These best price guarantees are all garbage, though.

They'll say that the room type offered on the OTA is different than the room type booked direct - even if it's the same room.

I stayed at the Kimpton Epic Miami. Paid almost $150/nt less through Priceline. Tried to use IHG's Best Price Guarantee and they said it's a different class of room.

$465/nt through IHG - https://i.imgur.com/nTdZTnM.png

$342/nt through Priceline - https://i.imgur.com/3jabBss.png

There's a lot of misinformation in this thread.

Certainly not all garbage, though IHG (and Hilton) are two of the worst. Marriott[1] and Hyatt[2] seem to be much more dependable, per literally thousands of posts on their Flyertalk threads.

BUT, the practical consequence is that seeing drastically cheaper rates on OTAs than direct booking is much rarer than it used to be.

[1] https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marriott-marriott-bonvoy/206...

[2] https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hyatt-world-hyatt/970090-hya...

Marriott did the same thing for me with the New Orleans Ritz. In their case, they said the OTA room isn't guaranteed, direct is, therefore, different class of room.

Do you actually have any experience with these best price guarantees? Because I've only tried a handful of times and every time I end up booking through the OTA.

Look how fast you walked back your initial claim:

> Every major hotel chain and many independent properties have "Best Price Guarantees" that, well, guarantee you'll get the best price with them.

> Certainly not all garbage, though IHG (and Hilton) are two of the worst.

That's no guarantee.

I just checked, our Holiday Inn here is 0.10€ per night cheaper on Expedia. That wouldn’t even trigger their best price guarantee (1% saving needed). But yeah, that is not worth it, I haven’t actually booked a hotel in a few years, so I guess things changed for the better.

edit: Of course, Expedia doesn’t even have Motel One which is a nice 50€ cheaper than the Holiday Inn, and that’s for their 2nd cheapest room.

edit2: Okay, actually this is pretty confusing. Apparently, Motel One website and Expedia have 2 completely separate contingents of available rooms. Some days I can get the cheapest room at Expedia with no rooms free at the M1 website, some days they don’t have any rooms while the medium room is available directly.