My elderly mother and her (also elderly) friend recently booked a place in Lyon, France using a well-known online travel agency (OTA). The taxi cab driver dumped their stuff on the sidewalk and spun out of the area as quickly as he could get away. Apparently the "accommodations" were a collection of small apartments in a bad part of town. They punched in a code to open the door and get into the hallway, only to find that there was nothing there but a bunch of doors and a staircase leading to another floor with nothing but a bunch of doors. This went up for a few stories. There apparently was no way to turn the lights on.
They had no indication as to which door they were supposed to go through or how to get through it. There was nobody in sight at the facility. After trudging up a few flights of stairs and back down again, they elected to ask some students passing by where they could find a hotel. Fortunately they were able to find a place that had a vacancy.
Then they had to fight the OTA for a refund. Fortunately they are retired and had nothing better to do all day long than call them until they finally gave a refund.
I've had a couple of really obnoxious problems with OTAs involving event tickets. In one case I bought the wrong type of Disneyland tickets. I had to purchase different tickets once I got to the park. Then trying to get a refund from the OTA was a living nightmare. After about a week of daily calls I finally reverse-engineered enough of their process of moving money between them and the park and what not to convince them to refund me for the wrong (and unused) tickets. Another time an OTA with a customer service stand at a hotel in Hawaii had worked with me for 20 minutes to book tickets for an event, and then at the very end they said, "The booking fee is $250. But we'll waive that if you attend a 1-hour sales pitch!"
My strategy these days is to use an online travel agency to learn about hotels with vacancies and events in the area and then to go directly to the hotel or event web sites to purchase. If there's no way to book except through the OTA, I'm not going to have anything to do with said hotel or event.
I booked a massage at the Banyan Tree on Koh Samui via Expedia back in 2021.
My email confirmation of the booking said I needed to contact a company Newway Travel via phone to confirm the reservation time. I attempted to call Newway Travel five times throughout via phone but nobody ever answered. I called the Banyan Tree Spa and they had no record of the booking. I waited until later in the day to see if there were just processing delays.
Later in the evening I received an email from Newway Travel stating that “for chinese speaking , right ? Becasue this package 90 mins available for that market.” I asked them to call me to clarify their policy and they replied via email and reiterated "*Inform you that 90 mins package available for chainese market only and 60 mins package for worldwide market. Pls inform us guest what nationality ?”
I told them I object to such race based discrimination and Newway replied: “As the hotel needs us to report the customer’s nationality and it’s about the different rates for each market as well.”
I had to spend about 10 hours on the phone with Expedia trying to get a refund since we were refused service even after sharing the email correspondence I had with them. Horrible experience, horrible customer service.
I had a similar experience with booking.com. I booked a place in Australia and when I got their I found it was a house run by a junkie who chain smoked inside. I cancelled it on booking.com but they refused to refund me because their policy is that they will only do that if the provider agrees. That was the last time I used their site.
Agoda also have a scam going - where if you elect to pay later in a foreign currency then they add on a 17% service charge which is hidden in some fine print which I still haven't found. This is illegal here in Australia and I am contemplating taking them to small claims court over it. The amount is small ($100) but I would like to set a precedent.
Is it not possible to dispute and chargeback via credit card provider? My strategy of giving three attempts to get a refund as per their procedures, then warning about dispute, then eventually issuing a chargeback worked quite fine so far across multiple vendors. It rarely goes as far as the actual chargeback, typically the warning is sufficient.
If you paid via Cc sure, but, in the EU at least, bank or debit card are pretty common, and while it is possible to charge back with those, it is pretty hard depending on the policies and size of the bank. I have a bank acc in Spain who chargeback without questions when I pop over an email, while my dutch or uk accounts require stacks of paperwork and often say ‘nope’.
I'm in UK (so until not that long ago, EU :) ). Don't need credit cards for the "credit" part, but I'm exclusively using them for online (or any) shopping, purely for the safety reasons mentioned. As far as I can see, there's no downsides as long as you're paying it all off every month.
So I'm in the UK as well, and have you ever actually tried issuing a chargeback? Because I have - and unlike in US, where I understand that you can just issue a chargeback by just asking your bank to do it, in here I was asked to provide all kinds of proof, then they had to wait 30(!!!) days for a reply from the seller to give them their version of events, then it took another 2 weeks for the bank to reply that yep, looks like you've been scammed alright, here's your money back.
