How to book hotels abroad with a Mir card?

Experienced tourists are already aware that no bank cards of Russian banks are accepted on the good old Booking and Agoda, as well as on foreign aggregators such as Hotel Combined, Trivago and others. some of them, in an "anti-russian" impulse, even went so far as to delete russian from the menu from their websites. It is impossible to book and pay for hotels on them not only with Mastercard or Visa bank cards of Russian banks, but also with UnionPay, moreover, neither with a physical card nor with a virtual one.

However, there are still opportunities for booking hotels abroad for Russian travelers, even with payment by Mir card. Let's talk about them:

Website Trip.com

This site is just a godsend for Russian travelers and the best replacement for Booking and Agoda. Almost everything that is on Booking and Agoda is on Trip.com at about the same price, and all without any problems, you can pay with a Mir ruble card or previously issued Russian banks Mastercard and Visa. At least for now, in March 2023, everything is working. So we recommend starting the search with Trip.com, and personally we do just that.

Book on Booking and Agoda without payment

These systems have a "Booking without credit card" filter. You can enable it, and there will be objects that are ready to accept reservations without prepayment and even entering bank card data. But there are a minimum of such options, and besides, as travelers write in reviews on forums, they often cancel reservations for tourists from Russia.

Use Russian search and booking systems

There are still foreign hotels in Russian hotel reservation systems, but their number is very limited, especially in unfriendly countries, and prices are higher for the same facilities as in Trip.com . But for some countries there are a lot of options. For example, in Turkey and Egypt, you can even book facilities and rent housing cheaper. Here it is necessary to approach each situation individually, and do a search on all systems.

• Ostrovok.ru is an old Russian system that has shown its reliability and convenience over the years. The prices are the same as Trip.com , but the number of objects is many times smaller, and what's bad, there are almost no budget options.
• 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. However, there are not a lot of hotels abroad yet, and mostly the most expensive options are presented there.