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Re:Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing from search res... by SOLAR_FIELDS on Friday April 28, 2023 @12:19AM (#35737434)
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?”

Re:Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing from search res... by JimDabell on Friday April 28, 2023 @12:28AM (#35737478)
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.

Re:Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing from search res... by SOLAR_FIELDS on Friday April 28, 2023 @12:34AM (#35737504)
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.

Re:Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing from search res... by mejutoco on Friday April 28, 2023 @01:54AM (#35737912)
Well, they could offer pay x times the booking price, instead of only refunding the money.
Re:Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing from search res... by TylerE on Friday April 28, 2023 @02:44AM (#35738230)
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.