It's my understanding that in US you "just" ask the bank to reverse the transaction and they do - if the company still believes you owe them money after that, they can pursue you through collections or other legal means. The bank isn't in charge of "investigating" anything.
I'm not saying it's better - just that when Americans mention "just do a chargeback" it doesn't really work this way for people outside of US.
If it was a chip transaction, the bank may or may not agree to temporarily reverse the transaction for you depending on the transaction and your history with the bank while they contact the merchant and investigate.
If it was a non chip transaction, and the merchant has a physical presence, then the chargeback is almost always immediately approved due to the merchant not having updated their machines to accept chip transactions.
If it was an online transaction, it gets murkier depending on how secure it was. I have been asked for SMA 2FA confirming charge and amount when buying from BestBuy.com, which I imagine is harder to chargeback than a hotel reservation made without the hotel even verifying the card name/address or requiring CVC.
But 99% of the time, if a product/service is blatantly not delivered or the charge was fraudulent (stolen, higher than receipt, etc), the bank will almost always immediately reverse it for you. Although, with chip transactions, I am not sure how it works if you wait a week or month to report it stolen. Presumably, the onus is on the cardholder to report it lost/stolen within a certain period of time.
Of course, whether or not a bank reverses a transaction for you, the merchant can always take you to court or collections (not that they would win, but it would be an inconvenience to deal with).
I recently went through this process with American Express. Here was my situation and experience.
I bought something online that was supposed to come in two packages. One package arrived. The other didn't arrive even after three weeks. The tracking information they sent me was wrong, and when I figured out what it was supposed to be, it showed as being stuck in one of the sorting facilities.
I tried to contact the vendor over a period of a week- emailed them, called them multuple times- no response or reply.
I called Amex and they opened a report. They asked me if I'd tried to contact the vendor- what had they said. I even explained that I didn't feel I was entitled to the whole amount, only the part for the second package.
Amex told me that they'd need to open up their own investigation, attempt to speak with the vendor, etc. and I should expect to hear back from them by email in two weeks.
That seemed reasonable to me.
Three days later, I got an email saying they'd give me the entire amount, including the part I didn't ask for.
A few days after that, the vendor got back to me and it turns out the tracking info was wrong, and the package had been delivered but I hadn't seen the package.
I felt bad for them that they were out the money for the product, but the fact that they sent me wrong information, didn't contact me for a week, only responded after the bank contacted them, and then misspelled my name and offered no apology helped curb some of those feelings.
All in all, the process was easy and reasonable.
I've only done two chargebacks in my life, and I think the other took a bit longer but was roughly the same. The bank is doing very rough justice but if the amount is small enough, they just offer it back to the customer as in my case, which was ~$500. If it was a larger amount, I'd expect a longer, more involved process.
I understand you feeling a bit sorry for the seller, but unless it was a very small entity (like a person on etsy), I wouldn't give it a second thought. I think it incentivises the seller to clean up their processes, to everyone's benefit. Also, buyers feeling comfortable about chargebacks and returns promotes more sales in the long run.
> just that when Americans mention "just do a chargeback" it doesn't really work this way for people outside of US.
It's this way in the US...for major credit cards and banks.
If your bank is a community credit union or you have a usurious credit card, the chargeback experience [can be] as onerous as yours. It starts with you needing to fax all of the required forms and evidence.
I mean, I can do(and have done) the exact same thing with a Debit card payment, so using a credit card has offered no extra benefit here. But yes, if you just used a direct bank transfer then you're screwed.
> I can do(and have done) the exact same thing with a Debit card payment, so using a credit card has offered no extra benefit here.
If you're in the USA (elsewhere I don't know the rules) there is a big difference that isn't immediately obvious.
With a credit card, you are not liable by law (regulation) so you always have this benefit.
With a debit card, most reasonable banks offer no liability as a customer retention perk, but nothing requires that to be true. They could at any moment decide to leave you hanging, if they decide it's cheaper to lose you as a customer than offer the benefit.
Exactly, plus I believe paying off a credit card improves your credit score. Some debit cards at least do offer protection (mine is Santander) but it’s not by law so I don’t know if it is as effective as chargebacks, which I’ve had cause to use a couple of times and thought worked great. I also only pay on credit online now and pay off in full, and tell others to do the same.
For what it's worth, some places in EU at least used to have "debit cards with credit-equivalent consumer protection". My MasterCard back in the day explicitly advertised that. Just don't rely on every debit card doing that.
