Fails my personal benchmark, unfortunately:

haskell megaparsec operators -> should return [0] somewhere high in the result set. Found it on the third page of Brave Search. For comparison, it's the very first result on Google, second page for Bing, and the third page for DuckDuckGo.

Sure, it's a bit obscure, and I don't even write that much Haskell these days. But it's calibrated to determine whether I can rely on the search engine to quickly surface what I need to be productive, and whether I can trust its 'negative results' (I don't see what I want on the results page -> I need to refine my query or take a different approach). The version number returned in the URL also shows how well the engine handles keeping up with versioned documentation pages and aggregating 'link juice' between them.

I try this on every search engine alternative that pops up on HN. Very, very few pass. I find it often works like an adversarial example, yielding completely nonsensical results.

[0] https://hackage.haskell.org/package/megaparsec-5.2.0/docs/Te... (or any other megaparsec-#.#.# version)

I don't know that I would rely on performance on a single search to categorize how a search engine performs even in related areas to that one search. Also, maybe this is a stupid question, but are you letting Google personalize your results? If so, the comparison becomes even more problematic.

That's the first result on Kagi, but I think that's because they just call Google behind the scenes for you.

That's pretty much how all small search engines work, but with varying backing indexes. Kagi's value-add is Google quality index (since they literally pay for it), no ads, their ranking algorithm, and tools to control the results that Google doesn't give you like blacklists and your own weights.

$25/mo is unfortunately a little steep because their lower priced option with 700 searches/month is comically small. On just my work browser I have 4000 Google searches last month. Doesn't count my personal laptop or phone. It's really hard to compete with $0/mo. for Google + AdBlock. I really do like Kagi better but $25/mo. is Tailscale + Notion + Spotify.

I have the early adopter professional plan, but I must admit that while I consider myself very much a power user I have never been close to even 700 searches a month.

Can you walk me through what a typical search day is like for you?

To me, the 700 soft limit seems absurd so I'm curious to hear how you interact with the product.

I average 50-100 searches per work day and 10-20 searcher per off day (totalling 1-2.5k per month). But I don't feel I'm using search in a particularly strange way.

For example, if I need to know how the new WidgetBean in SpringBoot works I'll usually end up making ~10 queries related to it before I move on to a new area of research.

E.g., I'll search "SpringBoot WidgetBean release notes" then "SpringBoot WidgetBean examples" or "WidgetBean test double", "WidgetBean in MockMvc test", "WidgetBean PowerMock known issues in MockMvc test", "WidgetBean FooService interation in MockMvc test SpringBoot 3".

Essentially, when I'm searching I go wide to survey the information landscape, then refine my search term as I discover what I actually need to know

This quickly balloons as I'm expected to know many things at $dayjob :)

What does it look like when you search?

I'll try to get back with some numbers later today.

This month, sorry for the crazy date formatting, I copied it from the Kagi UI:

  Date (UTC) Searches
  Apr 28, 2023 23
  Apr 27, 2023 11
  Apr 26, 2023 24
  Apr 25, 2023 4
  Apr 24, 2023 18
  Apr 23, 2023 7
  Apr 22, 2023 1
  Apr 21, 2023 6
  Apr 20, 2023 7
  Apr 19, 2023 10
  Apr 17, 2023 18
  Apr 16, 2023 1
  Apr 15, 2023 14
  Apr 14, 2023 22
  Apr 13, 2023 7
  Apr 12, 2023 18
  Apr 11, 2023 11
  Apr 10, 2023 13
  Apr 9, 2023 4
  Apr 8, 2023 15
  Apr 7, 2023 7
  Apr 6, 2023 6
  Apr 5, 2023 7
  Apr 4, 2023 12
  Apr 3, 2023 19
  Apr 2, 2023 11
  Apr 1, 2023 15

The last few months:

  (UTC) Searches
  Apr 2023 311
  Mar 2023 495
  Feb 2023 313
  Jan 2023 434
  Dec 2022 386
  Nov 2022 396
  Oct 2022 425

How I search:

I typically start with one of the same type of queries as you did above, then I open every interesting-looking page from the first query in a nested tab (I use tree style tabs in my "research" browser) and start reading them, ctrl-clicking again to open interesting links in new tabs nested in a new level beneath, closing pages that was clearly useless and bookmarking in raindrop if I immediately sense that the oage I am on is something I will need again.

Once I have exhausted this tree, at least temporarily, I start a new search - like you do - in a new top level tab anf create a new tree from it.

As an early adopter, I reluctantly cancelled my Kagi plan today. It’s a great search engine, but even while just restricting it to one of my desktop machines and not using it on mobile at all, I ran up against the search limit with 10 days to go before renewal.

There is no search limit on Kagi. Do you mean you were not comfortable to pay 1.5 cents per search?

Well yeah because ballparking at somewhere around 7k monthly searches that would be a hundred dollar monthly bill or a two hundred dollar bill if I wanted API because team plans increase the search cost for some reason.

To be fair this is why the $25 plan exists but if the economics are to be believed is totally unsustainable. For me 1.5¢/search is a really awkward spot. Fixed cost unlimited and GPT cheap pricing of $0.000002/token hit "use without thinking" status but at 1.5/2.5¢ I could actually rack up a rather large bill by accident so it causes me to use the service less.

They do provide a "soft limit" (which you get a notification when you reach) and a "hard limit" (which the system won't let you exceed) as options in your billing settings. I think by default they set the hard limit to $5, precisely to stop people racking up large bills by accident.

Not OP, but… I don’t consider myself a “power user”, but as it turns out, I use search for nearly everything: reviews, code snippets, spelling, cafes, stores, apps, news, products, files… But, perhaps, the most common type of search is when you read a text or hear something and think: “Hey, what’s that?”

And so I easily make 50–100 searches per day when I don’t even feel I’m actively searching for anything. And if I'm in a research mode, the count goes beyond that.

I noticed that only after I’ve subscribed to Kagi. After realising that I’ll burn throw the plan’s allowance very quickly, I tried doing most of my “dumb” searches via Google, and more important stuff — via Kagi. But that introduces a cognitive load, and kills the point of using a paid search engine.

Perhaps, I should switch to the $25 plan, but I can’t justify paying $250–$300 annually for a search engine, even though I have nothing against the idea of paying for one. Unfortunately, it’s too much for me. Nevertheless, I’m rooting for Kagi because it ticks all the boxes for me, and provides value. I hope that operational costs go down, and more people could use it.

This. Kagi is a great product and has been my daily driver for nearly a year. I honestly believe it's the best search engine on the market

But I fear they're going to have to get their prices (and relatedly, cost per search) down considerably before I can recommend them to anyone again.

I was fortunate enough to be grandfathered into an unlimited plan until March, but I don't think I know any professionals, e.g. people using a search engine to get work done, which search less than 24 times per day.

They have API access to Google but there is clearly a sprinkling of magic and logic between.

How can I know?

The magic is proven by the fact that Kagi mostly respect my queries (or accept my bug reports if I can prove they didn't) despite being built on the shaky foundation of Bing and modern Google.

