Review: A Platform For Booking Bus Tickets In Cambodia

The new side of Cambodia, rapidly developing

What images do you have in Cambodia? That’s mine, Angkor Wat, and volunteer?
Japanese biggest shopping mall, Aeon Mall was opened in Phnom Penh in 2014 and the global chain stores like Starbucks came to Cambodia as well.
I think that you have a different image when you see Cambodia now.

Today I would like to introduce one new side of Cambodia, developing rapidly.
That is BookMeBus, a Cambodian platform for booking bus tickets.

What is a Cambodian platform for booking bus tickets “BookMeBus”?

BookMeBus is a platform developed in Cambodia that you can book bus tickets including international bus tickets. BookMeBus was launched in 2015.

Up to now, in Cambodia when you book bus tickets, the main way was to purchase tickets at the site of each bus company or visit a travel agency to purchase. BookMeBus enables people to book many bus companies’ tickets on one website. You can purchase tickets for 29 bus companies and 5 ferry companies via BookMeBus now.

Tried to book a bus ticket via BookMeBus

I had business to go to Bangkok the other day, so I bought a return ticket from Bangkok to Siem Reap via BookMeBus.
I will describe how to book bus tickets on BookMeBus and report the convenience that I felt below.

The conclusion is that I could not say that booking bus tickets in Cambodia became very convenient.

Although the specific details will be described later, the service itself is not a bad thing, but rather the customer service is kind and polite. I think the surrounding environment is not developed and the convenience could not be kept at a high level as a result.

How to book a bus ticket via BookMeBus

Before telling my personal comments of booking a ticket via BookMeBus, first of all, I will show you how to book a bus ticket via BookMeBus.

There were the following 6 steps until booking a bus ticket.

1. Access BookMeBus
2. Sign-up
3. Select the departure city, the destination, the moving date
4. Select the desired bus from the displayed candidate list
5. Input passengers information
6. Select the payment method and input necessary information

As you can see, the flow of booking tickets is the same as booking airline tickets and buying bus tickets in your country, so you can purchase it without any problem even if you are as sight.

1. Access BookMeBus
First of all, access BookMeBus. URL: https://bookmebus.com

Then the following screen will be displayed.

2. Sign-up

Although you can book tickets without Sign-up, those who are planning to book bus tickets more than once are able to save time by signing up.

If you do not sign up, please proceed to the next step.

To register, please click “REGISTER” at the top right of the top page.

Then the registration screen pops up, so please input your email, phone number, password and press the “REGISTER” button. You can use your home country’s phone number.

3. Select the departure city, the destination, the moving date
Next, you will search for bus tickets. Since there are fields of a departure city, a destination, and a moving date on the top page, select any departure place, destination, and moving date as shown in the image below and click the “Find Tickets” button.

4. Select the desired bus from the displayed candidate list
Click the “Find Tickets” button, you can see the list of applicable buses.

The search results that I selected Bangkok as the departure city, Siem Reap as the destination, and 21 March as the moving date.

When you click the name of a bus company, information such as boarding point, getting off point etc. pops up, so decide the desired bus based on those information, departure time and price etc. and click “Book Now” button.

When you click the name of a bus company, information such as boarding point, getting off point etc. pops up

5. Input passengers information
Click the “Book Now” button, the passenger information entry screen will be displayed.

The person who signed up already has the phone number and email input

Please enter number of passengers and each nationality, name, gender, phone number, mail address.
If the number of passengers is 2 or more, you will be required to enter the nationality, name and sex for all. (Gender input is optional)

When you finish entering information, check whether there is no mistake in the email, the journey, schedule. If there is no mistake, check boxes and press the “Checkout” button to proceed to the settlement screen.

6. Select the payment method and input necessary information
Press the “Checkout” button to go to the settlement screen.

Although it corresponds to local payment methods in Cambodia, I think that most of those viewing this article will be settled with VISA or Master Card in the section “International Payment Methods”.

If you click on either VISA or Master Card, you will jump to the Australian credit card transaction service page.

Select VISA or Master Card again and jump to the page where you enter your credit card information.

Enter the information on the credit card used for booking the ticket and click the “Pay Now” button to proceed with settlement processing.

When the settlement process is completed, the booking completion screen is displayed and the purchase procedure is completed with e-ticket arriving at the e-mail address entered soon!

My personal comments when I tried to book a bus ticket via BookMeBus

As I mentioned earlier, I bought a bus ticket for Siem Reap from Bangkok via BookMeBus.
After completing the above six steps, the booking completion screen is displayed and it seemed to make a boking successfully…

I received an email from the customer service, saying “According to Bus ~~ is Full. Could you please change?”
Since there is no thing there is no way to accept it, E-ticket whose time has been changed has been sent.

It is a sad point that booking tickets will not be completed on the site if there is no seat on the bus like this case.
The inconvenience stands out because I completed the purchase same bus ticket on a Thai website before.

I think that this inconvenience is due to the bus company’s reservation status is not being tied to Bookmebus.com’s system.
On the other hand, BookMeBus provide the booking system to some Cambodian bus companies and they enable you to check the seat availability and select the seat on time.

I think that whether the ticket other than the bus company which offered such reservation system can complete the purchase on the site also becomes the key to switch from the existing ticket purchasing means.

The correspondence of customer service when there was no vacant seat was wonderful, and the other online Cambodia bus booking service has not functioned as customer service, so it can be said that BookMeBus offers the best user experience in the Cambodian online booking service.

In high seasons it is more smooth to contact the travel agency and purchase directly, in other seasons BookMeBus is convenient more than other conventional ways.

I think that it will be useful as a choice for foreign travelers to reduce wasteful cost, because they have to pay a considerable margin when arranging a bus ticket at a guest house or hotel.

If you plan to move between Cambodia and neighboring countries like Thailand and Vietnam, you should check BookMeBus.

URL: BookMeBus

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