+1 the last time I used such a service to book a hotel they confirmed it and gave me a confirmation number. I printed everything on paper. When I arrived at the hotel after a 13 hour flight, I showed the receptionist the confirmation number and they 'couldn't find it in their system'. I compared my confirmation number with a colleague's who was traveling with me and they were the same unique format. How the hell does that happen
When flying, I will avoid using an online travel agency (OTA) as well if I can .
I booking with Gotogate.com, but the flight was canceled. Then when trying to get a refund Gotogate systematically try to stall time as much as possible. You have to call support, and are answered by people with very thick Indian accent which is impossible to understand.
Luckily I had paid with Paypal, so I could request a refund through there.
Unfortunately, when booking flights that needs connections, you have to use an OTA. If one flight is cancelled, the others should be too, which an OTA fixes.
You should book directly with an airline who will book all the connections so long as they're all with partner airlines (i.e usually in the same alliance). Often you can even book with an airline in that alliance that you won't even be flying to possibly get cheaper tickets.
Some OTAs will book connections on airlines that aren't partnered as separate tickets so if you're incoming flight is delayed and you miss a connection, tough luck.
This. I booked an international flight with Delta for next month. On Saturday I awoke to find that KLM changed my European connection to 28 hours later than originally booked and this would screw up all of our hotels and rental car. I talked to Delta and after about 30 minutes of the agent doing everything she could including escalating was told that they couldn't make any changes for 10 calendar days as KLM was blocking them out.
Today, I found a Delta itinerary that actually fits our plans better than the original flight. I called back and got my original flight canceled and the new one booked. It still took 3 agents to get everything settled but I can't imagine how much worse the whole experience would have been if I had booked through Expedia or Kayak or any other 3rd party.
Now to hope nothing else changes between now and our departure.
An important note is this will not work with budget airlines, easyjet or the likes. They won't do the travel agent for you and you will struggle to get any cent back in case of trouble.
Anecdotal: there are bad things to say about Airbnb... But (for me) their customer service has been top notch. We were twice in a situation were we had to rebook spontaneous, once because the the original host canceled minutes before we arrived, another time because the host was very generous with their descriptions and we found ourselves in a tiny room without AC and shared accomodations instead of an apartment.
Both times a call to Airbnb quickly resolved the issue and they even payed the increase in rent.
I've only one experience with airbnb support (a host that blamed a cracked window on us that we had not touched or looked at) but they were reasonably okay to deal with that one time.
I'm more inclined to think they're very inconsistent, and people are more likely to complain about bad experiences than to loudly proclaim "this company is reasonably okay to deal with!"
I would sooner assume this was an outdated anecdote.
Companies are more willing to bend over backwards in their early days, when they're still trying to make a name for themselves (the honeymoon period). The abuse starts once they've bested the competition and become a household name.
At least on Booking.com there are tricks the hosts can pull so you cannot leave a bad review: they cancel your stay as "no show" and booking.com will not do anything about it. The only way is to check reviews in other places as well - google and whatnot.
I am actually sympathetic here - one quirk of New York City is despite hosting some of the busiest airports in the country, there simply aren't any reasonable airport hotels.
There used to be many, but the City bought most of them outright and converted them into homeless shelters. The remainder serve as overflow, so you probably don't want to stay there either. The common wisdom in the frequent flyer community seems to be to just head to Manhattan, or go to Flushing - it's more fun that way anyways.
* The exception is probably the newly opened TWA hotel on JFK, which is really nice, albeit pricy
I leapt into your comment to profess my love for the TWA Hotel but saw you actually mentioned it towards the end. I fly a Melbourne => JFK leg a couple of times a year and the fact that I can grab the AirTrain for one stop and then be at the hotel is pretty great. Doesn't really hit me that I'm back in the states until I walk into that lobby.
It's worth considering the direction of causality here. I doubt the City has somehow priced out frequent flyers who'd otherwise love to stay near the airport in droves. The City could afford to buy those hotels only because demand had already evaporated.
You have had some very interesting experiences at JFK. I'm honestly always amazed at how fast I can move through security there.
I just flew out recently and it took... maybe a half hour to check my bag and get through TSA security with an opt out request (for the scanners, so they pat you down instead).
Maybe I'm lucky, but I've flown through JFK and LaGuardia a fair amount and never really had any staggering wait times.
I do wish they could have just made the Air Tram part of the subway system cause taking a taxi during rush hour was certainly a mistake but Q ->... hmm I guess the A or J or whatever train would get me to the Air Tram -> Air Tram is a bit of a pain.