Also there is some good old fashioned engineering there, like allowing me to pin, prioritize higher or lower or block certain sites.

Brave search also failed the old "office -microsoft" search by returning a ton of microsoft pages. Just to be safe I tried "office NOT microsoft" too but it was even worse.

DDG and Bing (no surprise there) fails at it too, but Google actually works.

Google usually does through the maps place card. To update that card, the hotel manager has to receive a postcard posted by google. Obviously expedia etc can't easily do that.

OP is talking about modifying their hotel reservation directly, not updating a google maps listing.

And the comment you replied to is saying that the official website will usually be shown on the map card to the side of your usual results, which is only editable by verified businesses.

And you can customize it using goggles.

Huh, interesting idea. I personally deliberately book though Booking and alike because it's so nice to have everything hotel related in one place especially when having long trips.

I always buy directly from the hotel assuming that I will be treated better due to the hotel earning more money from me due to not having to pay commission to a travel agent.

Also, I assume there is less probability of errors since when you reserve on a travel agent website, your reservation goes through an additional system before it gets to the hotel.

It actually could be the opposite: since the OTA guest can leave a bad review, hotels may treat them better.

Anyone can leave a review on Google Maps and TripAdvisor and the hotel brands’ website, I assume a review on an OTA would not be any more valuable.

As a side note, I wonder if many people pay attention to reviews outside of extremely low rated places.

I do. One bad review doesn't make much difference to me but if I see a few mentioning the same issue I usually trust them.

> I assume there is less probability of errors since when you reserve on a travel agent website, your reservation goes through an additional system before it gets to the hotel

My intuition says the opposite. More moving pieces in the system, more fragility in integration of different systems.

Is that not the same as what I wrote?

Rereading it I think it’s ambiguous, and I definitely didn’t read what you intended (after clarification).

The problem is that the phrase “I assume there is less probability of errors” is not attached to a condition.

It’s a bit like that revolving ballerina dancer illusion

I see, but I was thinking the “Also” at the beginning of the second sentence attaches the conditions of the first sentence. So the second sentence could also be understood to start with “I always buy directly from the hotel…”

Nevertheless, there is clearly a more clear way I could have wrote that comment.

I have yet to find an occasion where directly booking a hotel would give a better or even the same price as booking through booking and the likes.

All the big hotel chains will usually give ~5% off for reserving directly since they pay ~15% to OTAs. They will require you to be a “rewards member”, but that is just checking a box since you already have to give them your personal information.

> They will require you to be a “rewards member”, but that is just checking a box since you already have to give them your personal information.

I became a "rewards member" with a major hotel chain once. Never again. The deluge of spam I got was intolerable.

That, and the discounts they offer are weirdly misaligned with what I actually book and could possibly want. If a discount happens to actually be applicable for a trip I want to make, booking.com usually is still cheaper. But then I've never managed to get a better deal booking with a hotel directly, usually it's significantly more expensive with more restrictive cancellation policy, which is a shame as I don't really trust booking.com et al. Maybe it works like that because I'm in Europe and mostly booking there?

You actually use your real email and not an email relay service?

Yeah, it was a slipup.

I got the feeling that it's the opposite. We pay the Booking fee. I've had hotel receptionists give me their card and say "If you come back some other time, just call to reserve directly with us, so you can save the x% that Booking charges for your reservation!"

You are both saying the same thing.

The hotel has a room they want to sell for $100 a night. They can list it on their website for $100 a night, and after paying credit card processing fees, they get to keep the remainder.

The hotel now lists the same room on one of the booking sites that charges a x% fee for facilitating the transaction and providing discovery for the hotel (getting the room in front of interested customers). The hotel can either take a x% haircut, or charge x% more. So that same room might be $110 per night now instead of $100.

It's a business decision, and not all operators will make the same one, naturally.

I took it as "of course we'll charge you the x% of Booking, so reserve with us if you want to save it". But it makes sense that not all operators will act the same.

I would wager your more luxurious, expensive hotels have enough "cushion" to absorb these fees - while your standard hotels may not.

You see similar things on online marketplaces, such as Amazon. Amazon's commission fee can be anywhere from 15%-30%, depending on the category. Unless there's huge margin baked into the product price, you may very well be paying 15-30% more for the product on Amazon. Not always, of course, as it does come down the the business and the strategy they've chosen.

You have to ask for a discount, they can't offer or advertise it.

I agree; I’ve had multiple instances recently of booking through a third party where getting changes or refunds is very slow and clunky, if they will even do it at all. Contrast that to my experience with booking a hotel directly through their website, where I mistakenly booked the wrong dates. One phone call to the hotel and 2 minutes later they changed it with no hassle.

I imagine it's booking.com requirement that the hotel can't sell cheaper thought its own website, just like credit card companies forbid discounts for paying cash.

The big hotel brands get around this by requiring customers to sign up for their rewards program to qualify for the discount.

Yeah, but when the hotel over-books, guess which customers are the first to get their reservation cancelled/sent to the room with a leaky ceiling.

(It's going to be the Booking.com ones.)

I do this as well. The fewer middlemen between me and the product or service I want, the better.

I worked for a travel startup for a bit and after that experience I only book airfare and hotels directly.

Specifically with airfare, a 3rd party is not allowed to sell for less than the airline directly, so it's always better options since it is much easier to reschedule/cancel/refund directly with the airline. Plus, if you travel a lot, it is better to find a favorite airline and stick to them. Any bonus "features" offered by a 3rd party I can assure you are either not in your interest or actually a scam.

I don't know if the pricing rules applies to hotels, but I'd rather pay extra then get to the hotel and be screwed over last minute because some 3rd party is trying something "clever" behind the scenes and it turns out it ruins your travel plans.

Most contracts between an OTA and a hotel chain included language requiring no lower price when I worked for an OTA 10 years ago. Not sure about today, but would not surprise me that nothing changed. OTA's are useful as a comparison but you are always better off going direct. Other than TripAdvisor, most OTA brands are either owned by Expedia or Priceline, but they never let you know.

> Specifically with airfare, a 3rd party is not allowed to sell for less than the airline directly, so it's always better options since it is much easier to reschedule/cancel/refund directly with the airline.

The last couple of flights I booked with Star Alliance were the same price on Lufthansa.com etc., but I got free checked luggage on booking.com/expedia and just hand luggage on lh.com.

Also, if you have to change anything with the airline and you book through a third party, you either have to deal with the third party (and a painful phone call for Priceline) or they charge an extra fee like American.

> I always buy directly from the hotel assuming that I will be treated better due to the hotel earning more money from me due to not having to pay commission to a travel agent.

I have never found this to be true unfortunately. I have some conference related travel coming up, and the conference made some deal with Hilton for a special rate. Hilton's link wouldn't work, and I made 5 calls trying to get them to offer a discounted rate to no avail. Eventually had to book at a discounted rate on hotwire (same as the conference's rate), which presumably made Hilton 20-30% less. At scale, hotels are just operated like commodities. Unless you are really special (loyal and big spender), you won't get any special treatment.

