Basically exactly this. I looked at Oshkosh WI for the middle of October next year. Middle of the week, in fact, a Wed night, 1 night, 1 person stay:

"Only 1 room left!"

"Booked 14 times in the last 24 hours!" - Oh yeah? This hotel in Appleton WI, with 80 rooms, had FOURTEEN rooms booked for a random Wednesday in September 2018 through booking.com ALONE in the last 24 hours.

Screw dark patterns, that's outright deception, if not fraud.

(edited, I originally said October 2018, when in fact my example was for Wed September 19, 2018).

This is a perfect example of a dark pattern.

The site said “14 bookings in the last 24hours”. You read it as “14 bookings for the date you searched for, in the last 24 hours”.

I don’t believe this is an accident.

To be fair, it said the room has been booked 14 times in 24 hours...not that it had been booked for that specific date 14 times in 24 hours.

To be reverse-fair, they know exactly how people will understand it.

You'd be surprised. Keep in mind it's a Dutch company, Dutch are very direct and explicit in communication.

Speaking of booking way ahead of time, how would you go about making a reservation for the 2024 total eclipse in Mexico? Most booking site allow booking somewhere close to a year in advance, but wonder if anyone had experience with reaching out directly.

Even if you could, that sounds like a bad idea. There's a lot of churn in the hotel industry, the hotel you're booking 7 years out may not even exist in its current form that far in the future, and if it does new/better/cheaper hotels might have popped up next to it. 18 months in advance should be plenty of time.

That was a good one :D , system didn't even realize its trying to fake too much.