Review of eurobookings.com

This is a sponsored post. The opinions expressed are those of the staff writers at BootsnAll.

www.eurobookings.com is a directory of european accommodation. Their service is free (no booking or cancellation fees), bookings are made without a credit card (you pay at the hotel when you arrive, so no advance fee) and they claim their volume of reservations allows them reduced rates at their listed hotels. They’ve been in the business for 11 years now and correspond with you via email in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish or Portuguese.

The site itself is easy to navigate, I (being the visually-oriented type) simply clicked on Ireland on their map of Europe and was transported to their Irish section. One click – not bad.

However, you could not use this site to book a stay in the beautiful Irish county of Westmeath.

Allow me to expound: My inclination was to use the site to book a trip to the lovely Irish midlands. I began with the attempt to peruse their offerings around Knock airport, which has just launched their transatlantic services. Then I thought I’d have a look at County Westmeath’s many hotels, as these are the areas I’m familiar with. First problem: no Knock airport. That’s fine, it’s a small airport and the transatlantic thing is new. Second problem: no County Westmeath.

What? says you. Yes, the fair County of Westmeath is omitted entirely from their list of Irish states/provinces.

It came as no surprise then that our burgeoning town of Athlone is missing as well. Athlone is chock full of 4-star accommodation, folks. Here in town we have a Radisson SAS (one of 8 in Ireland), the four-star Hodson Bay Hotel on Lough Rea, The luxurious Prince of Wales Hotel, our internationally famous Shamrock Lodge, the Wineport Inn (currently featured weekly on RTE’s The Restaurant television show), The Creggan Court Hotel – I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but that doesn’t include the massive Town Centre Hotel currently under construction (the 2nd largest in Ireland) and there are at least a handful of other large hotels under construction here.

That doesn’t even get into our innumerable B&Bs, hostel or alternative places to stay.

Enough righteous indignation, I decided to check out their site for its usefulness in other areas of Ireland. Galway, I decided. I checked the Travelodge Galway. A double room for this weekend in the Galway Travellodge on eurobookings.com price was €119. On the Travelodge’s own site it was €109. On www.ireland.ie (Bord Failte -the Irish tourism authority- ‘s website) it was €99.

In fairness, eurobookings.com is the only of the three that doesn’t require a credit card to book the room.

While it sounds like a great idea, my cursory perusal of their site shows it to have a good interface, but not to live up to its claims of affordability and to be badly researched (how do you leave out a county of Ireland – are there not lists and maps in the world?).