> Unless you are really special (loyal and big spender), you won't get any special treatment.

Lifetime Platinum Marriott member here.

The special treatment is OK. It is nice to get room upgrades and freebies, but that's little stuff. It doesn't get you a room magically when they are sold out, and you don't magically get a better rate when prices are high.

The biggest benefit if you're traveling a lot is your points accrual rate is higher with status, which lets you more rapidly exchange points for things. The only sane way to spend points of course, is more hotel stays. Nothing else comes close value-wise. I recall running the numbers on that (points/dollar ratio), and you'd be a brazen fool to spend points on merchandise - when you compare the ratio of hotel stays to merchandise point cost, you realize that they have a 3-4x markup on the merchandise.

>don't magically get a better rate when prices are high.

That's when you spend your points. Though it depends severely on the brand. Marriott and Hilton are no longer great. But Wyndham and Hyatt are pretty amazing. Starwood, used to be good until Marriott bought them out.

Mariott is pretty good. The single time I stayed in a Hilton was so nasty I’ll never do it again.

Hotel brands franchise the properties and hotel owners and management vary and change so much the best option, I have found, is to check flyertalk or other forums for recent reviews.

I've tried to do this for years and ultimately been disappointed. Even on my latest hotel booking, the direct quote was 20% more than Expedia and that's not an isolated incident.

I suspect this is partly predatory pricing on behalf of Expedia (charge the hotel 30%, discount the price 20%, get all the bookings and take the difference.) Yet I really can't justify spending the extra $400 to stand the moral high ground. Seems like something the hotels need to work out.

They used to at least offer the same price and add in little things like "free wifi" and breakfast. I haven't seen that offer since the pre-covid years.

A few times Ive literally used an aggregator booking site at the lobby desk after asking to stay longer, and the hotels price is higher than online.

I've assumed they do this as a combination of lazy tax plus they don't want to undercut aggregators as these might stop showing them if they know people will go direct to the hotel after searching.

Refusing to accept more money is just bad hotel management or ownership not aligning incentives properly.

Hmm, I guess I just only ever book through the hotel directly, so I never feel like I’m missing out. I don’t even know what the non-hotel pricing is.

On the other hand, that always includes free wifi and breakfast.

The travel agent is a more valuable customer for the hotel than you. Also, they have deep pockets and an army of lawyers.

I prefer the hotel website but only if it's a really good website.

Having worked in the travel industry, I recommend booking direct and organizing everything together with TripIt.

It gets it wrong.

Sometimes I want the Booking.com.

Otherwise you'd fan the flames of the predatory brochure websites industry.

Why not just use booking.com search then?

The convenience of hitting the back button and looking at other pages about them. Booking is the first page I want to check but not the only one. Sometimes I won't hit back, but my browsing habits are informed by being able to hit back.

You're allowed to have your workflow, but I'll add my n=1 that I want the exact opposite behavior, and I suspect I'm in the majority there

You might be arguing for what people think they want if they're polled.

If Google always prioritized official websites, dollars to donuts, people wouldn't like it.

0% on my test: ;-; meaning

Google gets it right at the first page. Bing doesn't get it. DDG doesn't.

There are two matching results for it on the first page.

That was a surprisingly peculiar example, but a quite practical test! I appreciate that you shared it.

(Ad) and (sponsored) were ok at first, but then they became the first screenful of results on most devices.

That’s when my childhood BFF google went off the rails.

Interesting, my test of a search engine’s ability to return relevant results is usually some sort of obscure search for tech help like;

“Best way to modify the xyz on a raspberry pi 4”

I stopped using DuckDuckGo because it always failed at searches like this compared to Google. Brave was ok

I stopped using DuckDuckGo when it introduced its email relay service. This service had (and I think still does have) the peculiar requirement that the user must install a browser extension in order to use it.

I can think of no valid reason why a (supposedly privacy-respecting) email relay service should require a browser extension to be installed.

This made me realize DuckDuckGo may not actually value privacy. I stopped trusting all of its services.

I have two email relays from DDG and have never installed their extension nor even knew they had an extension when I got their relays. (I know now but at the time I didn't) If you download the app on your phone, you can get a relay and then immidiately uninstall the app.

Yes, but you had to install an app. Why? They already have your email. They're forwarding email to you as part of the service. And you probably had to verify your email with them when you started using it. So why should you be required to also install either an app or a browser extension?

Doesn't the very act of installing something on your devices increase their technical ability to collect information about you and your devices? That doesn't sound very privacy-oriented.

Most likely a feeble attempt to avoid the domain from getting blacklisted from most services by restricting the amount of relays a user can have by device.

Reading your comments made me realize how a service like DDG could never succeed. The only people who care about its advantages are the same users they lose for anything that remotely helps the company grow.

Apple is a regular company and gets points for adding privacy features. DDG? “Nah, F that, they suggested I run code on my device for a brand-new unrelated service. Reprehensible.”

Apple does add privacy though. The company does not collect and sell your data. Folks regularly read the ToS and freak out, without understanding why the ToS says what it says.

Most privacy oriented companies don't care about your data, but they need to be able to see diagnostic information about your session for when things don't work. Oh and guess what? Things don't work for many users due to all kinds of crazy stuff, with viruses, proxies, crap internet, crap browsers, crappier browser extensions, or just plain user stupidity causing 99% of it.

Diagnostic data and basic telemetry allows software engineers to find the root cause.

> I can think of no valid reason why a (supposedly privacy-respecting) email relay service should require a browser extension to be installed.

I can answer this one: they're fine with not knowing who anyone is, but they're trying to make sure that each account maps to one real person — they're trying to prevent spammers from registering thousands of accounts, and from continuously registering more accounts whenever they get banned.

A browser extension that feeds their service a heartbeat packet every once in a while from a particular IP address, is a Proof of Identity. It ties the email account accessed through that browser, to a browser installation of the extension, such that you can only actively use as many email accounts as you have devices x installed browsers (which might be a surprisingly large number to you, a human; but is still a problematically low number compared to the number of accounts the average spammer wants to register — especially when most of those accounts get banned in short order.)

This is a workaround for the fact that there's as-of-yet no such thing as an "anonymous identity verification service" — something like an OAuth IdP that deduplicates users on the client-to-agent side through strong identity verification on registration (photo of your passport, webcam picture with this hand gesture, you know the drill); but then protects client anonymity on the agent-to-service side. If you had to SSO to your DDG email through such a service, then they very likely wouldn't be asking you to install the extension.

Companies like DDG and Apple don’t do privacy. They do privacy theatre. Just that Apple is too big with too much of a PR/marketing budget and has an ultra/rabidly loyal fanbase so it works for them.

There are companies that do privacy but they’re usually too small to be noticed outside the crowd of extremely privacy conscious people.

Mozila is a famous one though. Yup, even after their Pocket fiasco and some more I do believe they try to real and long term privacy. DDG is just hustling to stand apart and then maybe hope for a financial exit. (Have had a really bad experience with the company, other than using their product - their search is unusable though - that told me they do not have a respectable culture as an organisation either).

