| First on CTRIP and ELONG membership cards: They claim that they can save you 50% of the hotel rates. Bull! Who pays rack rate anyway? Watch out whenever you have to prepay a hotel room. Let me share with you a bad experience we had booking a hotel room through ELONG.
One time my husband's secretary booked us a "lake-view" room at Sofitel Hotel in Hangzhou. We paid a premium (I believe it was over USD100)for the room as it supposely had lake view. We arrived in the evening, but didn't seem to see any lake image. The next morning, we still couldn't get a lake glimpse, so we went to the Front Desk to check. We were then pointed out in the distance, through the corner of our eyes we spot (barely) something seemingly like a lake. The view was so skimpy that one has to look carefly with a telescope to see it. We protested, but was told that our room was booked through ELONG, and we had to contact ELONG for any change. Who had the time and energy to look into such things then? Incidentally, we went to Hangzhou again late April this year. This time we booked a gardent-view room at Hyatt Regency at RMB 900 + taxes. Although the room didn't have a lake view, the hotel itself is built in front of Wesk Lake. Within one minute walking out of the hotel, we were at the lake shore having an unobstructed 280 degree view of the lake. We booked the room directly through the Hyatt's reservation website. The room was held with our credit card until 6 PM of the arrival date. The room could be cancelled prior to that time without any penalty. I advice all who are coming to China to book their rooms that are cancelabe without penalty. That means if you check in the hotel and find the room not acceptable, you can still turn the room down. As for airfares, I found that you can buy tickets at some sort of discounts with any major airlines. It doens't have to be the particular airlines you're flying on, nor a travel agency. I often go to www.goldenholidays to check the flights and fares before I call for a reservation. Buying air tickets in China is mostly on one-way basis. Flying from Shanghai to Beijing, you can usually get a 10-20% discount, but returning route has much greater discount, generally up to 65% of the discount. So do a little homework, check some travel websites and you will have some pleasant discoveries. Unfortunately, most of the web deals are written in Chinese, so if you don't read Chinese, you might not have as much choices. Next on the travel cards: It's really very annoying to sit at Beijing airport waiting area and have the so called farmer agent continue to approach you to give you the cards. How they were allowed to go into the waiting area is beyond me. I thought only the ticketed passengers are allowed to enter the security-cleared area. I guess, in China, many things one is not allowed to do is allowed here. |
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