I have to ask, why use 3rd party booking sites at all? From what I can tell, the prices are usually the same as the hotel... needlessly adding middlemen into the booking process.

Because there are hundreds of hotels with a hundred different websites or no website at all in any given city, and hotel rooms are largely fungible. I want to sleep somewhere and I have a budget. Searching hotel by hotel is infeasible even if you can find them, and you often can't.

A "middleman", or search engine, or discovery system, or price comparison site, is worth a lot to me and to most travellers.

Edit: it's worth a lot when you... don't speak the language in the country the hotel is in... when you want the consumer protections of the country you or the middleman is based in... these sorts of concerns are much more of an issue in some parts of the world, and this might be reflected in the fact that Booking.com grew up in Europe.

Yes, but you don't have to book with the search engine. I search with hotels.com and then book by calling the hotel. Every other time I used hotels.com or booking.com the booking didn't exist when I arrived at the hotel...

I would generally rather book with a bigger company, especially when travelling abroad where I may not be knowledgeable of local language, customs, or consumer protections. If I buy from Booking UK I get UK consumer protections, even if that hotel does not provide those. In some parts that's worth a fair bit. Calling the hotel only works if you speak the language. I've also only ever seen identical pricing when I've checked hotel websites.

Perhaps perspectives are based on whether you're booking domestically or not. Domestically you get the same protections, same language, not much benefit. In the US most of the market is domestic.

> Perhaps perspectives are based on whether you're booking domestically or not.

I've had the best success when traveling abroad booking directly. Anyone in the hospitality industry is going to have someone on staff with enough English to assist you, and most of the nicest places are smaller hotels that often don't work well with big booking companies.

> If I buy from Booking UK I get UK consumer protections

I worked in a travel startup (not Booking), there's a lot of fine print to all those "protections" that will leave you high and dry in most cases.

Only use 3rd party apps for search, never book directly through them especially, in my experience, for International travel.

I'll take letter-of-the-law fine print consumer protections over "eh, sorry" any day.

You're right that we're lucky as English speakers, there's often someone to help, but that's not true of most other languages. Small places can provide some of the best experiences I agree, but finding them and getting in contact can be difficult.

Do you find you get a better deal by calling the hotel directly?

Booking get 15% of the transaction so it makes sense to ask for 10% off when calling the hotel directly (which increases the profit of the hotel by and saves you some).

Eccept that is breach of contract with the booking service and can cost them the contract[1]. Since everyone is using booking.com or hotels.com, they will quickly shut down due to no customers. Hostage situation.

[1] At least last time I looked into it. Haven't had a change to travel since a few years.

I just tell them that I saw a better deal on gestures broadly the Internet and they give me some discounted rate.

This happens all the time with every single type of service provider, why would some shitty service like Booking.com get to mandate no one can offer any other discounts?

What, just because there's some sort of aggregator service out there that you've partnered with you are not allowed to offer coupons, discounts, or your own booking services yourself? I would find that VERY difficult to believe.

Plus, based on what we're hearing everywhere, potentially losing your contract w/Booking.com seems like a blessing.

The hotels are required to have the same price on direct contact as they post on hotels.com so no. But I can be certain that there is actually a room waiting for me when I arrive. I have been standing there enough times with a booking confirmation in hand but the hotel not finding any booking and out of rooms. So far they managed to get me somewhere to sleep even though they have had to pay to house me at another hotel a couple of times.

If I'm not remembering wrong, since a while back, in EU the hotels are free to set their prices lower even if they are on Booking.com.

I'm very happy to hear that

They have to have the same price for “non members”. You can sign up for free to the hotels loyalty program and book a lower price.

You also get points if it is a chain hotel that can be used for future stays. The points can be worth from 7% to 20% of the cost based on what combination of base points, credit cards, and status you have.

I guess that’s why grubhub faked restaurants’ websites. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321260

And heavily implied they were the restaurant with fake phone numbers too.

You'd call a number, "I can take your order for XYZ whenever you're ready!"

"Is this XYZ restaurant?"

No yes or no answer, just "What's your order for XYZ restaurant?"

I get worse deals calling the hotel, usually, as Booking gives better discounts and they buy room inventory at bulk prices to resell.

This varies, some inventory is bought "wholesale", other inventory is on-demand reselling. Booking has a range of terms and systems for different regions, types, volumes, etc.