The same Firefox that gets most of its funding by funneling search to Google?

It also funnels all your nearby access point names to Google, and it does that for free!

Can you describe the difference between “privacy” and “privacy theater”?

Are you counting ads as results?

I just put "the 252 boutique hotel" into Google (without quotes) and the first non-ad result is the hotel's own website. It's also first in Brave. And first in Bing. So no difference here.

Generally in my experience, I've never had a problem finding a hotel's website via Google.

The ads can take up more than an entire display, requiring scrolling down a full screen of content before finding the official site.

It's even more difficult when trying to find the official site for a business I'm unfamiliar with.

I have rarely faced this problem, just an anecdote .

> (For anyone who's ever tried to modify a reservation, the difference is astonishing. If you're booked with the hotel, all kinds of adjustments are at least possible. If you're booked with Booking, Travelocity, Expedia, etc., it's somewhere between hard and hopeless.)

That's utterly backwards IME. On Booking.com, most modifications are the push of a button (that, crucially, is right there in the UI that I already know) and if I need to do something complex I can send a message and they'll sort it and get back to me. On a boutique hotel website, maybe I'll get a phone number that I have to look up the international dialing code for and then call in that country's business hours, if their website isn't just completely broken.

The problem is that Booking.com/Expedia/etc can't be trusted to book a real reservation. You never know if they're overbooking a hotel (and indeed I've been bitten by this multiple times).

By booking with the actual hotel's web site, you at least know you have a room. If the price of that certainty is a little bit of extra UX friction (or making a phone call, which I'll soon be able to delegate to an AI anyway), that sounds just fine.

I use booking.com quite a bit and I've never had that issue.

Overbooking is never the fault of third party sites, they literally make an API call in real time and ask if they have inventory available. For smaller chains and boutique hotels the backend is probably a system that is calling into the HMS in the same way Expedia would.

What you are experiencing is either the hotel manager verbally committing to rooms and not logging them into the computer to try and skim money, or they had something happen that impacted availability (no hot water, housekeeping couldn't turn over rooms, etc)

Again that's the opposite of my experience. When I reserve on Booking.com my reservation is always there (and I can see a confirmation of it whenever I want). When I reserve directly, who knows.

overbooking / "I've been bitten by this multiple times": Did you arrive and the hotel didn't have any spare rooms? What happened next? I have never once heard of such a thing. And you said multiple times. What kinds of hotels are these???

I use hotwire maybe a few times a year and it has happened twice to me that the hotel they claimed was booked did not have the reservation. Most 3rd party booking sites don't have real time access to inventory, so if you book close to the same time that someone books direct, you can easily end up overbooked.

I think in the first case, they gave me a refund and I rebooked another through hotwire last minute. In the other case, the area was very booked up and I had to pay double to get a comparable room. So I had to send hotwire the invoice and they refunded the rate plus enough to cover the more expensive option. Both times was a huge inconvenience but that is sort of the price you pay for cheap 3rd party bookings.

They’re often not even cheaper these days (and are usually pay in advance with no or limited cancellations, vs booking direct usually being pay on site and cancel able to to a day or two out.

Yes, I have found that in many areas, you can match or beat the 3rd party price by going direct. Especially if you have any additional discounts like AAA. But quite a few highly competitive areas like las Vegas, you can save 25-50% by going with hotwire or Priceline.

This does happen, but rarely. Family boutique hotels should not overbook. It happens more frequently at business hotels, because those tend to offer no-fee cancellations, overbook and as a result never know how many people will actually show up for the night. So folks arriving very late can be hit with "sorry, we have no rooms available". Business hotels try hard not to do this often, but it does happen.

On the receiving side, this is not pleasant, but not the end of the world. On a business trip I can get a human travel agent on the phone who can find an available room and if it means a $100 taxi bill each way to get to a nearby town, so be it.

I think you're talking about common modifications that the booking website understands how to make via the hotel's API. The GP, meanwhile, is talking about completely arbitrary stuff that is not part of any booking services's data schema for "modifiable properties of a booking"—and also, where the hotel likely doesn't actually have an API, because it's just some family-run thing, and the booking website is maybe just sending the hotel a fax to book for you.

In the boutique + arbitrary case, what you want is to talk to a real person, explain your issue, and get some kind of free-text note added to your booking in a way that staff will actually follow the instructions in it. You also want this to potentially increase the cost of your stay (rather than your request being denied on the basis that such a modification would increase the cost of your stay.)

If you book through a booking website, and then you speak to the booking agent to make such a modification, they will have no ability to add the note to your booking in the hotel's computer in such a way that the staff will take it seriously; nor even, necessarily, the ability to confirm that that modification is something that the hotel can do for you. (They can call the hotel... but they're just as likely to be brushed off as you are.)

If you book through a booking website, and then you speak to the hotel, they will tell you that they can't help you, because they want to charge you more, but they don't have the ability to charge you anything, since they're not billing you; they're billing the booking agency. And the booking agency itself has no way for a hotel to add an SKU for this kind of customization. (If it did, it'd be abused by unscrupulous hotels.) They'll then tell you that they can fix your problem if they cancel your agency booking and then re-book it through the hotel itself... but in so doing, you might not be able to keep your reservation.

If you book through the hotel, you can just speak with the hotel, and enter into whatever private direct customer-to-business deals you like with them to negotiate whatever kind of special service you want from them.

> If you book through a booking website, and then you speak to the booking agent to make such a modification, they will have no ability to add the note to your booking in the hotel's computer in such a way that the staff will take it seriously; nor even, necessarily, the ability to confirm that that modification is something that the hotel can do for you. (They can call the hotel... but they're just as likely to be brushed off as you are.)

Being able to write a message and have them get back to me (even if all they're doing behind the scenes is calling the hotel) is a much better UX than having to make a phone call during business hours, particularly when there's a language barrier.

> If you book through a booking website, and then you speak to the hotel, they will tell you that they can't help you, because they want to charge you more, but they don't have the ability to charge you anything, since they're not billing you; they're billing the booking agency. And the booking agency itself has no way for a hotel to add an SKU for this kind of customization. (If it did, it'd be abused by unscrupulous hotels.) They'll then tell you that they can fix your problem if they cancel your agency booking and then re-book it through the hotel itself... but in so doing, you might not be able to keep your reservation.

> If you book through the hotel, you can just speak with the hotel, and enter into whatever private direct customer-to-business deals you like with them to negotiate whatever kind of special service you want from them.

Meh, that seems like a bullshit excuse to me. If they're selling me some special add-on service, surely they can bill me for it independently of my booking. If I'm already going to the trouble of calling them (ugh), having to give my credit card details separately is not making that a whole lot worse.

Not true. But I won’t discuss that.

Here’s something else — the most critical part of a booking — the booking itself. Go talk to third party aggregator chat bot when you realise you don’t even have a booking that you booked.

4-5 days later if you’re lucky you’ll receive an apology email if you’re lucky, which mentions that they do not want you have that experience and they’ve send it for feedback to the relevant team.

