If you are planning a trip to Thailand between December 15 and around January 15, you may

Good to know! So I will wait a bit longer until I book my hotel rooms.

 

Regarding hotel rooms: in July I was asked for the first time to give an address where I stay on the immigration card (before, I always left it blank, as I travel around).

 

I have little personal experience in this matter, but read that booking hotel over the internet (I use agoda) is significantly cheaper than the walk-in price.

Regarding hotel rooms: in July I was asked for the first time to give an address where I stay on the immigration card (before, I always left it blank, as I travel around).

I always used to have a problem with this going to the USA when, like you, I'd be travelling to various cities. I then read somewhere that you should put in the first address at which you'll be staying.

 

I have little personal experience in this matter, but read that booking hotel over the internet (I use agoda) is significantly cheaper than the walk-in price.

It's not always the case. The booking engines like agoda.com, hotelbooking,com, asiarooms.com etc. generally negotiate their rates with the hotels for a period of several months in advance. They cannot then go below these rates unless their deals are renegotiated by the hotels themselves.

 

The walk-in rate, on the other hand, is often determined by how full or otherwise the hotel is. If its occupancy rate is low, you will almost certainly get a good discount which may still be negotiable downwards. If occupancy is high, though, your chances of a discount will be very slim.

 

Most travellers reckon it is cheaper to book on a booking engine site like agoda than booking via the hotel's own website. Agoda is a good site and usually has the cheapest rates for Thailand (but not always for other countries). However, more and more hotels are deciding to match the lowest on-line search engine rates by offering either guaranteed lowest rates on their own websites, or some form of rebate if you can find a lower rate elsewhere on the internet within a certain period after you make the booking.

 

But there are usually catches to all internet bookings. The lowest rates available are sometimes non-refundable. For others, cancellations must be made at least several days in advance. Then there is the problem that only a small number of rooms is usually on sale at the lowest price. So if demand is high, you have to book these pretty far in advance.

 

Checking around all the booking engines can be time consuming. So I usually use one site like http://www.hotelscombined.com This provides a wide selection of hotels available on several different search engines. For example, I just checked the availability of rooms in Bangkok between 20 and 23 December. It listed 705 available hotels. Clicking on the Siam City Hotel, it then lists 24 different prices and room types offered on 10 different search engines! The cheapest, incidentally, is agoda.com! But the agoda “hot deal” is non-refundable. Some others are more expensive but offer free breakfast and free cancellation. So you still have to spend a bit of time comparing.

 

Even after all that and finding the lowest rate convenient for you, I still think it is worthwhile also checking the hotel’s own website, especially for last–minute bookings since hotels are better able to adjust their own rates at short notice to stimulate demand.