick out the options best to you.
Pretty funky are some of the design elements the site engineers have put in place. Hotel photos are presented in a cool way, expanding when you click and unfurling more photos of the different areas the hotel has to offer. Even cooler is how each hotel displays the remaining number of places or rooms meaning that you don’t have to waste time going through the booking process or wasting any other further clicks to find that something is all booked up.
Quirky Design
As we previously touched on, what we most love about this site is its design. Everything is very interactive and intuitive enough that you could probably lead your grandmother through it blindfolded. Click on a map and instantaneously one will drop down and pinpoint the location, click on city guides and the screen will fill up with loads of great information on that next green destination you’re thinking of heading to.
Face to Face: The Comparison Tool
So now we know what EasytoBook has to offer in terms of search how easy is it to make comparisons? Well, luckily it’s definitely on par with the rest of the site in this regard. From the “Search” page you can pick out a destination hotel that takes your fancy and then just click on the plus sign in the “Compare” column for it to be loaded into the tool. From there just continue on filtering through the results and pick out other hotels that stoke your interest. If you get a little caught up or distracted in something else it’s quite handy that you can save these comparisons too, meaning you can come back and finish your search at a later date.
Where the comparison tool really comes into its own however is when you’ve finished a search. When you’re done you simply hit the compare button and are then shown a face-to-face comparison of the choices you’ve selected. A great overview for quickly scanning the pros and cons of each and easily the sites greatest asset over its rivals.
Getting Down to Booking
So once you’ve gone through all the steps, made your searches and comparisons and grabbed yourself a warm cup of tea, now it’s time for the big daddy. The actual booking process.
EasytoBook.com makes this a fairly painless exercise. The “Book Now” icon whisks you straight through to the screen where you just put in your contact and billing information just like you would on any other store. Easy. Swiftly after that you’ll get a confirmation email from the team and a lowest rate guarantee. Comparing this across other hostel and hotel booking systems we’ve used in the past the site did indeed offer lower prices or indeed match up!
In Conclusion
As green travellers conscious of our energy use and the time it can take to sometimes make hotel bookings, EasytoBook.com provides a very speedy and time-efficient resolution. We really loved its design and its overall feel. The comparison tool is what sets it apart however and makes it definitely worth using ahead of other, more sluggish, booking sites. We also loved its personality, with the EasytoBook.com blog, being a pretty cool read!
More Information
Visit www.easytobook.com for online hotel reservations.
Call toll-free at 1-877-346-3614.
Follow them on Twitter and like their Facebook Page.
(cc) Kadluba