I rarely book hotels via third party aggregators now. Either direct or I use my employee’s travel assistance parter portal where I have same protections as my work travel just that I’ll have to pay from my pockets.

Again that's the opposite of my experience. If I've booked on Booking.com my booking is right there, on their website and in my inbox. If I book directly with the hotel, do I have a booking? Uh, maybe. Roll of the dice when I show up.

This is super interesting. I know it happens, but I'm decently traveled and I've never had it happen to me (booking directly with the hotel and having that booking not be available). I've probably stayed in at least 500 individual direct bookings with hotels in my lifetime, to at least give some numbers to the anecdata.

I literally live in hotels for seven months a year across the US. I have never seen this happen. But I only stay at Hilton and Hyatt brand hotels.

Sticking with a single big corporate chain has most of the same advantages as using a big booking site. But I never found a single chain that had hotels everywhere I wanted to go; indeed a lot of the places I end up wanting to to don't have any name brand hotels at all.

If your hotel double books you, they're out of rooms and can't help. If Booking.com double books you, they can pull strings to give you a different room in any hotel on their site (and they do). I don't doubt you had that experience personally, but it doesn't match my experience at all, and I spend 1/3 of my life in hotels.

If you’re booked 3rd party you’re much more likely to be the one bumped I. The first place. You’re also likely to get the least desireable rooms on the least desireable floors.

That does not match my experience. IME the bumping is first and foremost dependent on the time of arrival. While the hotel has rooms, they will give them out to those who booked and show up. Should the hotel run out due to overbooking, how the next guest booked a room is not going to matter. My 2c.

Big sophisticated hotels have blocks of rooms at different price points. So, even if there are rooms currently empty but have been reserved for customers who have paid higher price, they won't give them to you.

In recent years, I have not had any booking problems whatsoever. Only problem I had more than 10 years ago was about arriving very late and finding that my room reservation had been released and they were full. Luckily it was a big chain hotel which had another property nearby and was able to get me a room there for the night and then resume my original room for the rest of the week long stay. This was very busy conference week and all 3+ star hotels were full in the area.

> even if there are rooms currently empty but have been reserved for customers who have paid higher price, they won't give them to you.

In my experience (not very big hotel) - the emphasis was on full occupancy - rooms would only be held (with other guest with booking at the counter) in rare circumstances (eg we knew an incoming flight was delayed and we were certain the other guest would arrive. Even then we might bump the other guest if it meant we had more time to scramble to find an alternative room for the guest that hadn't shown up yet).

People say that but it doesn't ring true in my experience. Let's face it, you're just paying more for the same service if you book directly.

Strangely, at least in Australia, you often pay more for booking directly. On multiple occasions I've checked a hotel's website and found aggregators with cheaper rates, then literally walked in the front door and asked what's the best they can do. It's worse and I end up getting my wife to book on her mobile phone from the parking lot and let her complete the check-in.

Don't get me wrong, generally not a fan of middlemen. But the experience when booking a hotel directly comes down to the owners/management, and it's going to vary wildly compared to one of these big aggregators.

I've heard booking.com forbids them to charge first-party customers less than the booking.com price, and the hotel is beholden to the site for income so they play along. The only people booking directly are basically idiots, so for those people they charge as much as they can.

In the UK there are large chains such as Travelodge who have pulled out from booking.com entirely and made people go to their site.

And yes downvote me but maybe think about whether spending more money going to first-party sites is actually serving you?

While I didn't downvote you, I'm one of those "idiots" who tends to book directly on hotel web sites because I'm a member of several free-to-join hotel loyalty programs. The aggregators generally do not beat prices available for members (which, again, I can be for free). It's not uncommon for me to find specials, room types, or even availability, period, available on the direct sites that the aggregators don't have. And I have never once been told "sorry, we can't find your reservation" if I book on the direct website, whereas I absolutely have run into that issue -- albeit generally with independent hotels and B&Bs -- when booking through aggregators.

But, sure, I'm obviously an idiot! I'm just over here drooling stupidly while I get better and/or cheaper hotel rooms.

Thanks for your response. I apologise, the term "idiots" was definitely over-the-top - while there are people who are paying more than they should, I didn't know about the loyalty programs (which makes me the idiot). Maybe it's a US-centric thing. In any case I understand that your experience with booking direct has been better than using third party.

The annoying thing is that should so obviously be the case! Booking direct should always be cheaper and better, right? But I've found that even if booking.com is cheaper the hotel refuses to match the price when booking directly. And they never told me about any loyalty scheme :/

I didn't downvote you, but I did notice that you are making repeated assertions about price disparity between direct and third party; multiple people are posting actual links and experiments showing you wrong; to which you more vehemently ("idiots") repeat the assertions (without evidence).

I apologised in another comment and admit it is not universally true, as many people have pointed out. However I have repeatedly tried to get hotels to price match; they don't, and they never mentioned a loyalty scheme. That is my personal experience. Of course it may differ based on the type of hotel (I don't use very expensive chain hotels), the country, etc.

Numerous times I’ve booked direct with the hotels and it’s cheaper than or same as 3rd party.

Booking.com requires the cheapest price, unless you are talking about the price from the hotel’s rewards program, which they will push very hard. It’s a contract loophole that works out for everyone except the non-savvy (or privacy-conscious) consumer.

Similar dynamic with credit cards, where retailers are forbidden from offering a cash discount. Though some skirt this using rewards programs— in Canada for example, Canadian Tire gives you more Canadian Tire "money" if you pay with debit or cash.

Best price requirements should be straight up illegal IMO.

In fairness, if credit card processors hadn't been permitted to require that and customers had had to pay the fee, credit cards would never have achieved liftoff.

Which is maybe as much of an argument as any, if it had put pressure on the processors to minimize or eliminate the fee and find alternative revenue streams to sustain themselves and build out the network. Instead we got a world where the fee has been static forever and the gains from automation have gone to cashback and rewards programs for customers, ultimately making it more expensive to pay with cash.

That's simply not true. I just did search to see if anything has changed. I searched for hotels in the Seattle area for a 5/18 reservation. The 3rd item in a hotel's result [1] is the direct hotel's price. It matches the same reservation on the hotel's website [2]. Another hotel's result [3] has the lowest price as direct booking.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/XtDkLZj.png

[2] https://i.imgur.com/gHJgB3I.png

[3] https://i.imgur.com/MVVqmFG.png

For reference: to be part of a hotels “rewards program” just requires you to create a free account.

What privacy concerns are you alleviating by not signing up for the hotels loyalty program? They are going to ask for ID when you get there and many require a credit card hold.

You can read the terms of service and privacy agreement for that "free account" to find out.

In general, the Hotel would not be offering a rewards program if it did not benefit them more than it cost. At the very least they are going to use your "free account" to try to get you to use that Hotel (chain) more.

They will be getting that information from you anyway when you check in.

Who do you think is more likely to sell your information to third parties - a hotel brand that has every incentive to keep your information to themselves or an aggregator?

