Hotel comparison sites are pretty much a dime a dozen these days. Hotel and airline websites seem to come and go faster than you can review. Some succeed, others flop. Some emulate, others innovate. The goal of a hotel comparison is to ultimately make sales, but also provide a unique and intuitive user experience for those booking the hotels. Information should be laid out in a clear and concise manner, and should ultimately be as simple as humanly possible. Booking hotels is hardly the funnest part of travel, nor is sitting down and comparing “Well this one has free breakfast” or “Yea, but this one has free wifi”. Typically I’m the gambling type and go with whatever is most convenient location wise. Who wants to save a few dollars if it means you’re stuck in a hotel in the middle of nowhere. EasyToBook appears to be one of the few who’ve got it figured out, not just for hotels in Canada, but for hotels all over.
First Glance
As you first arrive on EastyToBook it will appear like many other booking sites. The “Find Hotel Deals” section is prominently displayed to give the user a quick and easy way to find what they’re looking for. Thumbs up for making that easy, its surprising how few hotel booking websites tend to ignore that “ease of use” aspect. Whenever I’m looking at a website and considering if this is something I’ll share with family, I like to know that if need be I could phone the company. That extra assurance just builds trust, and reaffirms that there are real people behind EasyToBook, so if Grandpa or Grandma get lost, they’re always able to phone for help.
Safety in Numbers
As you scroll down the homepage, you’re given a massive number showing you exactly how many people have booked through EasyToBook. That numerical aspect can be make or break for me when it comes out to handing out credit card details online. In order for a company to completely gain my trust I like to know that I’m not their first customer. Directly below the “Safety in Numbers” field, you’re given a list of six reasons why EasyToBook is awesome. All seem to be great reasons, and the social media connection below that just aids in that “trust building factor”. Hats for this section guys!
Testing out the Hotel Search
Performing a quick search for Toronto, then Halifax, then Saskatchewan, I realized that EasyToBook has the ability to book hotels across Canada. This is a huge “essential” for me, given how many km’s I tack on across the country. As I pull up a search a fancy jquery type notification pops up informing me the last booking for this particular hotel was 10 days ago. Kind of a nice feature, and good looking to boot.
As I dive deeper into my search for a hotel I’m presented with an image gallery with countless photos of my “bed to be”. With their photo gallery I’m able to see the bedrooms, dining rooms, restaurantes, view from outside, the lobby, and convention centers attached to the hotel. Great feature if you ask me. My one beef is that I find the photos rather small. I’m a sucker for giant photos, and in this day and age, those extra pixels make all the difference. Eventually you get to the customer reviews, which are always a great addition when it comes to spending money wisely.
Getting my compare on
As I noodle my way through my search I get to the prices. They’re displayed in a clean colour coded table which makes it easy to ensure that I’m looking at the right price. The savings on these hotels appear to be pretty standard, while they’re not crazy expensive, they’re not giving them away either. Although I’m sure you’ll be hard pressed to find any hotel comparison website that is. I save one of my searches, and I’m pleasantly greeted by the fancy jquery again. My selection is saved along the bottom of the website in their “Compare” section.
Once I manage to find 3 hotels I’d consider booking, I hammer my cursor on the compare button, in hopes that the power of my click will somehow take off a few extra dollars. While unfortunately that didn’t happen, I was however, presented with a nice comparison chart. With a quick glance I was able to determine which hotels got the breakfast sausage out for its customers, and which are providing free wifi. Those little additions honestly do sway my decision. Wifi trumps all, but sausage and bacon is a very close second!
Proceeding to the checkout and paying is as simple as the rest of the website. EasyToBook pulled all the stops in order to make every step of the booking process as simple as humanly possible. While there’s a few little things I would change about the website (particularly just larger photos), all in all I feel if you can’t find what you’re looking for here, you probably won’t have much luck any place else. The hotel reviews were laid out beautifully, and information was a breeze to find. EasytoBook should be dishing out high fives to one another over what they’ve created.
What are the benefits of using EasyToBook.com?
- Very simple step by step process to booking your next hotel.
- Hotel prices are discounted up to 80% off, that’s a huge savings and in Canada, any extra help is worth looking into.
- They offer immediate confirmation with no hidden fees or extra charges
- Great comparison tool to evaluate which hotel can offer you more
- Read reviews of past customers to get a detailed view of what the hotel is like
Additional Info
Visit their website Easytobook.com
Follow them on twitter at @easytobook
Book over the phone at 1-877-346-3614
Read their travel blog
This review was sponsored by EasyToBook. If you’re interested in getting your website or product reviewed you can find out more here. I do these types of reviews in order pay the bills that come with running a website.