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I’ve been checking around the hotel booking sites to prepare for my trip to Europe in late September. My best friend is in Italy and I am seeing her, and of course I’ll be travelling other parts by myself. This is completely free travel that is planned by me, and I have to arrange from air ticket to local hotels, meals, and what to do there. But I really really like that kind of trip and I think it’s the first time since Australia, which is surprisingly alreay 10 years ago from now! At that time I gained working holiday visa which gives permition to Japanese young people (I was young then, hahaha!) to stay and work in Australia for as long as 1 year. So I went there alone and traveled around the Australian continent for about 9 months and came back home. I remember I reserved YHA (youth hostel) in Sydney for the first several days thru web.

Time has passed since then, and now I have to book my hotels thru websites. First I thought of YHA, but on second thoughts, I may want to try budget single room instead as I am not “youth” any more. I know many people stay at YHA regardless of youth or not, but they would stay in a twin or family room because they are travelling with group.

I’ve checked out Booking dot com, Hotels dot com, Expedia.co.jp, and Venere dot com. This was my first time to use these sites, and how useful they are! I can even read the info. in Japanese! Among all, I liked Venere.com the best! For hotel reviews, I referred to tripadvisor and I really liked this site too, because I can see “solo travellers” comments only. But reading through these booking sites and reviews, from one hotel to another, it takes too much time without knowing and here I come to realize I missed a very famous website.

It’s Rakuten Travel!

I have no idea how much my life depends on Rakuten. My credit card is from Rakuten and I save points. My online shopping is basically at Rakuten and I save points. (You can also shop at Rakuten in English and have international delivery from the red banner in the right sidebar of my blog! The one with red round R mark!) In fact, Rakuten is the top scaled web mall in Japan and its service ranges from shopping mall to various kind of things such as online auction, free blog service, online trade service, online job finder service, and so on. Saved points can be used to deduct from the total amount of purchase. The points are therefore almost equal to money to users. If I book through Rakuten Travel, I can again save points! (This service may not be available for non-Japanese people but yet you can use the site to compare the price especially when you travel in Japan or Asian countries.) My life is getting surrounded by Rakuten, just like Google!?

This is the English page of Rakuten although the area is limited to Japan and some other Asian countries. If you travel in Japan, what about having a look?