iBilik.sg - A Pillow to Rest My Head

If you are travelling to Singapore and have problems looking for a place to stay, look no further. iBilik is arguably the most comprehensive database of rooms and places to stay, boasting of more than 10,000 accommodation in Singapore for that truly 'home away from home' experience.

The database include a colourful mix of town district and neighbouring heartlands in Singapore. There are many travellers nowadays opting for homestays instead of hotels to soak in the local atmosphere. The site not only offer homestay accommodation to holiday travellers, but it also caters to anyone looking for a longer stay like students and expatriates.

The database is growing tremendously as accommodation owners can post your spaces for rent to be listed too. All you need to do is sign up as a user (free registration) and you are good to go. The database is categorised under two listings namely; homestay/short-term rental and room rental. Each category consists of detailed description of the spaces such as room availability, accessibility, and rental rate. What is good about the room rental section is they include the direct contact of the owner. This removes the hassle of worrying whether the owner would respond when contacted, or if he/she received the email in the first place.

Another plus point of the site is its short-term/homestay rentals. I particularly liked the room information such as rates, condition, images, directional map, calendar of availability and online booking facility, all made available on one page. What frustrates me about an accommodation and travel site usually is the need to click and visit so many pages to finally arrive at the booking facility, so this is therefore a very user-friendly feature of this section.

About navigating your way on the site, it includes a 'How To Use' section if it is your first visit to the site.

Of course, with so many online frauds and security issues about purchasing and releasing your credit card details online, this is a major determining factor of the site's credibility and whether visitors would eventually make their online booking through the site. It is great relief though to find that this site guarantees a secured payment system, a refund policy and quality of the rental owners. They state that all owners and hosts must go through a strict and rigorous screening process before they are being approved and suspicious/rogue hosts would be removed from the database if they are reported by customers.

Overall, I would safely and satisfactorily say that it is the best and reliable site if you are looking for such accommodation in Singapore. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best, I would rate the site as follows:-

Content/Informative : 7/10
User-friendliness: 7/10
Payment Security, Refund and Customer Safety Policy: 8/10