By: Peter Brassey

Up until recently, when I booked a hotel online, I searched on Google for hotels in the place I wanted to stay, picked the first booking agent that I came across,looked for a suitable hotel and booked it. I'm sure that's what most people do. I may be naive but it never crossed my mind that different booking agencies may be offering the same hotel at a lower rate. I always assumed that the prices being quoted were what the hotel was charging.

Last year, my wife and I decided to book a long weekend at a hotel in Galicia in northern Spain. When I searched on Google, there was a site listed called Hotels Combined which claimed that I could find a better deal by using their comparison search engine. I thought I'd give it a go because these days, every penny counts and if it was possible to save some cash it might be worth a try.

Hotels Combined claim to have the world's largest hotel database with over 200,000 unique hotels in over 20,000 destinations. They are completely independent and list most of the available hotels in the place you want to go with the prices from all the major online booking agencies. I entered Galicia and the dates we wanted and within about twenty seconds a long list of hotels appeared showing what the various booking agencies were charging. I couldn't believe that the prices being quoted by different booking agencies could vary so much. Some hotels we checked had price differences of over thirty euros a night for the same dates and same accommodation. Thirty euros a night would be enough to pay for our meals out. Even the cheaper hotels had savings of around ten euros a night. To compare all the online booking agency prices manually would have meant spending hours trawling through hundreds of websites.

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