These days most hotels are booked online which really makes things easy. There are however a few different options as to how you book your hotel on line. You can either book with the hotel directly or you can book using one of the travel websites. The question is which will get you the better deal?
As a general rule you will find that booking through the travel website will provide you with the better deal. The main reason for this is that when you use the travel site there is the chance to compare the rates of a number of different hotels. You may find that you can get the same rate from the hotel site as you could from the travel site but you may also find that the hotel down the street offers an even better rate when you use the travel site.
The other big reason that you want to use the travel site is that the hotel site may not tell you about the best possible deal. Usually their sites are much simpler in design and will only tell you what the regular room rate is. When you use a travel site you may find that if you book at certain times you are able to get a special rate. These are usually not something that the hotel itself will tell you about unless you ask. Since you can't really do this online it is unlikely that you will hear about any deals if you use the hotels site.
If you are worried that you are not getting the best deal by booking through a travel site this is easy enough to deal with. All you have to do is find the hotel that you are interested in using the travel site and see what kind of rate they offer you. It is then a simple matter to go to the hotel's site and see what rate they will offer you for the same dates. This will allow you to get the benefit of being able to compare rates using the travel site and making sure that you are getting the best possible rate.
While you are usually going to get the best rate by using the travel sites one thing that you can do is to call the hotel and ask what their best rate is. You can use the information on the travel sites to really help you with this. Find a hotel of similar quality near to the one that you want to stay at and find the rate that you can get from the travel sites. Then call the hotel you want to stay at and ask them what their best rate is. Of course you are going to want to mention the rate that you were offered by their competitor.