You probably know Booking.com as the place you book hotels. What you might not know is that it has been steadily building out an attraction tickets arm - and is recently starting to market it more frequently, which suggests it is now taking that side of the business seriously.
The platform now sells tickets to theme parks, tours, museums and experiences across more than 5,000 cities in 115 countries. For a Disney-going audience, the relevant part of that is Florida - Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, SeaWorld and the rest of the Orlando area are all in there. It puts Booking.com in direct competition with the specialist ticket sellers that many UK holidaymakers already use, such as FloridaTix and Attraction Tickets. If you want to know who's better, Floridatix or Attraction Tickets, we have a handy Attraction Tickets Vs FloridaTix article.
So is it worth using? The honest answer is: sometimes, depending on the price and the currency. Here is what to consider.
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How Does Booking.com Compare to the Specialist Sellers?
FloridaTix and Attraction Tickets have built their entire business around selling theme park tickets to UK visitors. That means they tend to offer GBP-priced tickets, ABTA and ATOL protection on holiday packages, UK-based customer support and often a few extras thrown in - free dining cards, buy-now-pay-later options, and that sort of thing. They also tend to lock in the exchange rate at the time of purchase, which takes the currency gamble off the table for the customer.
The Booking.com attraction tickets, by contrast, sit within a much larger platform that is not specifically built for UK visitors heading to Florida. You are not going to get the same level of hand-holding, and the deals will vary. Where Booking.com does have an edge is convenience - if you are already using it to book your hotel, having tickets in the same place has an obvious appeal. It also has the breadth of lots of other tourist attractions beyond the theme parks, which means an enormous range of experiences beyond just the big parks.
Check the latest attraction prices on Booking.com here >
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The Currency Question
Here is where it gets interesting for UK buyers, and where a bit of homework before you click "pay" can save you a reasonable amount of money. Some attraction tickets on Booking.com are priced and charged in US dollars rather than pounds sterling.
If the pound is strong against the dollar at the time you book, you will get more ticket for your money. If it is weak, you will pay more than you expected. Unlike specialist UK ticket sellers who often lock in a GBP price at the point of sale, a USD-charged ticket means the final cost in pounds depends entirely on when you book and what rate your bank or card provider applies. Most standard UK debit and credit cards charge a foreign transaction fee - typically around 2.75% to 3% - on any purchase made in a foreign currency. On a family's worth of Walt Disney World tickets, that fee adds up faster than you might like. If you are booking USD-priced tickets anywhere - not just Booking.com - it is worth checking whether you have a fee-free card available.
Cards such as Chase, Starling, Monzo, Halifax Clarity and a handful of others charge no foreign transaction fees and apply the Mastercard or Visa interbank rate, which is typically better than the rate your high street bank would give you. If the pound is sitting at a decent rate against the dollar and you have one of these cards available, booking USD-priced tickets can occasionally work out cheaper than a pre-converted GBP price - particularly if the specialist sellers have put in a small margin into their exchange rate. It is not a guarantee of savings, and it requires a bit of real-time checking rather than just clicking through. But for anyone already using a fee-free card for their holiday spending - which, honestly, everyone travelling to the US should be doing anyway - it is worth factoring in.
Check the latest attraction prices on Booking.com here >
Who Does Booking.com Source Tickets From?
When you book attraction tickets through Booking.com, they are sourced via a company owned by TUI. TUI don't offer standalone attraction tickets outside of their own package holidays, but their ticketing infrastructure is what powers the packages TUI sells internally - so there is some comfort in knowing that Booking.com is using a well-established operator behind the scenes rather than an unknown third party.
What Is Booking.com's Attraction Ticket Feature Actually Good For?
Beyond the big Florida parks - where the specialist sellers have spent years building UK-specific products that are hard to beat on service - Booking.com's attraction ticket offering comes into its own for the other stuff. Boat tours, city passes, skip-the-line museum tickets, transfers with included entry, day trips from your resort. If you are padding out an Orlando holiday with a day in Tampa or a trip to the Kennedy Space Center, Booking.com's range is wide and the convenience of having it in one place is hard to argue with.
It is also worth noting that Booking.com's Genius loyalty programme now includes attractions in its earning structure, so if you are already a Genius member and booking your hotel through the platform, stacking attractions on top could help you progress through the tiers.
For the main Disney and Universal tickets though, check FloridaTix and Attraction Tickets first. Then check Booking.com. Then decide.