I guess I've been using booking.com for a decade or so and this has literally never happened to me.

Now I'm curious, what countries were those hotels in? Never happened to me in Europe (from the top of my head: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, England, Scotland, Czech Republic, Croatia) - just over 50 bookings/different hotels.

It was all in Stockholm for work. Sometimes I had a co-worker along that booked his own room and that one was lost too.

Google Maps shows hotels and prices now. That's what I've been using lately. I book on the actual hotel website. Always choosing the cancellable booking option in case plans change. Often it's the only option, but not always.

I've been using Booking.com, and then booking via the Hotel's site after I find the one I want to stay at. I suppose you could Google to find their number if they don't a website.

You can still search and then book directly. Enough of that would perhaps make booking fix their issues.

I search and then call/email the hotel directly to see if they want to give me a lower price for buying directly so they avoid 15%+ commissions to the travel agent.

How successful are you? I assume that the person picking up the phone does not care about the extra booking, nor do they have the authority to offer spot deals.

Maybe I am wrong and this is a common tactic?

I estimate 50% success. I find it more successful when emailing the sales person, or the manager directly.

Not the op, but it's the opposite, at least in the UK. I worked in hospitality as a yoof, was manager of a small hotel and a receptionist in big (independent) 5 stars. I absolutely did care about extra bookings because I got a big commission on walk-ins and a smaller commission on phone bookings. I also had leeway to discount rooms on a sliding scale down to "barely covers the cleaning costs" levels on the night. As a booker if I have the time I still call places up and can usually get a decent discount if they have availability, especially off season or last minute.

I have tried this but most of the time its the same price, sometimes it is more. Even standing in person at hotel the person at the desk cant even match the online price. Not empowered to.

> Even standing in person at hotel the person at the desk cant even match the online price. Not empowered to.

True, but not uncommon! Captive market.

In many countries, the majority of hotels do not have a way to book directly. The just use Booking/Agoda.

The problem is that hotel rooms only appear fungible: a space that is a rectangular solid, with a bed. Sounds easy.

However, in reality, people want more than a place to lay immobile for roughly eight hours. These are not commodities. Check-in time. Check-out time. Type of bed. Bathroom? Bathroom with tub? Bathroom with waterjet tub? Pets? Dogs? View. Floor. Proximity to whatever. Bedbugs. Television, microwave, refrigerator, coffee pot, hair dryer. Free wifi? Breakfast? "Continental" breakfast?

If "hotel room" were some kind of spec, it might take years to hammer it out. And then hotels may or may not be honest about their rooms, or even understand the spec. Then there's the periodic keeping the listings up to date. "We had to take the TV out last week, it was on the fritz." "This room was upgraded." When was the last bedbug check? Finally, who is the system of record for any given room? And then the discount policies, wowza.

Looks fungible, really isn't. These aren't pork bellies.

I really don’t care about any of the things you mention. I literally only want a room with a bed and a bathroom. And maybe I’ll sort my three stars and up or something.

There’s a lot of variability, but it’s also pretty impossible to know at a non-commodity level unless I’ve stayed there before or do a ton of research.

I’m not going to trust anything online for the latest bedbug check. Id like to know, but let me know how they factors into your decision making process.

That’s the great thing about booking directly especially with a chain hotel. If you don’t like it, you can cancel the rest of your reservation and only pay for the time you are there. With travel portals it’s much harder.

Even if you’re not happy with the response from the hotel - and I’ve never had a problem with a chain hotel making things right, I can call corporate customer service.

These are all the reasons I said "largely" fungible.

You're right there's certainly no formal spec here and everyone is going to have the things they care about that others may not, but for any given person there are going to be many places that satisfy their needs, basically interchangeably.

I stay loyal to two hotel brands - Hilton and Hyatt for the most part.

The very reason I don’t use third party portals is because it’s always a hassle when you need to make any changes.

Last year I booked a week at the Hilton San Francisco Financial District for a hybrid work/personal trip.

We arrived late that night and we were not impressed. We went downstairs the next morning, shortened our stay to that one night. Paid it and moved over to another hotel - the Hilton Parc 55. This would have been much more of a headache if not impossible going through a third party portal.

I’ve also increased my stay by a day before arriving and the published price had changed. I called the hotel and asked them to extend my stay by one day at the original price - no problem.

I was a customer of the hotel, not the third party portal.

