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.