Keeping in mind this all based off of personal experience and there is no right answer. I'm in Australia so once again thcould well be a very different experience to you, but myself many other have a faaaar higher rate of success when booking through either an international(not based in the country of stay)travel agent, or a 3rd party payment plan such as humm
Also I personally don't like using gift cards because they can suddenly bounce before the card that purchases them even does!