When you are booking the hotel you have many options. You can book the hotel through travel agent or internet. Internet is also providing various options. In all the cases, you will be paying for the hotel but there are two ways you can make additional benefit with your hotel booking. One is through Hotel Loyalty Programs and the other is Airline Miles.
Hotel Loyalty Programs: In which you can earn some hotel points against your stay and you can get some discounts or additional benefits in future stays with the same brand of hotels. You cannot stay in the same brands of hotels in all the cities due to unavailability of the same hotel brand in that city, or the location is not of your interest or the price may be higher than the other hotel in the same location. In this case, you will be part of couple of loyalty programs, that will not let you accumulate all points at one place.
Airline Miles: Earning Airline Miles, will get you additional benefits while flying like lounge access, more luggage, upgrade to business class or award tickets. This is really good when you are traveling with plane. No matter wherever you stay, you will get the miles from your stay in the airline program you opt. Suppose you have Qatar airways Privilege Card for Frequent Flyers. So wherever you stay, just get miles for Qatar Airways. In this way you don’t have to book always the same brand of hotel.
I prefer Airline miles more than the hotel loyalty points as it gives me flexibility to book any hotel. Also this will combine your airline frequent flyer program and miles earn through hotel, resulting in more miles in your frequent flyer account.
Some of the online booking options and their pros and cons are listed below:
Hotel’s own website: Through this you can book hotel directly (if you have one brand in mind). The advantage of this is you can perhaps get the best rates (not always), get hotel Loyalty point / benefits or even get airline miles if your hotel brand has an agreement with the travel airline.
3rd Party Internet Sites: Sites like booking.com will provide you many options to choose from and compare the rates. Also free cancellation is available to many hotels. This will give you flexibility to change the hotel later on or cancel the booking in case of change in plans. But you will not get any Airline miles or hotel loyalty points. I have found that the booking.com rates are good and in most cases cheapest.
Another site that I specifically want to write about is Rocket Miles. The advantage of booking through this site is that you will get airline miles for all hotel bookings. I have got 10,000 Qmiles (Qatar Airways Miles) when I booked a hotel through Rocket Miles in The Hague, Netherlands. Make your Rocket Miles account and start getting airline miles with your hotel stay. Before booking at Rocket Miles , search the price for the same hotel through booking.com or hotel’s own website to compare the prices. Also note that many of the Rocket Miles booking are non-refundable, so if you are not sure about your plans, then ensure that the booking you are doing from Rocket Miles is refendable.