Although, I will say, if you stand at the front of the air tram at night so you can look out the front window as you zoom down the track, that's pretty neat and beautiful.
> I do wish they could have just made the Air Tram part of the subway system cause taking a taxi during rush hour was certainly a mistake but Q ->... hmm I guess the A or J or whatever train would get me to the Air Tram -> Air Tram is a bit of a pain.
Unfortunately, federal law essentially prohibits cities from having subways connect directly to airports, which is why nearly every city in the country has a separate train shuttle to the airport (assuming they have a subway system in the first place at all).
For what it's worth, if you're taking the Q to the A, you're probably coming from a place where it's actually faster to take the LIRR (from Penn Station or Port Authority) to get to JFK.
The silver line extension (hopefully opening by thanksgiving) includes a stop at IAD (Dulles airport, the third airport in the DC area class B airspace) as well.
Yes, that's because the relevant law was repealed last year. The Silver Line was actually the impetus to finally end the policy.
However, transit infrastructure is locked in once, built, so almost every other transit system in the country has this issue, because it was built before 2021.
Am I the only one who had a very positive experience with Booking?
Once I had booked a hotel in Hong Kong for a week, pretty expensive, and I finally couldn't go. But this was in an especially hectic moment (personally and professionally) so I missed the full refund deadline for cancellation. It was obviously my fault, as the deadline had been clear from the beginning, so I just cancelled without refund (or maybe with partial refund, I don't remember) and moved on.
The next day, and without having asked, I got an email from Booking saying that they would negotiate with the hotel to see if they could give me a full refund anyway. A day after that, I got the refund. It was a substantial amount of money so I'm quite grateful to whomever did that at Booking.
On the other hand, I hate their pricing practices, e.g. presumably because I am a relatively frequent customer, the website often offers me worse prices than my wife who almost never used it. Also different prices on mobile and PC, etc.
My one experience with Booking.com was a mixed bag. I paid for a room for a few nights in a city on the Black Sea, and when I got there (pretty late at night, after several hours of driving through the lovely and beautiful mountains), they couldn't find any record of the booking. None, and no rooms available. We suddenly had nowhere to stay.
I went out and sat in the car, and eventually got to chat with a Booking.com agent, who said they could do nothing at first. After 15 minutes of chatting with them, they said, "We don't have any relationship to that hotel. What is the local number you have for them?" And about 15 seconds later, "I am issuing a full refund."
Frustrating, but I did get my money back, and did find another room elsewhere in the city (unbelievably, with the one hotel chain where I use their rewards program!)
Turns out someone had simply set up a fake hotel profile for this prominent hotel in the city and was collecting booking fees from people like me! Like I said, at least I did get my money back...
I had lots of positive experiences with them until one I didnt and they wouldnt do anything to help or refund me for sending me to a smoke filled crack house. Since then I don't use them anymore.
I don't think it was booking but after hurricane Ian swept through the Ft Myers, Florida region this year my parents got a full refund before they even reached out.
I don't know what service it was but they were very proactive about it.
I haven't had much issue with Booking.com but I haven't had any times where I needed to refund either.
That's great, but things like hotels aren't like, say, I dunno, say one stick of gum not having flavor out of every 50 that do; you just spit it out and move on. Hotels are where people temporarily reside. This situation is more akin to one stick of gum out of 50 causing food poisoning and possibly death. That becomes much more serious, even though there might be 49 people who just really love that gum. That is, tldr: it's great, until it's not.
The further we get from the factory/industrialized IS9000(1) standards of the 1960s where quality control was king, the further we get into wildly inconsistent and personally variable experiences, with spectrums of experience that fluctuate wildly from yours, and the person in the article. And that's a big problem.
Consistency is really hard, but when companies are built on software which can more or less withstand moderate failures, errors like this are more prone.
I hate to be "we need to go back" - but we really do need a return to consistency of experience and product.
Agreed. It seems like every platform's goal is to ignore all rules and responsibility and grow large enough to become a toll road for an entire industry.
Our travel agent is an individual with a reputation. An app is not. An app is self-service and self-service is no service.
When travel agents were unable to get us something affordable in Paris, we attempted to solve it ourselves with an app. The experience was so bad I refuse to travel to Paris ever again, and now we only ever book through agents. My fault? Maybe. Enabled by a faceless marketplace that doesn't give a crap? Absolutely.
If a travel agent goes "Yeah, you probably don't want to do that" even ONCE while you're sorting out your travel plans, they just paid for themselves.
