Travel Republic

Travel Republic is an online travel agent I have used a few times before to book holidays with. You can book flights and hotels together, a flight only, hotel only, airport parking, insurance, transfers and car hire on this website although I have only done Hotel and transfers. They have destinations worldwide and plenty of choices when it comes to star ratings and all inclusive options.

The search process is simple, you just type in your destination, you can choose a whole country, city or a specific hotel you want to stay in. Then you add your dates, how many rooms you require and how many adults and children are in each room. You can then select the currency you would like to view the prices in.

Depending on how many results your search produces you may wish to narrow this down. This is simple to do with some boxes to check at the top. I usually leave the 1 and 2 star hotels empty and see how many I am left with. You can then select what board you would like to go, if you just want self catering of bed and breakfast, click these 2 boxes. Some may only want all inclusive so you can just click that box and your search should be narrowed down significantly. The other option is to use a slide bar to select a maximum price per person.

You can browse your search results as a list, on a map or as a picture album. There is a drop down list where you can select which order you would like your results to show in, whether it is by the price, star rating or what they recommend. For each apartment or hotel there are usually a few room choices you can choose from if you want to book. You may have a choice between a studio or an apartment, a double or twin, seperate rooms or a family room, sea views or garden views etc.

Before booking there is quite a lot of helpful information available on the hotel/apartment. They will list the facilities available, what is included in the price, photos of the accommodation and links to user reviews and previous customer's ratings.

If you find a hotel which you want to book, this website has the useful feature of paying a deposit. It costs you no more to pay this way and secures the room and the price. I have often found rooms and thought I'd wait until pay day only to find out the price has gone up. You have until 4 weeks before check in to pay the remaining balance. The last time I booked with them the room was around 300 and the deposit was 55.

There are still bargains to be found on this site especially when they have sales and offers but with many websites and hotels doing price guarantees the prices are similar on most websites.

I have booked with this website 4 or 5 times for myself and a couple of other times for others and the descriptions and photos of the accommodation have been accurate, good value for money and simple airport transfers. This is one of the first places I look when I am looking for accommodation.

There is a section to comment on any requirements you may have from your room but they do ask anyone who may need an adapted room or has special requirements due to disabilities to book by phone to make sure this is available before booking.

There is also a section where you can message them to see what deals they can offer you for large group bookings. You can select and comment on how many rooms you require and how many people will be in each room. I never used this but it is a good idea.

They take several payment methods including visa, laser, american express and barclaycard. There is a small booking fee or around a fiver for using your card.

I have sent emails to travel republic regarding bookings before, they are quick to respond and very helpful. I accidentally printed off the wrong page with one booking and the hotel phoned travel republic who faxed the right page to them immediately.

The phone number is a UK landline and not one of these numbers that charge £1 a minute and I have never been in a queue for longer than a couple of minutes.

I would definitely book through Travel Republic again and would recommend them to others. Now I want to book a holiday.