> 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.