I'm currently on a holiday in Greece that we booked ourselves after talking to a travel agent. Her main contribution was suggesting an island to stay on, but all her other suggestions ended up being worse than the options we found for ourselves. For example, we wanted a quick cheap stay in Athens so we could see the sights, so she found us some hotels that were somewhat outside the city centre - I'm sure they were okay, but what we actually wanted (and ended up booking ourselves) was a holiday flat in the city centre with a perfect view of the Acropolis, the flexibility we needed to sort ourselves out for breakfast and lunch, and a much cheaper price point.
Likewise, we wanted to stay in a resort for a few days afterwards and relax, so she sent us some ideas, but they were so lacklustre that we almost gave up on the idea of that part of our holiday altogether. Then we found something ourselves that was much nicer, and have been enjoying lovely beaches and incredible food for the last few days.
Even her flights were weird choices that involved a lot of waiting around at airports and would have brought us back a day earlier - booking them ourselves got us cheaper and more convenient options.
I always assumed that a travel agent would be more convenient than looking for something yourself, but I was amazed at how poor our experience was using one. Less choice and flexibility, and as you say, less self-service, and for us self-service gave us exactly what we wanted.
That's been my experience, I'm certain that good travel agents exist but finding them is hard and most don't seem to be much better than I can do myself. I've also tried some of those "concierge service" and they seem to always find much worse solutions than what I can find on my own.
It's also possible that they suggested worse options just to get a bigger fee without looking more expensive than what you could find with a single search.
I think the best "cheap" travel agents nowadays would just do the job of searching for you for an explicit fee, and then just send you the links. This is generally useful when you have specific requests and not much time to find them.
TBH, I'm amazed that "real travel agent via videochat" isn't a thing now. Even if you end up booking yourself, I could see paying up front $20 for half an hour of asking for some basic suggestions and sanity checks, or even providing a proposed itinerary via email for review.
I'm almost sure I left money on the table the last time I booked a holiday. I could probably have optimized my rail pass choice more, not sure I picked the absolute best departure days (I could probably have gone a week earlier or later) and there was probably a better way to book a hotel when I needed two non-consecutive stays (Visit $major_tourist_city for four days, then spend three days with family, then back to $major_tourist_city)
I ended up staying in the hotel said family used when they would spend a weekend in that city, which was extremely convenient and passable, but as much as anything, I went for it because I figured I couldn't trust random weirdly cropped photos and dueling reviews on travel sites. If I want to go somewhere else, I don't have that opportunity.
> I could probably have optimized my rail pass choice more, not sure I picked the absolute best departure days (I could probably have gone a week earlier or later) and there was probably a better way to book a hotel when I needed two non-consecutive stays
But will a travel agent really do that for you? Most likely they just use more or less the same booking interface as you do and give you some package deal and that's that.
I mean competent agents that have access to Virtuoso, know how to use the old ITA interface, use SABRE, know their way around credit card points and have experience with various destination should be able to find better options than you could.
The problem is finding that elusive competent travel agent and for that travel agent to find a way to market their skills so that they can be paid more than the vast majority of incompetent travel agents.
I've used apps many times over to travel to Asia/Europe/North America, book accommodations, rent cars... and haven't had a bad experience. That's not to say that I believe bad experiences don't ever happen, but more like they don't happen enough to me that I wouldn't ever use any of the apps.
Most of my friends are more avid than myself at traveling, and they also don't use travel agents.
It's possible it's just because I'm not super picky about my accommodations.
Paris is overrated. Two or three days is plenty, in my opinion. See the Eiffel Tower, hit the museums, and then you’re done. I preferred Bordeaux even though there was less to do than in Paris. On the other hand, I live in a huge city, so cities aren’t very interesting to me, so my opinion is very biased.
You can't see more then mi iscule part of museums in small city in one day, much less in Paris. I mean, if you are u interested in them sure, but why would you go into them then in the first place.
And you pay for that which is fine. I think these sites offer ways to stay in different types of homes which provide a unique experience. There's always a risk of problems and I think that's common sense.
When articles like this are posted I often see comments like "a travel agent is more personal" or "it's an app with less control than a hotel"
Who wasn't aware of this? These aren't a revelation.
You're being downvoted for a sarcatic remark but all these comments that simply point out obvious benefits seem less like genuine offers of advice and more like a way to keep damaging any big tech company.
I wasn't even being sarcastic: for me saving potentially hundreds of € is worth it, for some people they might like the "personal touch" of a travel agent.