In my specific case, I am Diamond with Hilton and Globalist with Hyatt. I would get no status benefits or points for going through the portal.

That incident in S.F. I mentioned? When I changed hotels I got an upgrade for free to the “fitness room” with a gym inside the room.

That sounds cool but I'm not sure how realistic that would be for most people, esp. international. There are about 2-3 hotel chains I can think about here in Europe where I have had more than one stay, i.e. where I used the same chain in a different city.

JFTR, my last stay in Prague I paid 80 EUR for a perfectly fine Hotel room, the cheapest room in the Prague Hilton I can find (being flexible for whole Oct+Nov) is 130EUR, usually more like 140+, close to double.

So I suppose if I had to just take a different room in a different hotel every fifth time (and that never happened to me) I'd still be about equal with the price.

> I have to ask, why use 3rd party booking sites at all? From what I can tell, the prices are usually the same as the hotel... needlessly adding middlemen into the booking process.

It can be worse. I once called the hotel and didnt realize I was calling Hotels.com (which used a tricky website to make it seem like I was calling the hotel.)

Worse, the [Hotels.com] agent pretended to be a the hotel reservation desk. I gave him several discount codes (my consulting company code, my AAA code) and each time he said it wasnt reducing the price. That got me suspicious...because my consulting company Accenture always had discounts.

So I asked the person outright, "do you work for the hotel, which company do you work for, etc" and learned he was a Hotels.com employee.

Based on this, i'd note that Hotels.com might not be the same price but might actually even be more expensive that booking direct with the hotel.

If you're traveling to an unfamiliar area, and especially if it's last-minute, and you aren't wedded to one particular hotel brand (or they have no availability), then finding a decent room is currently a big pain in the butt and there's no good centralized way to do it.

booking.com frequently appears at the top of searches for "hotels near..." and other third-party travel sites, like tripadvisor, link to it.

They've done a good job of getting their site in front of eyeballs. Like others, I've tried them, and like others, found them to be awful and now actively avoid them.

Prices are very often not even remotely the same.

I've regularly scored things like 70% off regular price when booking the day before.

They continue to advertise their regular full price on their official site and other mainstream sites that business travelers use.

But they advertise at a massive discount on certain discount sites that attract budget travelers.

They want to fill the rooms, often in response to last-minute cancellations, and they hope they get lucky with somebody at full price first, but they advertise budget prices on budget sites because a deeply discounted rate is better than no money at all.

Can you list some of these discount sites?

Hotwire and Priceline.

Hilton at least has a price match guarantee. I don’t know about the others.

Availability: Often, booking sites like booking.com have reserved bunches of rooms at hotels that you can only book through their site. So the hotel's own website might show "no rooms available", while on booking.com you can still book. Many hotels even have given up on their own website and only offer rooms through booking.com.

Price: The hotel website often is no cheaper than booking.com (I guess thanks to very one-sided contracts), and sometimes only gives you a better price if you join a "club" and give them permission to spam you, sell your data, etc.

Payments: booking.com is shady, but less shady and far less broken than a random hotel website where some credit cards might not be working, your CC data turns up in some data dump "found" somewhere, or payment is held by the CC company because you are the first person in months to directly pay to that hotel's website.

Language: booking.com offers an interface and descriptions at least in English. Many hotel websites are only in the local language plus maybe some awkward machine translation that leaves lots of important points to guesswork, especially in the payment flow.

Convenience: booking.com at least offers some kind of searchable database of hotels so I can easily compare them. The hotels themselves make this rather impossible.

I do make a point to try to book via a hotels website after having found it on booking.com. However, in more than half of the cases, for the aforementioned reasons, I end up going through booking.com after all. So while lazy users might be a large part of the reason for the existence of booking middlemen, the hotels do have to bear their fair share of blame here.

As far as payments go, I have been surprised, when booking through booking.com (especially in foreign countries) to see my full credit card details printed in plain text on the Booking.com reservation email that the proprietor printed out and referred to when I checked in. This even when I indicate in the reservation that I intend to pay in cash or with contactless on-site.

While it makes sense to take a card to guarantee against a no-show, it’s always felt a little slimy to me that they make it feel like they, rather than a random property someplace far-flung, are the ones who would collect the fee if I didn’t make good on the reservation—and only if I actually didn’t show up.

