About Trip.com UK

Trip.com is one of the largest travel booking sites in the world, and its British storefront sells flights, hotels, trains, car hire, attractions and packages in sterling.

What can be booked

Flights draw on several hundred airlines, and the search will happily build an itinerary from two separate carriers, which is where some of the lower fares come from. Hotels and self-catering run alongside, with train tickets covering Britain, Europe and the Asian networks the company knows best, and car hire and airport transfers filling the gaps. Attractions and tours are booked as tickets rather than as part of a package, and there is a flight-plus-hotel option that prices the two together.

Where a discount code is entered

The code box sits on the final booking page, after the traveller details and before payment, not in a basket, because there is no basket in the ordinary sense. Enter the code there and check that the price shown against the payment method actually falls before you confirm, since travel bookings are far harder to unwind than a parcel. Codes here usually carry conditions on the type of booking, the destination or a minimum spend, and one written for hotels will not move a flight fare.

The self-transfer question

This deserves attention before booking a cheap flight anywhere. When an itinerary combines two airlines that have no agreement between them, you collect the bags and check in again yourself, and a delay on the first leg is your problem rather than the airline's. The site does label these, and it sells its own protection against exactly that situation. On a tight connection the saving is often not worth the risk, and on a generous one it usually is. Read which kind you are buying.

Rewards, apps and cancellation terms

Members earn credit on bookings and the app frequently carries prices the website does not, which is worth checking before paying. Hotel rooms come in two flavours, refundable and not, and the gap between them is the price of certainty rather than a discount. Free-cancellation rooms can normally be cancelled up to a stated hour on a stated day, so put that date somewhere you will see it. On flights, the fare rules rather than the site decide what a change will cost.