I get that hotels are safer but I have rented with booking.com (careful to book only apartments that have 9/10 ratings) with much success for my large-ish family. Traveling with more than two people is a huge pain and buying two hotel rooms is not only expensive but also never guarantees the two rooms are next to each other, making family travel inconvenient and expensive.
My experiences with booking (in Europe mostly) have been very positive and I find them way more transparent about fees, etc than Airbnb.
> It is hard to tell how to divide the blame between the service representative you spoke to — according to you, at a call center in a faraway country — or the system that trained her.
I don't understand why the NYT is getting into company-internal blame. The customer's interface seems to have been Booking.com. Shouldn't any blame -- from the perspective of customer and this NYT writer -- stop at the company?
I've completely sworn off third-party booking services. They never know what's going on and when anything goes wrong they just tell you they can't help you. Then the place tells you that they can't help you because you didn't book through them and they just point fingers at each other.
Better to book directly from whatever hotel / airline / whatever you want to use. Whatever savings you might get is not worth it and a lot of times hotels appreciate direct bookings and they're cheaper anyway.
I've spent ~150 nights in hotels in the past year, and it's super rare that booking directly is cheaper. I almost always save like 30% on Hotels.com/HotelTonight/etc.
I recently wanted to extend a stay and the front desk quoted me $120/nt while Hotels.com was $107 (plus 10% back as a reward, so ~$96).
I wish that weren't the case because this is 100% true:
> never know what's going on and when anything goes wrong they just tell you they can't help you. Then the place tells you that they can't help you because you didn't book through them and they just point fingers at each other.
I've come to rely greatly on in-app ratings/reviews before booking.
Here, hotels have deals with booking.com etc that forbid them to post lower rates on their own websites. However, if you call to reserve, you get a discount code. I don’t know if that’s a more global practice or not.
This is the "most favored nation" pricing clause that major OTAs like Booking and Expedia try to put in their contracts with hotels. Usually the phrasing says something along the lines of how the clause doesn't apply if the hotel has a previous relationship with the guest - this is part of why hotel chains push so hard to get customers to join their loyalty programs. If the OTA is taking 20% off the top, the hotel can get you to sign up for their program and then sell you the room for 10% off, and everyone but the OTA wins. Another way hotels try to get around this is offering free breakfast, wifi, better rooms, etc. for directly booked customers, while showing the same price as the OTA.
~5 years ago the EU was starting to push back on the legality of the MFN clauses and I was under the impression that Booking.com had scaled back their usage of them in some ways, but I don't know the current state of things.
While I'm at it, my usual rant about Booking.com's review system - the scale is actually from 2.5-10, and the median score is 8.1. Don't be fooled by those "above average" 7 scores.
Same here... I'm one of those archetypical millennials that hate phone calls.
Over the year I have learned to overcome my aversion to calls when making one is beneficial, but a call to someone totally unknown, and not in my native language, is one of the cases where... yeah, I'd pay the premium too.
Not only that, hotels.com often has rooms when the hotel is “fully booked.” Twice last month in London, I wanted to extend my stay. The staff said the hotel was full. I went online and booked. Then asked them to keep me in the same room. I think it’s because they reserve a block for online sales.
The staff/management must have been incompetent, or there was a discrepancy in the inventory and they overbooked. There’s no reason a hotel owner would want a person in the hotel to buy on hotels.com and end up with 15% less money due to having to paying commission to Expedia.
I found that to be the case a lot more during covid. Hilton and other chains had these amazing deals where if you found something cheaper they’d match plus knock 30% off or whatever. It was almost a certainty that was the case so I was getting good deals on rooms.
That guarantee still exists but I find the prices are now usually the same for those mega chains.
All the hotel chains offer a Best Price Guarantee discount or maybe even a free night if you report that you found a cheaper hotel room than the official website (at the same time/date of shopping):
I've found that booking direct will get me the same rate as something like hotels.com, at least for the hotels I'm booking. I do have a much higher confidence that I will get the room type I booked and any additional add-ons like parking if I book direct than with the 3rd party.
I'll also check back closer to arrival to see if there's a better rate. It's been about 50/50 this year.
> I've come to rely greatly on in-app ratings/reviews before booking.
Really? My last vacation we booked the first few nights and then decided where to go and booked the next night on booking.com and my take-away was that they must mostly keep the good reviews online and remove most of the bad ones.
This price discrepancy almost never happens due to advances in integration of the reservations systems. When a chain hotel changes its prices, it almost immediately is reflected on Expedia/booking and other websites.
