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.