How to book hotels on Booking without a Mir card

The Booking system very actively joined the sanctions policy against Russia in 2022, and blocked the possibility of paying for reservations with all cards of Russian banks. Mir cards and all cards of Russian banks with the sign of the international payment systems Mastercard and Visa do not work.

In addition to this, Booking generally turned out to be from work in the territory of the Russian Federation and Belarus, and now when requesting hotels in any city in Russia, the result is "Nothing found".

Fortunately, travelers from Russia were not completely left without the possibility of booking hotels abroad. There are many ways to do this, let's talk about them:

• Booking on Booking without a bank card

  There is a very convenient option in the Booking search filters – "Booking without a credit card". If you choose it, then only options that are ready to accept a reservation without prepayment and a credit card will remain in the search. To be honest, there are a lot fewer such options than armor with a map, but there is a lot to choose from, especially from inexpensive options.

• Get a foreign bank card

  Honestly, just for the sake of booking hotels, there is no point in making such a card, it will cost too much. But if you are actively traveling and can't do without a bank card, then this is the way out. It is most accessible to issue a card in one of the neighboring countries, for example, in Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, etc. But this is not easy and the rules of registration by foreign banks for Russians are constantly changing.

  In any case, this card will not be cheap, besides, you will need to replenish it using transfers with commission deduction. In addition, there are now many scammers who offer to issue such a card and deliver it to your address by prepayment. And if you decide to issue it according to offers in social networks or Telegram, then most likely you will not get anything and will lose money.

• Get a Union Pay card from a Russian bank

  Union Pay cards are accepted in Booking, but not all and there may be problems with cards of Russian banks. Considering that the issue of Union Pay in Russia as of 2023 is expensive (from 3000 USD) and expensive maintenance costs (from 250 rubles / month), then alternatively you can issue a virtual card for 0 rubles. For example, such a service is offered by Postbank.

• Use Russian search and booking systems

  Russian hotel search engines quickly rebuilt after the imposition of sanctions, and today you can find and book hotels abroad. At the same time, you can easily pay with the Russian Mir card on domestic sites. Of course, the choice of options will not be as large as at the Booking Office, but in general, hotels are represented almost all over the world. These are the search engines:

  • Ostrovok.ru is an old Russian system that has shown its reliability and convenience over the years.
  • Hotellook.ru is a hotel meta–search engine from the creators of the most popular Russian airline ticket search engine Aviasales. Hotellook can be fully used instead of Booking, because it searches for many other hotel and accommodation booking systems at once.
  • Sutochno.ru – a cool system for finding and booking accommodation from private owners with a guarantee of occupation. It has been operating for more than 10 years and during this time a lot of foreign resorts have appeared in it, ranging from Turkey to the USA. Open the page at the link and scroll to the bottom of the screen, there you will see a list of countries.
  • Yandex.travel – Yandex travel planner with hotels, hostels, and tickets. There are a lot of options, a lot of reviews about places, a good filter with search terms. True, there are not a lot of hotels abroad yet, mostly very expensive options are presented there.