Usually, the price discrepancy is because someone is comparing prices on different dates/times after the prices have changed, or the price is not actually advertised (auctioned rooms at random hotels like on Priceline), or some type of car rental/flight package pricing by the travel agent.
I had issues with the accommodation after booking, but hotels.com always fixed it and so far to my benefit (getting better rooms or hotels than I paid for to compensate me).
I agree. It never seems to go right. The third party either has the wrong room availability, wrong room type, wrong price, etc. And I actually side with the hotels because it’s exactly as if someone else bought the room for you and messed up, which the hotel can’t really deal with but they usually try. And for the most part, hotels seem like one of the last places you can still get actual customer service with.
Sadly that's comparable to rent in some places these days, so not so special. But yes I've always been pretty happy with the level of service personally.
Yeah, the rent for my girlfriend and I is within that range, and the first two months we were in the apartment there were a total of six or seven days where our apartment had no heat and management would not answer our calls or emails until the city stepped in due to the number of complaints that we and our neighbors were filing. On the other hand, the hotel we stayed in for a bit during one of those stints had amazing customer service! They let us decide each day by 11 AM whether or not we wanted to extend our stay, and when we finally got confirmation that the heat in our apartment was working, they decided to let us stay until 1 PM with no extra charge just to save us some trouble.
Serious question: how much do you think a full time customer service agent should be paid? (Some background: I've worked at customer service in the past.)
Depends on the rest of the hotel/hospitality equation. I imagine they can be paid more than they are and still have the hotel be profitable, but I have no idea what a reasonable amount looks like.
Not only is it often cheaper to book directly through the hotel, they often upgrade you to a nicer suite at least here in Aus whenever I've done that.
My grandfather taught me a decade ago (more even) to use Wotif (now Expedia) and similar to find places, then call directly. For someone who definitely did not grow up with this sort of tech, he was quite excellent at working the boundaries of tech and people to get good results.
I’ve tried booking through hotels directly and it’s never been cheaper. It is so weird. I usually end up using hotels.com which is just one of many booking services owned by Expedia.
Have to call them -- they often have contracts that mean they can't offer cheaper rates online, but are happy to over the phone. Though it's possibly down to where you're staying I guess, but I've had good luck doing that in Australia, the UK and a couple places around Europe!
And worst-case, they'll match it usually, and I'd rather be booked directly to avoid the crap that the article is discussing
While I've had that as well, I've also had occasions where the hotel staff replies "oh yeah, to get the cheaper rates you'll have to go through <agent-site-with-lower-list-price>" when calling them, or even trying to extend an existing reservation at the desk.
Norms do seem to vary between regions and countries.
Some locations have no option to book outside of the third party service, unfortunately. I visited Peru recently and was only able to book directly with the stay on about 1/4 of the occasions.
I've had this exact experience with third-party brokers so many times. I now use third-party sites just for searching and price comparisons, but always book direct with hotel / airline. Usually they give miles / points / benefits you wouldn't get otherwise.
For flights yes, for hotels I suppose it varies on location.
In South East Asia hotels are cheaper on Agoda and even contacting the hosts directly wouldn't get you a better price most of the time. It's a waste of time to try so I stopped doing that.
Always book directly through the hotel website. Priceline has deals but their customer service is horrible. Also it seemed like the majority of the time I would book an express deal they would put me in an accessible room. I’m not disabled and generally no issues with it but I found it odd. Not only that, they will never honor their “price match guarantee.” They state that if you find a cheaper price on a express deal they will refund you up to 200% of the difference. They will act like you are crazy if you call them after finding a cheaper rate. I learned my lesson the hard way. Don’t book through 3rd party travel websites.
Theory: people who need the disabled room are likely aware of this and are more likely to book ahead. Therefore, when you get to day-of or very close to it, if the disabled room is still available, it's unlikely it's suddenly going to be reserved by an actual disabled guest, so they may as well offer it cheap if it's more profitable than letting it sit empty.
This happened to me too in Austin! I booked a room at a La Quinta Inn in South Austin that they had turned into a homeless shelter. I was pretty upset and quit using HotelTonight and stopped staying at La Quinta Inn over it. I was able to get my money back though, and just showed up a different hotel downtown in person and got a room there instead.
Purely as an observation, as a driving holiday tourist I stayed in hotels in Penn. in the 2010s era, and even in off the main path motels, the reception was a wire mesh cage with a hole to pass money. For anyone who comes from other developed western economy cultures this can be a bit of a shock. "rough" is very contextually defined.