It looks like they still pre-emptively give out your full credit card details directly to every property in plaintext, but that they might now make a notional effort to record when the property accesses the CVC?

https://partner.booking.com/en-us/help/policies-payments/gue...

That sounds shockingly non-PCI compliant.

At least it says:

"Never take a screenshot of your guest’s credit card details, and never write them down."

That's a bit like instructions for an eBike.

"This bike is limited to 20 MPH. Do not go to the third option on the settings menu and remove this limitation with a long press of the plus button".

I agree, this is why I book through Booking as well, it's usually cheaper than calling rhe hotel directly. Plus, I get discounts in the Booking app with repeat bookings, just like a hotel chain club.

I want a middleman to hold my money, if the host fucks up, he will not get the money. That’s why you use escrows, but Booking.com doesn’t act like an escrow, so don’t use it.

Credit cards perform that function.

Not in the whole world, my guess is that it's usually credit card companies in USA that protect you.

Convenience mostly, and I've sometimes gotten better prices that way.

They make it easy to see available options in a city and compare prices. And making the reservation through them is often easier than getting in contact with the hotel.

Assuming it works, that is.

Never again.

Like with everything... convenience.

Inertia. You used to be able to get some good deals on those sites, now they're coasting on that reputation.

I just got back from a trip to Japan where I stayed at a lot of non-western brand hotels. But when I went to their sites directly, they were obviously all in Japanese which I don't speak. I could've relied on Google translate to book directly but I'd rather book through a 3rd party site in native English. Which I did.

What service did you use, and anythings to stay away from / definitely try?

A mix of Expedia, Agoda, and Priceline! As far as what I looked for in a hotel? Mainly just good reviews and pictures that looked simple and clean. I figured that I wouldn't spend a ton of time in the room! I liked the Tokyu chain of hotels. Stayed in a couple and they were very clean

I have never ever found a hotel to have the same or cheaper prices when booking directly on the hotel website. I travel in Europe.

For my last booking the difference was almost 20% (340€ at Hotels.com, 420€ direct booking). I don't know if they enforce some most favourable pricing rules or what, but one of the booking sites is always the cheaper option.

I would prefer to book directly so that the accommodation gets all the money, but I'm obviously not going to pay that much more just out of generosity.

The middlemen argument isn't valid anymore. Hotels have for the most part forfeited their right to sell directly. Which means whatever they do, they still pay full commission to whomever they are under contract with, unless said booking concerns 10 rooms or more.

What hotels don’t allow you to book directly?

One data point, but it was only 2 days ago. I needed a place to quarantine while I was the only one in my family who caught covid on a trip, so I went to the hotel a few blocks away and asked about their rates. They told me that the lowest they could go was $183. I asked why Google showed 6 third-party sites advertising their rooms at $135 and they said those sites reserve rooms in bulk and they aren't normally refundable. So I booked the room with credit card rewards points for about $120/night and everyone was happy.

I always thought that booking direct got the best rates also, but that seems to be incorrect, at least in this case.

For me booking.com has always been cheaper than booking directly with hotels.

I do a lot of motorcycle travelling without a plan. I often do not know where I’ll be at the end of the day, just a general direction.

Late afternoon when I have a better idea where I’ll end up before it goes dark I’ll look at booking.com, find some hotels/motels that match my criteria and head to them without booking.

Countless times I’ve turned up and said “I found you on booking.com and it says you have vacancies, I want a room” only to be given a price higher than booking.com. Some reluctantly negotiate down to match it, some look confused how booking com can offer the price they are while I book through booking.com at the hotel desk as the hotel won’t match the price booking.com are charging.

If you just walk in off the street, hotels will quote you the "rack rate," which is going to be higher than anything you can find online, even on the hotel's own website.

I didn’t get my refund after a trip was COVID cancelled in 2020. The money had already been paid to the hotel, and the hotel owner (in Marrakech) only wanted to promise me I could come back in 2021. So they are not acting as an escrow as I thought.

Always pay by credit card for such things. You can do a chargeback if the service you paid for is not delivered.

CC charge back. I had this during covid with an online travel agent that decided aeromexico was the one I should get refunded by while aeromexico didn't want to know me.

He who takes your money has the responsibility. The travel agent cried foul but what are they going to do.

booking.com allows guest bookings without verifying email address by design, so I had a booking added to my account that was nothing to do with me.

Couldn't cancel automatically. Support only seemed to be able to do the same I could. I assume the booking was some kind of fraud or credit card test -- anyway, the result is my account is suspended and support won't respond to me.

