Loyal CTrip Customer – Trip.com: Book Flights, Hotels Review

Quick disclosure: I know the highest level mgmt at CTrip. But! But, I was a loyal customer well before I met them, and they don’t give me any special attention or anything like that . They are friends of my current work place, and that’s it. I’ve been using CTrip since 2011 and long before I moved to China or even knew that it was a Chinese company. Early on I used them exclusively for hotels in Asia. They were usually much cheaper than hotels.com, and I had repeated success— zero issues — with my reservations with CTrip. When I moved to China in winter 2015 I started using them for all travel needs from trains to planes to hotels to vacation packages — literally everything related to travel. As a recommendation for those who are new to CTrip (Trip.com exact same company) consider booking local hotels in prime locations, especially for bookings in China. Local hotels are almost always a much better value for the money than western chain hotels. Local hotels are often in the best locations with better service and better breakfasts and significantly cheaper than their western counterparts. Plus you are supporting locals more directly and significantly rather than Swiss hotel executives. Also with trip.com (again same as CTrip.com) don’t assume that booking early is best. 20 minutes ago I booked a hotel in Wuxi for tonight and am paying 30% less than what I paid the last time when I reserved 2or 3 days ahead of time. (Of course if you need 100%certainty at a certain hotel then book ahead, of course, but again if you can be flexible with exact hotel and there are no major conferences that weekend than why not try one of those local hotels across the street?) The only downside to CTrip is that their rewards program is weak compared to the big hotel chains and even worse than hotels.com (though I think they have watered down their loyalty programs as well... don’t know don’t use them very often anymore). It takes many, many bookings before you get that freebie. Moving back to the positives, the customer service is the best in the travel industry. On the few occasions that I’ve needed to contact customer service I have never had to wait in the phone— not once— and they will resolve issue respectfully and in timely manner, including stupid mistakes that you made (though don’t expect them to pay for your mistakes) . Again super loyal and happy customer who uses trip.com for all Asia travel and also , because they are expanding quickly into western and Southern markets, I’m about to drop all other allegiances to cheapticjets.com, hotels.com etc
Review by Kovachevtsi on Trip.com: Book Flights, Hotels.