Back in October 2003 when my father got really sick he was moved to a hospital away from home. This required a hotel stay on us for a week at a time or longer. My sister and I both went to an online company that would help us in locating hotel rooms in the area for the best price. This was a great help to us.

We were able to book the room, print off our confirmation information and go! Just that simple! It’s always nice in life to find things so simple and things that make a hard time easier to get through. The last thing we wanted or needed was to have to worry about hotel accommodations.

The Online Store

www.expedia.com was the place for us in searching a hotel in Brunswick, GA, when daddy was hospitalized there. As I stated above both my sister and I had actually gone to the same place and got the same deal. Thankfully we spoke with one another first before actually booking!

When you go to www.expedia.com you find a well-organized home page allowing you to choose from hotels, airfare, car rentals, cruises, deals, maps and more. You find these links across the top of the homepage. You can click either one and you will be taken to a page that allows you to choose from a city listed or use the search for you city of interest. In our case we used the search.

You can also put in the dates you will be arriving and leaving. However, you do not have to do this in order to find hotels in the city of interest.

After typing in Brunswick Georgia into the search engine I was then taken to a page that listed all the hotels in the area along with a description of each with pictures of each as well as price of each. We also had the option to call each hotel if needed.

I could also choose a location around a specific area such as an airport, mall or specific address. This made the experience at www.expedia.com even better I thought because we wanted to be as close to the hospital as possible.

I was also able to find out what attractions if any were in the area, restaurants, etc., in the area as well.

I chose the hotel of choice and was then taken to that hotel home page where I was able to put in the date of arrival and departure (the departure date can always be changed), the price of the room per day, hotel amentias as well as a map to the hotel.

I was also able to click on pictures of the hotel to get a better view of the place and the rooms. Most hotels do offer a Continental Breakfast and certainly we were looking for this to save us some money. We were also looking for a hotel that offered a restaurant or at least some close by. I was able to find all of this information for each hotel with no problems.

After making my choice I was then ready to check out where I made an account, which was free, made my choice again and paid via credit card (all major credit cards excepted) in a secure location. There were no hidden charges and I was given a confirmation number, which I printed off. When I got to the hotel there were no problems at all. In fact, this particular hotel gave us an even better discount as we stayed for over a week and considering the bad news we had gotten about my father they wanted to help all that they could.

I could also bookmark any hotel that I wanted to or email to a friend or family member.

Other Stuff

At www.expedia.com I can also save my trips and a personal profile. This is handy so if I need to go back to a location I can simply click on my trips and see where I stayed before or I can make new locations. I can choose from many selections such as Beaches, Cruises, Golf Courses, Family Vacations, Mountain or Casino locations. I can name each trip personally making it easier to find when I want to go back and take a look.

I can also use the “Express Booking” option, which allows me to keep my credit card information on file. This way I do not have to keep re-adding that information each time.

My personal profile can have my name only or I can add other family members.

To make an account all I had to do was put in my name and a user name with password. That’s it! Very easy to do!

The customer service is available to answer questions should I have any via email or phone. I do suggest reading the Customer Support information found under that link. There is a lot of information about the site as well as various contact information.

I can also use the site for maps, which I like, since we are planning our summer vacation. The map section is helping us to find the best possible way to travel to our destination.

www.expedia.com offers a variety of services such as: Travel Alerts, Flight Status, Airport Information, Deals via Email, Currency Counter, Driving Directions, Weather and Passport Information.   I can access any of these links from any page. There are found on the lower left hand side of the page. In fact, all links are found on the left hand side of the page.

How I Feel

The site was very easy to follow and use. The links were quick and I was taken to each page with no problems.

One thing that I really like about it was that once we got to the hotel we had to stay longer than expected, and the hotel was unable to give us the Expedia price without going back through the site to book. So, I called my niece who went on the Internet for me to www.expedia.com and walked her through the site with no problems. She was able to follow the site to the letter and get us booked once again. After that the hotel was able to keep giving us the discounted rate. The reason we had to go back and rebook was because we had only reserved one night, thinking that was all we would have to stay and as mentioned above it didn’t turn out that way.

The prices of the hotels were competitive to say the least, however some of the hotels did seem to be a little high for a discount hotel site. But overall, the prices were competitive.

The experience with www.expedia.com has brought us lots of discounted rooms in Georgia and Florida. We use it now all the time. In fact, my sister and her husband use it when doing all their traveling for school or pleasure. We use it for hospital stays and pleasure.

I can always depend on www.expeida.com to be there for me and give me the best possible rate and we still use the site and will continue to do so.

I hope that this has helped in some kind of way.

God Bless!

©LKD 2004