Sometimes the direct prices are actually more. Your best bet for sticking it to them might be to use an alternative booking service.

Booking.com takes an 18% commission. Only a severely incompetent business would refuse to give you a lower price in exchange for them not having to pay that 18%.

All the big franchises (Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Hyatt, Choice, Wyndham) will give you a cheaper “member” price at their direct website. Being a member is free, it’s just like airline miles and you even earn points.

Commissions vary depending on a lot of factors. My property in the south of France, we pay 10% and it’s well worth it. It’s incredible lead generation and saves us a ton on marketing and advertising. I’m happy to pay the commission because for small hotel owners, it’s much easier than having to spend continuously on marketing.

Right. But imagine you have your rooms listed for $220 in your own site, and for $200 on Booking. If someone books on Booking, you get $180. If someone calls and asks to book at the rate they see at Booking, but directly with you, you make $200.

If I understand this correctly, such deals should be forbidden by contracts with property aggregators.

And small hotels will give you extras as they're not allowed to lower the price but can give you more service. However, wouldn't do that in countries you're not comfortable dealing with as you lose the protection that booking.com gives you.

Except that hotel room bookings work a lot differently for lot of hotels than any other types of bookings. Hotels usually sell rooms in bulk to Priceline, Expedia and other OTAs and possibly keep some for their own funnel. So they may not have the same incentive to sell at that price you saw on Priceline.

That is not true for the chain hotels in the US. They also all have best price guarantees where if you see a lower publicly advertised price than the hotel’s own website, then you get a free night. But that never happens since it’s all updated in real time now, and the hotel’s systems will not allow reservations at a lower price.

Actually I've been able to use Best Price Guarantees many times. But it's not as easy to use as you say it is: each program has it's own set of complicated terms and conditions and often reject seemingly reasonable requests. Also, usually the chain needs to independently verify the rate, which can take up to 1-2 days, and by that time, the rate may have changed. Also, often you need to book the lowest rate for the guarantee, which could be a nonrefundable rate.

Easy/Lenient/Refundable: Starwood (20% off) Marriott (25% off)

Easy/Lenient/Nonrefundable: Hilton ($100 certificate)

Medium/Nonrefundable: Hyatt ($50 certificate)

Hard/Nonrefundable: IHG (1st night free)

And who is that in Europe? I tried both Agoda and Hotels.com without much success.

In Europe, I always check the price directly from the hotel, if it's last minute, I check hotels tonight and if the price is really much cheaper in booking.com, I call the hotel and get them to match the price.

I sometimes use hotels.com though since I often can get a 5% cashback plus their reward scheme which gives me a free night every ten nights (effectively a 10% discount)

Oh and for reviews, I check tripadvisor since, on the contrary to booking.com, they actually publish bad reviews.

>"Oh and for reviews, I check tripadvisor since, on the contrary to booking.com, they actually publish bad reviews."

But what good is publishing bad reviews if they are fake? See:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/avaseave/2014/01/27/when-online...

Agoda = Booking.com

Agoda is a Priceline subsidiary, like Booking.com

Perhaps calling the hotel to ask if they'll match the online price will work?

I book via hotels.com to get there 8% discount (on hotels that apply), or booking when/if the hotel is on the genius 10% list. But yeah, if the hotel I want to stay in isn't on a discount on either site I'll book direct if the price is the same/less. I do travel often without a computer and need to book quickly so will just use booking or hotels app, as it's easy and quick, whereas the booking direct is usually rather hard. + I don't usually book within a hotel chain enough to gain any rewards, which you do on hotels.