> cost. At the very least they are going to use your "free account" to try to get you to use that Hotel (chain) more.

And a third party aggregator won’t try to get you to use their site more?

> except the non-savvy (or privacy-conscious) consumer.

Every single hotel I have been to already requires your ID and records your information at check in. In fact, it is required by pretty much all city laws in the US.

I also would not want to stay in a hotel that does not require it.

Even in countries where recording guest ID is a legal requirement, it can often be circumvented.

The rewards programs use your information to market to you, and sometimes third parties. Terms and conditions vary. As always, consult a lawyer before clicking accept on any EULA.

Of course they do. Grocery stores, airlines, car rentals, hotel brands, retail stores, everyone has a rewards program for a discount and they all have my info.

So far I do not receive any junk mail other than credit card offers, which I take advantage of for the bonus.

I'll tell you a story about Booking.com. I booked an ostensibly available hotel in Ouray, CO in fairly peak season. I got there and they of course, had already sold the booking beforehand and because the systems didn't link up correctly Booking's availability was not updated. It was the hotel's fault, but it didn't matter. Not a single other hotel in Ouray had availability, and, if you happen to know the area, anything that resembles a hotel outside of Ouray is going to be a significantly long drive.

Booking.com was zero help at all when I called them. None. They couldn't find or book me another hotel, and basically just told me that there was nothing they could do besides refund my money.

There are many, many stories like this.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like Booking. I think it's a great way for smaller properties to get visibility without having to build and maintain that web presence themselves. But when it goes wrong, don't expect them to go to bat for you. They are incentivized to keep making money, and threatening to delist hotels for fucking over customers when the hotel clearly messed up is clearly not a game they have decided to play.

I always book directly with the hotel if I can, because, if you do that, the shit that I mentioned just doesn't happen. Sure, if it's double the price, I'll roll the dice with Booking. But it basically never is. If it's something like 5-10% of the nightly price extra, I'll pay that premium to not have to deal with any BS. Usually it's the exact same price anyway, if it's an available option (there are some hotels that literally only survive via Booking these days).

> Not a single other hotel in Ouray had availability, and, if you happen to know the area, anything that resembles a hotel outside of Ouray is going to be a significantly long drive.

> Booking.com was zero help at all when I called them. None. They couldn't find or book me another hotel, and basically just told me that there was nothing they could do besides refund my money.

I get that you were in a very difficult position, but if there weren’t any hotel rooms, what were you expecting Booking.com to do? And what did the hotel do to help you?

> I always book directly with the hotel if I can, because, if you do that, the shit that I mentioned just doesn't happen.

Of course it does. Booking.com didn't invent double bookings.

My point is that they aren’t on the side of the booker. They are on the side that makes them the most money. Incentives are not aligned to provide the best possible experience for consumers. I would have expected them to at least say “this is not ok, we are looking into this relationship with this hotel. We own responsibility for this hotel that we ostensibly vetted to be adequately integrated with our systems to not fuck you, and they did. After all, we advertised them as a booking on our site”.

But they didn’t do any of that. They just said, sorry, can’t help you. Which is fine, but be aware of that and don’t sing their praises from the rooftops and advocate for them by saying “why would you not use them over booking first party?”

Yes, but you are blaming them for being unable to resolve what appears to be an unresolvable problem that a hotel you booked directly wouldn’t be able to help with either. Incentives don’t matter there if nobody is in a position to do anything.

I think Booking.com is by far more reliant upon repeat customers than hotels. If a hotel screws up a booking, sure the customer isn’t going to come back but they probably weren’t even if they had a good experience – people travel to lots of different places. If Booking.com screws up a booking, they very probably lost a repeat customer – Booking.com gets used again and again even when people travel to many different places. Booking.com’s incentives are more closely aligned with the traveller than the hotel’s are.

Perhaps you misinterpreted my above comment. I don’t blame booking for my poor experience with that hotel, merely their response to the situation.

If what you say is true, I would think that there would be evidence of some sort of punitive action from booking.com for poor behavior like this. As far as I know, such evidence does not exist.

Well, they could offer pay x times the booking price, instead of only refunding the money.

A reasonable approach would seem to be to confirm the booking with the property within, say, 24 or 48 hours so if it’s overbooked you’ve at least got a chance of getting something else.

I mostly deal with Hilton brand hotels for both work and our newish “hybrid digital nomad” lifestyle where we hop across cities in the US for 7 months a year.

We stayed in Hilton brand hotels for around 160 days over the last year.

You don’t get loyalty points and days don’t count toward status when booking through a third party. With Hilton, those loyalties points can account for 20%-35% toward future stays. Meaning if I spend $100, I will get points worth $20-$35 toward future stays. Based on rooms I’ve already booked this year with just points, we are staying free for 25 days in 5 cities this year. Of course point accumulation is a lot slower for most people. But there are a lot of people who stay in hotels using other folks money when traveling for business.

Most hotels chains also have a “lowest price guarantee” where they will match a price found on a third party site.

This isn’t even mentioning all of the hassle you can avoid dealing with hotels directly if things go wrong or if you just don’t like the service.

Last year, I booked a 7 day half work half personal stay in San Francisco at the Hilton Financial district. It was a run down dump. I went to the front desk, told them I would be cancelling the rest of my stay and booked another hotel - the Hilton Parc 55 - for the rest of the week.

The first hotel charged me for one night. That would have been much more of a hassle going through a third party site. First you would have to hope that Hilton gave the money back to booking.com and then go through the hassle of getting your money back from them.

On that same note, I booked a regular room at Parc 55, messaged the hotel on the app before I got there and asked did they have any free Diamond upgrades available. They upgraded me to the fitness room - with a gym inside the room - for free. You don’t get those benefits when booking through a third party.

It seems to make sense if you're going to use the same brand for a long time, yeah. I tend to stay wherever is cheapest so I haven't exploited loyalty schemes yet, but reading the comments I might be missing out.

If a hotel double booked you and you showed up, the hotel would walk you to a nearby similar hotel all paid for by the hotel. The “walk” process is a standard industry practice.

This whole reply thread looks astroturfed.

I notice it every time when the benefit of booking 3rd party is questioned.

Having to walk a guest when the hotel cannot meet the terms of the reservation is part of the contract between the big hotel brands and franchisors. If the hotel operators do not fulfill the walk policy, then you should contact the 800 number for Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Choice/Wyndham/etc and they will mail you a check for your expenses and bill the hotel owner.

This thread started about “boutique hotels” and now we’re talking about franchisees of major national chains. They’re not the same. Plenty of tiny unfranchised operations can you leave you hanging with little to no recourse.

I've heard "boutique hotel" applied to places like Aloft that are owned by big chains.

This threads discussing small hotels ("boutique"), not the large chains.

Most of the larger chains even have benefits if you go direct though.

I worked a few years as a night manager in a hotel in Norway - we always had to figure out a solution when overbooked - at "our" expense (customer pays/pre-paid agreed upon price, we cover room and transport at alternative accommodation - usually more expensive).

