Before lunch, we wanted to snag a few more hotel reservation services to finish up our autumn getaway research. The more you travel, the more you crave convenience when making your hotel reservations, a feature that hotel booking sites definitely boast. Star Reviews was pleasantly surprised with one site we happened to find, GTA Hotels. Although we had our doubts and didn’t recall this site as being a top player in the hotel booking industry, we’re happy we found it! The website interface was visually appealing without bombarding us with too much text. We liked the warm colors and bright images, which reeled us right in. See what else we found below.
What’s New?
- Group Rates - Traveling with 10 or more? You get the opportunity to save on bundle discount hotel reservations.
- News Alerts- See which hotels are undergoing renovation or have new features
- Limited time offers-International destinations & savings
Star Reviews Favorite Features
Find Activities - This isn’t merely a hotel reservation service. If you want to have fun during your weekend in the Adirondacks, you can enter criteria and search countless things to do wherever you’re heading. Kayaking? Broadway show? Skydiving? It’s all here.
GTA Hotels Features:
- Limited time offers
- Detailed hotel information
- International rates and booking
- Customer testimonials
- Free membership-including great features and trip planning resources
- Manage your bookings
- Rebate program
- Featured destinations
Navigating the GTA Hotels website:
We thought this site was fairly straightforward and no-frills in its design and layout. GTA Hotels has made their website incredibly easy to use. For those who know exactly where and when they’re traveling, a search box awaits you at center page. If you’re the more adventurous type, shop around through featured destinations and ‘Our Picks.’ We thought the page load time could be improved, as it took longer to produce results than some of their competitors’ websites. However, we liked how ‘Help,’ ‘My Bookings,’ and ‘Special Offers’ were all clearly explained on a link toolbar.
GTA Hotels Search Results:
All in all, we weren’t thrilled with GTAHotel’s listings. Although when entering broad search criteria such as ‘New York City,’ you do receive a bunch of hotels, we had trouble finding rooms available for our desired weekend at Wynn Las Vegas and Loews Miami Beach. In fact, we retried the process and no rooms were available for our desired nights or even a few weeks later. This left us wondering what customers who have specific hotel names in mind would do. We were given tons of hotel alternatives, but a tough-to-please traveler will not appreciate this.
Booking on GTA Hotels:
Star Reviews filled in our city of choice, number of nights and how many people we were traveling with. Our plethora of search results yielded boxes with ‘Info’ and ‘Book’ under each listing. There is an instant confirmation, which we applaud. When you choose to book, you will be prompted to fill out your personal information for your GTA Hotels free membership, as well as payment information. Members receive updates and hotel discounts through email, so why not sign up? You can always go back and look at your reservation details via GTA Hotels’ log-in box or even cancel your reservation if you so choose.
Price Comparison:
Standard Room Sept. 27-29, 2007 Total Booking Price
|
Hotel Name |
Hotels.com |
All-Hotels.com |
GTA-Hotels.com |
Trip
Advisor |
Hotel Discounts |
The-Hotels.com |
|
Wynn Las Vegas |
$1,246.02 |
$738.00 |
n/a |
$872 |
$675.04 |
$1,806.08 |
|
Milford Plaza |
$667.38 |
$650.97 |
$584.00 |
n/a |
$490.48 |
$606.15 |
|
Loews Miami |
$591.83 |
n/a |
n/a |
$702 |
$623.56 |
n/a |
Customer Support
The Help link gives users an extensive FAQs database and the option to look at their ‘Customer Care Center.’ We found both to be pretty comprehensive and there is even an online demo for you technology lovers. If you have gone through the Help database and your question is still not answered, look in the left hand column under Self Service Help and you can send GTA Hotels an email via online form.
We immediately received confirmation and within three hours we had a response, which we loved! We would have liked to see telephone support, but we think you can receive most answers to your questions through their email and FAQs section.
Upside:
Free membership with discounts. Effortless booking. Good rates.
Downside:
Cannot compare their rates against other hotel booking sites’. Several hotels and dates unavailable. No telephone support.
Summary:
Overall, we felt that GTA Hotels offers a pretty good hotel reservation service. You cannot really expect the world, however, as not all hotels you may be interested in are available on this site. We had trouble finding any rooms at all at two, well-known hotels in two major cities. Prices on most hotel rooms, that we did find, were fabulously priced and we were pleased to see a simple-to-use search mechanism. The site is user-friendly, without a ton of frills. Customer support was great, but it lacked telephone support, which is a must in our eyes.