Hotels - Choose your own or go with the agency?

[cojak]

Nice pub with rooms.

These seem to be harder to find. I used a great one in York but it got bought out by Wetherspoons and stopped offering accommodation.

[cojak]

Thanks for the replies and the link. I'll listen to what the agency has to say and look around/negotiate myself and see which is best. The interviewer on the phone also mentioned he had hired contractors from this agency before and helped them with accommodation so can't be all bad I suppose.

The contracts in York by the way.

Don't laugh but I also used the Convent there, they did nice rooms at a very reasonable price

[d000hg]

What?? The agent never is involved in this. All he/she cares about is that you turn up at the client in time.

Someone is pulling someone else's plonker...

If the client is paying your accommodation then you bill the agency or the agency pays directly, before billing the client, so for the to have a preferred supplier just as the client has a preferred agency doesn't seem that weird.

[cojak]

Yes, I'd forgotten that. The last time a client picked up the tab for accommodation for myco was 2007...

[northernladuk]

Had my flight cancelled and we left in Brussels a few years ago so went to the Crown Plaza at the airport and they gave me a rate for the room. I asked for my clients rate and it was more than the walk in rate. How I laughed.

Don't assume the clients rate is the lowest you can get.

[speling bee]

Had my flight cancelled and we left in Brussels a few years ago so went to the Crown Plaza at the airport and they gave me a rate for the room. I asked for my clients rate and it was more than the walk in rate. How I laughed.

Don't assume the clients rate is the lowest you can get.

I have sometimes found government rates unbeatable.

[TheFaQQer]

Had my flight cancelled and we left in Brussels a few years ago so went to the Crown Plaza at the airport and they gave me a rate for the room. I asked for my clients rate and it was more than the walk in rate. How I laughed.

Don't assume the clients rate is the lowest you can get.

Was it anywhere near the Crowne Plaza?

[TheFaQQer]

I have sometimes found government rates unbeatable.

+1

I did a project in Glasgow where the government negotiated rate at the Hilton was £75 B&B, or I could have booked through our corporate travel and paid £125 room only.