This is a job for a chargeback from your credit card company.

I just hate all the dark patterns that create feeling of scarcity.

If you booked with a credit card, you might be able to claim the money back via the credit card provider.

It also sounds like the hotel screwed up if they listed themselves as pet-friendly but actually aren't.

You can do a chargeback, but Booking.com bans you after - even if it is completely their fault

Isn't retaliation for chargebacks a violation of most merchant contracts with the credit card companies?

The one time I have had to request a chargeback I was basically told to contact the financial institution[1] in case the merchant tried anything funny.

[1] In this case Nets A/S who acted as a middle man between my bank and VISA. But I assume my bank would have said the same thing if they had the agreement directly with the CC company.

Suppose it is true, I would like to know what you would do after your account is banned. You are not a part of that contract so you cannot sue the merchant. And credit card company likely won't bother with a lawsuit because there is one person affected by this.

I presume you never filed a chargeback? If you didn't bother to get your money back, they have no incentive to fix problems like this

If that helps you...Hotels hate Booking.com as much. Just ask them.

So you tried calling Booking support by phone and they didn't pick up? I ask because I personally had to call their support before a couple of times and they responded almost immediately. You do need to provide booking ID for that to happen though.

Contrast to Airbnb, which was so bad I deleted my account in.

Contrast to Agoda, which after charging my debit card required government ID scans within 2 hours-- or immediate cancellation & no refund. Stay next morning in foreign country, what if I was on the damn plane already? Never had an account with them and probably never will.

You can probably get refunded by your credit card company

This happened to me via Expedia, more than once. Both times I had driven hundreds of miles and was forced to pay for a second hotel due to this issue.

I've never had this happen because I always call the hotel directly and ask them.

Trusting a 3rd party booking system to have accurate up-to-date information is a fool's errand.

I worked for a travel startup for a bit, it was by far the most toxic org I've ever worked for with a smiling disdain for their users (meaning they would chat about how much they loved users while actively implementing features that hurt them). I learned talking to other people that this is pretty par for the course for travel companies in general.

The biggest lesson I learned there: never book through a 3rd party for travel.

For airlines the price is already dictated to not be lower than the airline offers, you're far better just working through your favorite airline directly. It makes it much easier change plans, and anyone who travels a lot will agree not all airlines are equal. I've learned to have a favorite airline and not worry as much about lowest prices.

Hotels can be cheaper through a third party, but imho, not worth the hassle of having your trip depend on an untrustworthy middle man.

At most, use 3rd party tools as search engines, and then just book directly.

Yes, and it's the same issue with accessibility. My wife is in a wheelchair and we always call directly to the hotel to make a reservation, rather than going through these services. It only took one time to never make that mistake again.

Isn’t that fraud?

Funny, I always look for hotels that do not allow dogs, as most of the time the rooms tend to smell like a wet dog, or sometimes feces.

I appreciate people who want to travel with their animals, but saying "we allow dogs" then not having rooms designed to ameliorate the issues with such a policy - hard surface floors everywhere and thorough cleanings - is unfortunately very common.

This is what Mr Chargeback is for. Had a similar experience with them and my CC refunded it. I had flights booked with them as well so they refunded those too! Basically got 3 nights in Reykjavik for £290

Chargeback in Europe can, at least with some major banks, require first a fraud report with police.

UK at least you just fill in a form and it happens. Basically "I paid for something, I didn't get it, I contacted the vendor and they did not deal with it, I want my money back"

Seems reasonable for reducing friendly fraud. In the US you just get your money back no questions asked and it's up to the merchant to provide proof that they provided the services/product as advertised

So who is responsible for the listing on booking.com? I always figured it was the hotel who managed the listing on the site, similar to e.g. AirBnB, but if I understand you correctly it's completely separate and booking.com is responsible?

Or: obviously booking.com should have gotten back to you, but I'm also not entirely sure the hotel also didn't just fob you off with a bullshit story for their own mistake.

The hotels are responsible

For reliable travel with a dog, I highly recommend BringFido. I’ve done two cross-country trips with my dog and BringFido delivered both ways. Half the reviews in their app are just from dog owners talking about the hotel experience from that perspective.

I look for hotels on booking.com and then deal with the hotel directly once I find something I like. There's no good reason to include booking.com in the process.