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It is the beginning of April, and many of us have already started thinking about summer vacations. To lessen your struggle to find affordable accommodations, today we’ll review the best travel tool – Ratepunk, that you should try out while planning your vacation.
Frequent travellers have their hacks and tricks for planning holidays: following sales, enrolling in loyalty programs, or using various travel tools. Seriously, basically everything you can achieve with RatePunk. It is a browser extension that compares multiple hotel booking sites and shows the lowest available price for the same hotel and dates. This eliminates the need for users to compare prices across multiple sites manually. Who wants to manually open more than 20 tabs and look for the best offer? Only a few. So how does it work?
First, you need to install RatePunk. After that, head to your favourite hotel booking site and enter your vacation dates and destination like usual. Once you hit the search button, a list of hotels will appear along with a little Ratepunk icon. Click on that, and you’ll be taken to the hotel’s page. Then Ratepunk will search all the other hotel booking sites and show you the prices of the same hotel. If you find a great deal, click on the link, and you’ll be redirected to book your room. For instance, this example shows that with RatePunk, you can instantly see that another provider offers the same deal, £150 cheaper than Booking.
You might have noticed that some providers have a coin item next to their suggested price. It means that after booking the hotel, you will be awarded RatePunk coins that you can collect and redeem into money, also known as cashback. This feature works only when the customer logs in RatePunk and claims RatePunk coins after booking accommodation. The amount of coins depends on the total booking value, and you’ll see the final amount on the success page.
Have you ever booked a hotel only to discover the price dropped £120 two days later? That isn’t very pleasant, and you might wonder if there’s anything you can do about it. If you have a RatePunk account, you can also activate the rebooking feature. This way RatePunk sends notifications on all cancellation-free bookings when the price gets lower than the one of the initial booking. So again: you don’t need to spend your time checking the hotel prices yourself, and you ensure you really have the lowest price.
Moreover, a few months ago, this travel tool got another upgrade – RateScore. If you’ve ever tried to choose a hotel, you know how frustrating it can be when the same hotel has different ratings across different booking websites. For example, 7.2 on Expedia, 9 on Booking, and a 5 on Google, leaving you unsure which rating to trust. RateScore is official hotel ratings. RATESCORE takes ratings from all the major hotel booking websites and calculates a final, accurate rating for each hotel. The rating appears alongside the list of hotels, making it easy to compare them and choose the best option for you.
And that’s not all. Recently, RatePunk launched a new feature on Airbnb – price match. The principle of this new extension is the same as the original one. When browsing the Airbnb website, users select their destination and dates, and the extension pops up automatically when they click on their preferred rental. It is helpful because users can find the exact property match for a lower price. (The example shows that it is possible to save £240 on a similar accommodation). In addition, the tool helps identify if the same property is listed on hotel booking sites with lower prices, which may not be visible on Airbnb due to hidden fees like cleaning charges. Also, RatePunk provides a list of alternatives that can help users explore other options, including hotels. This can be particularly helpful for travellers who prefer more comfort and reassurance offered by professionally managed hotels, with amenities like room service.
Let’s sum up the pros of this travel tool. It’s free to use, has no hidden fees, no need to sign up or log in, shows an objective accommodation rating, works on Airbnb, and suggests similar accommodation options. RatePunk also has rebooking and cashback that works for those users who are logged in. But once again, users can use these features for free.
Now let’s talk about the biggest con. RatePunk works well on desktops and iPhones, so Android users can’t use it on their mobiles. It might be a bit disappointing for those who love to plan their trips and do everything via phone. Nevertheless, there are more pros than cons, so you should try RatePunk, see how it works, and have your opinion on this tool.