Planning a trip can be very challenging. When you think of the stress you will go through to book your flight, find a good hotel, move from the airport to the hotel, rent a car, and so on, you will get tired even before you start. If you reach out to some travel agencies to help you to arrange some of these things, they will charge you an exorbitant amount that will discourage you from using them.
If you decide to brace it and pay what they charged, they may even disappoint you by the end of the day. These are just some of the challenges faced by travellers when they plan their trips.
Fortunately, some travel agencies can allow you to use their website to find and book some of the services that will make your journey easier. One such agency is Trip.com. In this essay, we will review this company so that you will know the services it can offer you. Just stay with us to the end of this tour because it will be an adventure you are going to love.
What Is Trip.Com?
Trip.com is an international online travel agency that helps travellers to organize their trips and complete their bookings. The company is one of the numerous businesses owned and operated by Trip.com Group. Trip.com was launched in 2017 and had its headquarters in Singapore. But it operates in more than 200 countries and regions and has more than 400 million active members. So, if you travel a lot or plan to travel recently, the Trip.com reviews are for you.
But is Trip.com legit? Should it be trusted? Does it provide all the services it claims?
We will do our best to answer those questions in this Trip.com review. By the time you’re through reading this essay, you will have a deeper idea of how this travel agency works.
How Does Trip.com Work?
As you must have known by now, Trip.com is an online travel agency that helps people to book flights and buy tickets, book hotels, rent cars, and arrange any other activities that can help travellers to enjoy their trips. But to enjoy any of these, you must first create an account on its platform. We will explain how you can sign up with Trip.com in the next section of this review.
Note that the airlines, car rentals, hotels, trains, and other companies you’re going to book their services through the website of Trip.com do not belong to the travel agency or any of the subsidiaries of Trip.com Group. What the company does is that it brings those companies closer to its members so that they don’t have to go about looking for where to obtain the services they render.
For instance, if you want to book a flight and you’re not sure of the airline that operates the route you’re flying, you can simply use Trip.com to find out. You just have to search for the available airlines that suit you and then pay through the portal provided by Trip.com. In most cases, your payment is directly processed by the airline with Trip.com overseeing the process to make sure you got to your destination on time.
So, all Trip.com does for you is help you to locate a vendor that provides the kind of services you needed for your trip. That is how the company works.
How to Subscribe to Trip.com
You must be a member of Trip.com to be able to enjoy any of its services. The good thing here is that you don’t have to pay to become one of its members. It is completely free to subscribe and use the Trip.com platform for searching, selecting, and paying for any services.
Subscribing to Trip.com is very easy. When you visit the company’s website, you should click the “Sign In/Register” button, and it will take you to the “Sign In” page. Here, the “Register” button is positioned down the page. When you find it, click it to be directed to the registration page.
When you get to the Trip.com registration page, you can decide to register with your Google, Facebook, or Twitter account. But if you will rather separate your Trip.com account from any of your social media accounts, you can simply enter your email address and password in the box provided for them.
When you submit this information, you will be tested to be sure you’re a human being. Here, the system may give you simple instructions on what to do with your phone. For instance, it may ask you to swipe a button to the left, right, up, or down. When you do this, your registration process will be completed, and you can go ahead to search for and book services on Trip.com.
Services at Trip.com
In this section, you will find out the major services Trip.com offers and how you can access them. You will find out about the flights, hotel, car rental, train, tour and tickets, and airport transfer bookings.
Flights
You can easily book your flights through the Trip.com website. To get this done, you should log in to your account, click the “Flights” button, and search for flights. Here, you should use keywords, such as round-trip flights or one-way flights, to search for flights. You should also search for flights based on the packages they offer, their prices, the class, city of departure and arrival cities, the number of passengers you’re paying for, and any other keyword that will help you to locate the flight you want.
After finding the flight that suits you, you should select it and then choose the price package you want. You should then proceed to the page that will ask you for personal information. Here, you will find other packages that you might want to purchase. For instance, if you are going to carry a lot of bags, you may wish to purchase baggage protection and so on. These extra packages are known as add-ons.
When you are satisfied with what you selected, and you’re sure your personal details are correct, you can go ahead and make your payment by clicking “Pay Now”. When the payment is completed and your booking submitted, you will receive a confirmation email from Trip.com or the airline, depending on who received your payment.
You should always check flights related to Frequently Asked Questions on Trip.com websites for any information you want to get. You should also read the terms and conditions of every airline before selecting one. Remember to check out their refund policies too.
Hotels
Booking a hotel through Trip.com is very easy. All you need to do is to log in to your account, search for a hotel by providing the city you’re visiting, choose the hotel you want from the search result, choose a room type, provide your information, and submit the form to Trip.com.
But you need to bear a lot of things in mind before choosing a hotel. One of them is the price of lodging at the hotel. But the major one we want you to look into is finding out how good the hotel is.
First of all, on Trip.com, you will find out the description of the hotel, its location and landmark, and any special amenities or facilities it has. You will also find out the packages attached to its charges and any terms and conditions it will want you to adhere to.
You should equally consider what other lodgers said about the hotel. Here, you have to look at the number of stars the hotel received. If it is rated highly, good. But if its rate is poor, you should know what to do.
So, if you make out time to go through all these and still love what you saw, you should click the orange button with the “Book” tag. Remember, you can’t book a hotel if you’re not logged in to your Trip.com account.
You will also find several hotel-booking-related questions on the FAQ page of the Trip.com website.