As a bonus re: booking.com - they integrated with our booking system and always overbooked, unless our system lied about available rooms (would happily sell rooms when none were available - especially annoying at night, when a booked room typically means an occupied room).

Or maybe booking.com is actually a better experience for most people than the legacy hotel sites. It's more streamlined, it's cheaper, you don't have to sign up etc.

If you think I'm an astroturfer look at my comment history, I've never mentioned hotels before.

By which party?

I've never heard of this and never had a hotel do it when they've fucked a booking.

When was the last time you booked direct with a hotel where they were overbooked and they refused to walk you to another hotel when you showed up? Which hotel is it? We can call them up to ask them to clarify their policy.

Edit: Here's more information since you're not familiar with the walk policy.

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/getting-walked-from-a-hotel-c...

https://www.lawinsider.com/clause/walk-policy

https://www.costar.com/article/1992652780/how-to-walk-guests...

https://www.godsavethepoints.com/hotel-overbooking-walk-guid...

https://www.cvent.com/en/blog/events/hotel-walk-policy-defin...

https://www.uponarriving.com/hotel-walk-policies/

Those are all about big corporate chains, which have many of the same advantages as something like booking.com. We were talking about boutique hotels. If you really want I can tell you the place in Aachen where it last happened to me and you can call them up, but I guarantee they don't have "policies", and probably not anyone who speaks English.

So funny how this thread got nerd-sniped from Brave search to hotel booking.

I love the word nerd-sniped and indeed it applies to HN comments very often. We just want to bicker.

As the guy who started the thread, I'm just glad to have provided an (accidental) portal into a whole new subdomain of HN community expertise.

We've ended up with the perfect mix of helpful insights, provocative theories, well-documented personal experiences (sample of one) -- and brief snark that gets reined in before it gets ugly.

Later on this year, I'll offer some thoughts about hotel bookings that can be nerd-sniped the other way -- into a discussion of Brave search

Well a hotel has never double booked me. A hotel in India however of Taj group (business class) took me to a much better class which was not from their group/chain in a Mercedes and put me up there for the same duration and added full meal plan from their side because my room had some problems and they were fully booked.

And booking.com? Heaven’s sake! Where do you even want me to start! First of all I can’t contact them right then. Nope I can’t! And if I do they fucking stonewall me and more than once just waved the T&C in my face. Once they fucking refused to refund because they said “I should take it with the hotel”

I mean the experience has been so shitty with TPAs that I don’t even want to look for deals now. I just call the hotel and book. They confirm and they double confirm and if anything goes wrong there’s literally a desk with more than one people 24x7. It’s just so much worth it.

If you're using hotels with Mercedes then you're booking an entire different class to the hotels I book and that may explain our difference in experiences :)

I showed up at a (cheap) hotel booked on Booking.com earlier this year. They had no record of my booking. They couldn't help me.

I spent the next hour on the phone or on hold with a booking.com rep. They claimed the hotel had made a mistake and should be the one to fix it. They attempted to contact the appropriate person at the hotel but were unable to.

About four hours later somebody appropriate from the hotel responded to the booking.com rep and "found" the "lost" booking.

I brought up the policy you mentioned, and the booking.com rep told me that they hotel gets a chance to fix it first. They seemed quite surprised the hotel ghosted them for four hours, and told me that eventually at some point at night they would book me some other room.

So I'd say the booking.com policy you mentioned isn't quite as valuable as you might think at first.

Re: issues w/ travel plans - I’ve gotten stranded or left SOL before. My general course of action is to just buy a new ticket/room/whatever and file a claim on my credit card. My wife cracked the bumper of a rental. Chase paid. Flight got canceled. Polish air refused to give me a refund until 6+ months later after I had filed a complaint with DOT. I booked a new (more expensive) flight and Amex covered the cost.

I did get absolutely screwed once though. Turns out you can’t book a hotel in Paris after midnight because the system rolls the date over. Ended up sleeping on a couch in the lobby that night.

I can say overall I've had OK experiences with aggregators, but my style of tourism lately has been motortourism with partially determined plans so I often book rooms a day or two ahead.

I agree though with the sentiment of a post up in the hierarchy that it's a problem that middlemen dominate the listings for hotels, restaurants and such.

In Japan booking.com is often more flexible than the original website (e.g. offering free cancellation, not having to phone)

Do you mainly travel where there isn’t a language barrier? My experience is the exact opposite. Written messages are far more helpful when there is a language barrier.

tangential, but booking.com is an unscrupulous company, no one should use them on moral grounds

If there were an alternative that didn't suck, I'd look at it. But 95% of first-party hotel websites suck massively. So what's the option? AirBNB is far worse than booking.com in the moral stakes. I guess picking one of the big hotel chains and going with them might work for some people, but no one chain has good enough coverage IME.

I typically use travel sites to search for hotels and read reviews, then just book directly with the hotel, which has never cost me more, and often less because some sites (i.e. booking) obfuscate the relationship between price and amenities/size so you don't get what you actually could get for the money if you just went to the hotel directly.

Life's too short to do direct hotel bookings. The sites are slow and terrible to navigate even when they're not straight-up broken. They never bother to tell you their cancellation policy, filling in your information is a drag and you don't get a proper calendar entry unless you make one manually.

Maybe I just know how to pick good hotels? Every single point you just mentioned has not applied to the way I typically do it, the cancellation policy is always the first thing I look for and make sure it’s clearly spelled out. I’ve never had any problems actually interacting with the sites either.

I'd be interested to know what your process is if you've got a way to reliably pick out boutique hotels whose websites don't suck without taking too long over it. E.g. I'm going to Munich in August - want to talk me through what you'd do?

Booking.com allowed me book a room in a hotel that was closed due to renovation - which I didn't know. I learned that a week prior my trip because I messaged the property (as I had a special request) and received automatically generated reply.

Since then I book directly. Most recently I booked a hotel which had 2+1 night free. Booking.com was offering full price for 3 nights stay.

Its the hotels fault to begin with for not managing their booking.con listing.

In that case, why use booking.com since it has a higher chance for errors?

Higher compared to what? There are plenty of smaller hostels/hotels which don't even bother to have their own website (only some FB page, and Booking.com listing)

Booking.com has a higher chance for errors compared to hotels' direct bookings since its information is secondhand. For the hotels with direct booking avenues, why use booking.com?

Because booking.com answers the question "where can I stay given place, date, and budget"? While direct access can only help you when you already know where are you going. The latter is fine if you travel to the same place many times, the former is more universal. As for reliability, I dunno, I used to travel a lot, and in my experience troubles mostly come with a particular destination, not with the method of booking. I.e. if a hotel is unreliable (poor business culture, or overbooking, or whatever), it's unrealiable.

Research on OTA. Book direct.

"booking.con"

Freud ;-)

What if the Hotel doesn't want to have a Booking.com listing in the first place but is forced to have one because search engines rank it so much higher?

You might have typoed booking.con but it is spot on.

Booking always tells me that are only a few rooms left in the city I am looking for and only one left at that price on the property I am looking on. Many times, the price on booking is higher than if I book directly from that hotel.

