I had to recently book a hotel for a few nights. Hotels are mostly empty because of COVID. When I called to book a room it was clearly a script being followed with high pressure tactics including saying rooms are filling up quickly. Once I arrived at the hotel it looked mostly dead, and I when I asked the manager who was helping me behind the counter, he said they were at 10% capacity. It should also be illegal for businesses to misrepresent their inventory.

So many websites resort to this, frankly it's embarrasing used car salesmen level tactics. My favorite is the petition websites like change.org. The ticking of people signing the petition before your eyes is entirely artificial. Refresh the page and the count resets.

Oh so like reddit today!

To be fair, they had just experienced a sudden exponential surge in interest: your phone call.

/s?

Seems highly redundant.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority had a clamp-down on exactly this last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/06/hotel-booki...

I had learned after moving to the US (pretty much any western country), it is all about "wordplay". What the agent did was not illegal. What they said could be true in their own terms.

I don't know what's more amusing, the fact that they didn't change the script at all for the current conditions, or that there are probably still people falling for it.

I agree with the sentiment. But, it should not be illegal to lie about your inventory. As long as you are receiving what is promised by them at a price that you both agree, its all fair game.

I don't understand this position, how is it not a form of fraud?

Atleast in the EU it even is forbidden to use false information ("only X rooms/seats/items left" if that isn't true) as a sales tactic.

Deceiving the the other party is a market failure of asymmetrical information. Like being told about a car being all peaches but it's actually a lemon. It's unlawful in most developed countries and is a great way to get a fine and/or a prison sentence.

This can come to a head when traveling.

Years ago, I had used hotels.com to book a reservation. I had booked a hotel near the destination airport for one night before continuing to travel to my actual destination. The hotel advertised that they can give refunds or change booking with 24 hours notice.

My flight was cancelled and rescheduled for the next day, making that one-night hotel stay a waste if I couldn't reschedule or get a refund for it.

Apparently hotels.com doesn't have the same policy as the hotel I had a reservation at, so while still in the airport, I had to argue with about 3 layers of people before it was made apparent that I wasn't speaking to the hotel.

In the end, hotels.com "made an exception" for me and refunded my money which I was then able to use to book another night. I suspect that exception was made because they were able to get a refund from the hotel itself.

I was doing a stint of formulating our national enterprise architecture, something I was invited to because of my local work on the subject.

During this period I staid at hotels quite often, and learned that the best way to get a good and cheap booking is to E-mail the hotel directly. The cheap part came from being an enterprise organisation, but as far as secure and easy booking goes I always email hotels directly for private stays as well. Maybe it’ll cost me a few extra dollars, but I avoid the hassle of having to deal with hotels.com who among other things charge you up front and make it almost impossible to cancel.

My experience (years ago) was that the hotels would prefer people did this as they don't like the middlemen either.

I always lookup the hotel on an aggregator (Hotels.com usually) and then call the hotel directly to book.

and you call the number listed on hotels.com? In this case you are calling hotels.com and not the hotel itself.

No, I lookup the hotel's actual phone number. I don't rely on any contact info on hotels.com, only their map data of where the hotels are and rates for rough pricing.

Just ask a random question only a real hotel employee would know - like "What time is breakfast served?"

The problem is I dont have a "skeptical resting state" where i'm constantly trying to sniff out scams.

I google "Fairmont Hotel Berkeley" because that is what my co-workers are staying at. I get an 800 number, which I call. The person is friendly and asks "Can I help you book a room at Fairmont Berkeley?" Business customers, especially, are somewhat price insensitive since they are not paying for trips.

Sad world.

I suppose you should know this also, to detect a lie.

I don't think the intent is to have you book at a higher price. The intent is to get the booking and collect the fee. And they just don't care that they can't process corporate codes.

They are misrepresenting things, and asking about a discount code probably should get you forwarded to the hotel (or their corporate call center). It can get a little hairy when Hotels.com (or whoever) has a lower price or more rooms available than the hotel directly (sometimes the Online Travel Agencies will commit to a number of rooms over a time frame, then they have pricing autonomy and exclusive availability; probably not happening in covid times though)

I don't remember phone numbers being listed on hotels.com.

If you dig up the support number it is going to the hotels.com call center. It's not deceptive because they have your booking and your money, they can see your order and rebook you in another hotel which the direct hotel wouldn't be able to do (this happens regularly when there are problems like the hotel has no room).

If you have a corporate discount with a specific hotel you definitely need to deal with the website of the hotel directly, not hotels.com

hotels.com is an Expedia brand, not a company.