Trains
Booking a train ticket at Trip.com is not a difficult task. To do this, you should log in to your Trip.com account and select “Trains” on the homepage menu. This will direct you to a page where you have to “Search” for trains.
To search for trains and buy tickets, you have to select the country where you will be needing the service. Then, you should select the departure and arrival stations or cities as well as the date for the departure.
As of the time of writing this Trip.com review, the only countries and regions that were covered in the sale of train tickets were China, South Korea, Taiwan, Europe, and the United Kingdom. Depending on the country you selected, you may have to choose the type of ticket you want to buy. You can opt for a single, return, or an open return ticket. You have to select all these before you can search for a train.
Car Rentals
You can search and rent cars through Trip.com. When you want to do this, you have to log in to your Trip.com account, select your location, choose the pick-up and drop-off dates, select your age, and then click the blue button with the “Search” tag. This will take you to the page where you can view the cars that will be available for you to use within the days you specified.
Trip.com provides the particulars of the cars that appear on the search result page. For instance, if you want to use a van that was made by Toyota, you can simply scroll through the cars listed on the page to see if there is any available. You will also find the capacity of each car and the amount you will pay to rent it. If you find a car that satisfies your taste, you should go ahead and “Book” it.
Note that you cannot search for cars according to model or capacity. You will have to scroll through the search results to make your pick.
Airport Transfer
Another way Trip.com makes travelling easier and fun-filled for its members is that you can arrange to be picked up or dropped off at the airport through its website.
If you’re booking an airport pick-up, you will need to provide the details of your flight and destination. If you have booked a hotel, you should state the name of the hotel and the city it is located in the space provided for “Destination”. After providing your information, you should click “Search” to find cars available at the moment.
If you’re booking an airport drop-off, you will also provide information about your hotel, the airport where you will take off, the pick-up time, the number of passengers involved and their ages. You can then click the “Search” button to find and select the cars you want.
When you select the type of car you want and book it, the vendor will send you a confirmation email that also contains the name of the driver and the particulars of the car you booked.
Tours and Tickets
You can book and buy tickets for your tour through Trip.com. But, as of the time of writing this Trip.com review, the company only makes this arrangement for visits to a few countries. They include China, South Korea, the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, France, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Japan. You can contact Trip.com customer service to find out when other countries and cities may be added to this list.
To book your tour or buy tickets for it, you should just log in to your Trip.com account, select a location, pick the date for the tour, and then, the type of service you want. For instance, you can choose “Attraction Tickets,” “Day Tours,” “Travel Photography,” “Wi-Fi and Phone Cards,” “Experiences,” or “Travel Services” as the type of ticket you want to purchase.
When you select any of these, you will be directed to a page that displays the events and places you can visit. Trip.com has so many exotic sites and events you may want to visit. So, relax and go through the page until you see what you truly want to experience.
Payment Methods
Trip.com accepts payments made with Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay, PayPal, and Google Pays. Usually, the currency for transacting with the company is US Dollars. Yours may be different, anyway, depending on the country you are living in. However, if you’re going to pay in USD even though it’s not your local currency, your card company will see to the exchange.
Refund Policy
Remember that most of the payments you’re going to make at Trip.com will go directly to the vendor. Even if Trip.com collects the money on behalf of the vendors, it will pay them before your bookings are confirmed. So, the refund policy you need to look out for is that of the company or vendor that provides the services you’re paying for.
So, always remember to check for a vendor’s refund policies before paying for its services.
Can I Use my Phone to Obtain Trip.com Services?
The answer is yes; you can use your internet-enabled mobile phone to search and book services on Trip.com. You can also use your laptop, PC, and tablet for the exercises if you like. The website has versions for all these devices.
You can also download and install Trip.com mobile app on your phone. The app works on phones and tablets with iOS or Android operating systems. So, you can head straight to Google Play Store or Apple App Store for the app, depending on the type of phone you’re using. Alternatively, you can download it from the Trip.com website.
Customer Service
You can contact Trip.com customer service through emails, phone calls, and live chats. But you should consider going through the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page of its website to be sure that what you are looking for hasn’t been discussed already.
Is Trip.com Legit?
It is good if you desire to find out if Trip.com is legit or a scam, especially after seeing all it does and how it makes it easier for travellers to plan and have their trips. Well, from what we could gather, we are certain that Trip.com is legit.
In the first place, Trip.com Group, the parent company, was incorporated in China, and it currently has a lot of subsidiaries. Apart from this, Trip.com, which is the online travel agency it established, was registered in Singapore. This shows that Trip.com is a legitimate company.
The next thing you should worry about is whether Trip can be trusted to offer what it claims. Well, the best way to answer this is by looking for customers’ reviews. On Trustpilot, for example, the travel agency ranked 3.5 out of 5 stars. This came from the reviews of more than twenty-three thousand Trip.com users. There were complaints and commendations, quite alright, but the happy customers confirmed that the travel agency is not doing a bad job. So, you should go ahead and create your Trip.com account because the company is not a scam.
ALSO READ: Hertz Rental Car Review : Is Legit or Scam?
Wrapping It Up
As we promised earlier, this Trip.com review was a tour that must have taken you around the travel agency. You must have discovered the services the agency renders and how you can go about obtaining them. Remember, Trip.com is just the middleman between you and the vendors you are going to book their services.
So, before booking the service of a vendor, read the descriptions of the service and the customers’ reviews it attracted to be sure it is what you wanted.