I never use Booking. Once got a terrible (and overpriced) location that was highly rated according to them, but above all - I more than once arrived only to realise my booking wasn't there.

On top of that, I hate their UX.

My first go-to is Hotel Tonight mobile, which shows how interfaces should be handled. It doesn't handle rebookings and room selections though, so I often book through a given hotel directly - usually better interfaces than booking - even if not standarised, and I had a better treatment at least once, because I booked directly.

Also, if I type in a hotel name, I want to go to the hotel website, not a middleman. Hotel's website is a proxy of hotel quality to some extent.

"On a boutique hotel website, maybe I'll get a phone number that I have to look up the international dialing code for and then call in that country's business hours, if their website isn't just completely broken."

If call them on the phone that implies one can speak the language. If hotel has a website that suggests it has an email address. Not sure I would want to stay at a hotel with a broken website and no email address.

I've never had problems booking through an intermediary but the parent is correct to the extent there are some benefits to dealing directly with the hotel.

It's really sad that so-called "tech" companies and internet marketing companies have bought out the independent travel guides, took the data and made it unreasonably difficult to find the contact info for hotels online.

But we can always find the contact info in Google Maps. Frommers and Zagat both acquired and pilfered by Google. Very sad.

Nobody replies on the emails nowadays. You are lucky if the mobile number mentioned matches with Telegram, Whatsapp or whatever else, or it's phone call only. I'm talking about small to medium businesses - shops, hotels, restaurants etc.

"Nobody..."

That's quite broad. How about some specific examples.

Small shops and small hotels in eastern Europe. I simply stopped trying to contact via email after several inquiries without any response. While messengers for some reason are very popular. If I already talking to someone in person and I need to send files to them then in 100% of cases they will ask to send it via some messenger. Latest cases - car insurance asked for photos, notary asked for my passport, legal consultant asked for my docs - all via messenger. No, wait, there was one case when I was asked to write an email (not a reply to email send to me, but I had to write first) by a hospital. Guess what - they didn't reply and I had to print and give them paper copies of the stuff I emailed previously.

Email is great, I use it at work all the time, internally in the company. But in the outside world it's just not working, unfortunately.

Yikes. It sounds like there is an expectation that every member of the public has these apps installed or can otherwise use them. It's difficult to fathom that any organisation could claim "Sorry, we do not have email."

Not to discount the speed and convenience of messenging apps, but if someone is playing fast and loose with the law and trying to avoid a "paper trail", then avoiding email and using "ephemeral" messenging might be a strategy.

It was once claimed, by Facebook, that "[1 in 7 people worldwide is on Facebook. More importantly,] 6 out of 7 people are not on Facebook." Perhaps more than 1 in 7 people have an email account. Just a guess.

Do you have a vested interest in Booking.com? Interesting that you vehemently defend a common negative experience that booking through third parties is garbage, but you only seem to be defending this particular website.

Probably because that's a website they think is good at this. I don't think we need the pitchforks quite yet.

Nope, just a happy customer. I'm sure other booking websites are similar (I used to use Agoda a long time ago), but I don't want to speak outside my own experience.

Just don't get Genius, or they won't do shit.

Beyond that, boutique hotels are often substantially more expensive when you book directly. Which is weird, because you think it would be cheaper since they’re not paying the affiliate booking fees. But no, even if you call them directly or show up in person they generally refuse to match Expedia or booking.com. I am being overly general here, I’m sure there are exceptions, but this has been my experience repeatedly.

With restaurants I try to not use aggregators like doordash or Uber Eats and always make sure to call and order directly so they save on fees. But hotels seem like they would rather pay the fee rather than give a real customer the best available price and keep a larger portion of the profit.

There are many things I hate about Booking.com, but at least they do generally give the best price.

Do you have any specific one in mind? Because while it's nice to blame Google, my experience has been quite different.

I just tried the last two boutique hotels I stayed at. For one in Tel Aviv the Google and Brave results were exactly the same. First was the hotels' own website, second was tripadvisor, third was booking.com.

The other in Buenos Aires, Google had the same order (hotel, then trip, then booking), Brave did not. Brave showed booking.com, then hotel website, then tripadvisor.

"modify a reservation": The posts below are trying to guess the exactly meaning of this phrase. Can you provide some specific examples?

I respect your experience, but third-party sites are cheaper than the true website and hotels refuse to match it even if you ask them. Even if adjustments are easier (and in my experience Booking.com has been fine), it doesn't offset the price difference.

I stay in hotels a lot though, if you travel occasionally and on special occasions I can absolutely understand.

This is not true. I use agoda, there is nothing that cannot be resolved on agoda. I once accidentally booked a hotel 1 year in advance instead of 1 month, when I arrived the hotel pointed out the error. I rang agoda, they rang the hotel and I watched as the woman in front of me answered the phone, they adjusted the booking to today and I got checked in. The whole thing was resolved in less than 10 minutes. No extra cost or fees.

Wow it is. The maps are fast to load too. (as is anything you do in brave search, where as google maps is so slow, and a pain to view search results on too)

I hope Brave releases a dedicated maps tab soon. (I realise it's just openstreetmaps, but it's a clean and easy to use version)

I'm moving my comment here because I'm not sure why people are repeating the false information about 3rd parties have lower price than direct booking because of some contracts.

That's simply not true. I just did a search now to see if anything has changed. I randomly searched for hotels in the Seattle area for a 5/18 reservation. The 3rd item in a hotel's result [1] is the hotel's direct booking price. It matches the same reservation on the hotel's website [2]. Another hotel's result [3] has the lowest price as direct booking. Again for another hotel in NYC [4], the 3rd item is the hotel's direct price.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/XtDkLZj.png

[2] https://i.imgur.com/gHJgB3I.png

[3] https://i.imgur.com/MVVqmFG.png

[4] https://i.imgur.com/WAIuM16.png

> even DuckDuckGo

Why "even" when it's basically BingBingGo.

I totally agree that this is a great sign. I'm a bit more pessimistic though - a search engine's willingness to actually let you click through to an organic search result is a function of A) how dominant in the search market they are, and therefore how much they can afford to jerk users around, and B) how mature they are economically, since growth is more difficult later in the life of the company.

This is to say that I don't trust Brave to keep doing things right as their incentives evolve. Trust is a finicky thing, but from the outset they strike me as an organization with lofty commercial intentions. And, I admit, I don't think I can trust anything Brendan Eich does.

In reality, search should be a government service as a utility.

I’m pretty sure that’s how, say, Expedia makes their money. Traditional hotel reservation permit very late cancellation (24hrs typically). Hotels are willing to offer a reduced rate if you promise to not cancel.

So Expedia is just a front for that other class of bookings that are non-cancellable and they skim a profit from that. Hotels save face as they can just fingerpoint if someone complains yet they gain by getting the non-cancelable bookings.

> even DuckDuckGo

It's because DDG pays Microsoft to use the Bing index for most search stuff.

I always find it funny when people swear by DDG and hate on Bing... :P