Live in China: How to book a hotel in China

The purpose of this guide is to show you how and where to book a hotel in China.

Before we start

Before going on, you need to be aware of these two points:

1.Chinese hotels must register all of their customers with the police station. So, you will always have to show your passport when you arrive at the hotel.

2.Not all hotels in China have a license to lodge foreigners. Because of this, I recommend that you make a reservation in advance and avoid having to try several hotels before you find one that you can stay at.

What online portal do you have to use to book a hotel in China?

There are a variety of online portals to book hotels, but in my opinion, for China, the three best are:Agoda, Booking and cTrip.

Why shouldn’t you use multiple-comparison websites?

While Booking and Agoda are included by the majority of multiple-comparison websites, such as Trivago, both Booking and Agoda offer exclusive deals to users who book directly on their website.

Agoda

Agoda is one of the best portals for Asia both for the number of hotels and their deals.

Pros: Agoda is normally the portal that offers the best deals on hotels in Asia. In addition, its network of hotels in China is much better than more widely-known international portals such as Booking.

Cons:Agoda’s coverage in some parts of China is still scarce.

Booking

Booking is one of the most widely-used platforms to book hotels in the world.

Pros:It offers a good selection of hotels, it has good deals and is one of the most popular platforms in the world.

Cons: Its selection of hotels in China is much smaller than the other two.

cTrip

cTrip is one of the main travel agencies in China and one of the few Chinese travel agencies that has a good website in English (and other languages) that allows payment with non-Chinese banks.

Pros:It offers very good hotel coverage in the whole country.

Cons: Many of the hotels displayed on it don’t have the necessary permits to lodge foreigners and it is missing some of the international hostels.

Comparison between the different platforms

Number of hotels:

If we consult the Agoda website, we see that in China, there are 16,537 possible hotels, onBooking 8,627 and finally cTrip 361,192 hotels.

If we use Beijing as an example, Agoda offers 1,243 hotels, Booking 734 and cTrip 5,406.

In conclusion, while Agoda and Booking offer a good selection of hotels in large cities, in second and third-tier cities without tourism, cTrip is the only one that offers a decent selection. However, keep in mind that cTrip includes many hotels where foreigners can’t stay, and it is because of this that there is such a large difference in numbers.

Prices:

We are going to compare the prices in USD of my three favorite hotels in Beijing (for three nights starting August 1st, 2015), one of them budget (Peking International Youth Hostel), one mid-range hotel (Beijing Double Happiness Courtyard Hotel) and one high-end (The Peninsula Beijing).

Peking International Youth Hostel: One bed in a dormitory costs 18.22 USD/night onAgoda, 21 USD/night on Booking and isnt’ listed on cTrip.

Beijing Double Happiness Courtyard Hotel: The price for a double room without deals is more or less the same on Agoda, Booking and cTrip (139 USD), but if we apply the special offers on Agoda, it costs 109.12 USD/night, on Booking 118 USD/night ad on cTrip 119 USD/night.

The Peninsula Beijing: The price for a double room on Agoda costs 206.30 USD/night, onBooking 206.33 USD/night and on cTrip 219 USD/night.

What type of hotel should I choose?

If you don’t speak Chinese, I suggest that you book a room in a hotel with at least three stars or an international hostel.

At those places, you will normally find at least one person in the reception who speaks some English. The situation is different in cheap (and not so cheap) Chinese hotels, where often nobody speaks English.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that if you don’t speak Chinese, organizing an excursion on your own (for example, visiting The Great Wall if you are in Beijing or the Stone Forest if you are in Kunming) can be difficult. Hotels of a certain category will help you do everything you need to organize the excursion. On the other hand, international hostels normally offer cheap one-day excursions (or even larger trips) to all relevant tourists destinations.

Internet connection

While four or more star hotels normally offer decent internet service, cheap hotels in general don’t offer an internet connection (or a very bad one). While international hostels tend to offer internet, normally it is so slow that it is useless.

Another problem is that many websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked in China. The only way to access them is by using a paid VPN service.

If the internet is important to you, I recommend that you read the reviews on Agoda,Booking or TripAdvisor before booking it to find out if the internet connection works well and if the hotel offers free access to a VPN (some international hostels do it to make Facebook addicts happy).

Where to book your hotel?

Chinese cities can be enormous. I’m not just talking about Beijing and Shanghai, but also include “small” cities such as Hangzhou, Tianjin, Suzhou, Kunming, Chengdu and Guangzhou, which have between five and ten million people.

While taxis are quite affordable in China, I suggest that you look for a hotel downtown or at least close to a subway station (almost all of the large cities in China have an efficient subway system).

Are Chinese hotels safe?

China is by far the safest country that I have visited (and I have traveled a lot). So, I’m not going to recommend any special precautions.