If however, you wound up in the parts of town truck drivers in the UK have to put up with (they call them lorry parks, not truck parks) you could find similar things. Not that the drivers are a problem: far from it. They just get shunted to some of the worst parts of town.
Lots and lots of cheap hotels and B&B in the UK are now de-facto housing otherwise homeless people: this started to be routine under Margaret Thatcher if not before, and has continued at varying pace ever since.
I've stopped booking through Kayak (used to be my favorite), other OTAs, even many budget airlines, because it's simply not worth the post booking headaches.
Hotel searches on Kayak are pretty poor simply due to the fact that they somehow always show low-res images. I generally book on Agoda or search on Google Maps nowadays. Kayak is still my go-to for flights though.
I’ve had good experiences with Hotels.com and find the reviews helpful. The free nights are a nice perk too.
Have contacted customer service only twice and can’t really complain. When reviews or other information weren’t available in the app I’ve called directly.
I am a gold member with them, meaning I stay more than 30 nights a year. They definitely have tiered customer service. At the regular level, it’s meh. At gold, I left a complaint with a virtual agent about the app not working well with VPNs, and a person called me back the next day.
The crazy thing is that I hit gold level staying at $30/night places in SE Asia.
A customer runs a reservation engine that OTAs use as a white label backend.
Their IT manager once told me that he didn't understand how people can actually get their rooms in an hotel since most reservations come to the hotel as an email (unless you are going to a big girl chain).
Most hotel management systems do not talk with booking management systems and all transactions come via email. Of course they don't have their full inventory in the platforms just in case something like a spam filter happens.
After bad experiences with Booking.com, I just use them as a search engine: call ahead to the property I want to stay in and propose a deal that we book directly with a discount (so split in half between us the Booking.com middleman commission) - it usually works!
I suggest you do the same, as using Booking.com offers no protection for problems - don't give them your money!
Booking.com operates like a monopoly and doesn't need to care whatsoever if the money they collect from you will correspond to a night of accomodation.
Last bad experience: I successfully booked - and paid! - a room in an evening emergency (broken-down car) to find out that the hostel door was locked and no one would open.
Called Booking.com customer support about them collecting money for a service they were not in a position to provide: a total back-and-forward mess and they couldn't care less. I did not get my money back.
I agree based on the good reporting that everyone is at fault here, but for gods sake Booking.com learn to react in situations like this by just getting the person a room and eat the costs and you will earn double that in more people using your service in the future. I imagine that Booking.com and related sites mostly exists due to their business partnerships where they handle bookings for employees for business travel, and that their consumer business is just a side business where they don't give a shit if people are left stranded in the middle of nowhere. If the hotel is accepting reservations, but not actually in regular communication with Booking.com or weekly checking boxes that they are still accepting reservations then that is on Booking.com for not doing any diligence and I believe they are guilty of negligence if something more serious did happen.
number one reason why i never EVER recommend booking hotels or cars through aggregators. you'll save very little money but deal with a lot of pain if something goes wrong.
The old money taking intermediary that doesn’t take responsibility: happens all the time with all the things. Don’t take shit from these shoulder shruggers and try not to use them. Not just booking websites but tradespeople and wrapped finanical services too.
No but I don’t have a choice there. I have had shares locked up for a year due to a broker blaming another bank dealing with shares moving to another exchange (not my choice) though. So just waiting and no organ grinders to help me.
Actually had a similar experience at a hotel in San Jose (Courtyard Campbell) that I stayed at for a wedding. There were homeless people and prostitutes in the parking garage and when I asked the front desk if our vehicles were going to be safe, the concierge told me the people I saw were actually guests of the hotel due to some city program... I was flabbergasted and also really didn't feel safe having my 2 year old and 3 month old at a hotel like that.
Booking.com is a large travel aggregator, Nasdaq listed (BKNG) with a 74B market cap - 6x the size of Expedia. They’re just not as big in North America.
These initiatives saved the hotel industry during COVID when demand fell off a cliff. These hotels still had mortgages but no clients. State intervention saved the industry.
This a massive overstatement. There are over 1,000 hotels in Los Angeles county, 35 participated in Project Roomkey. Hotels don't want to shelter homeless for obvious reasons. That's why LA now has a ballot initiative to force hotels to give up rooms to the homeless.
I disagree with both you and the columnist that somehow the poor quality of the hotel is in any way relevant to this story.
She had, in the practical if not precise legal sense, a contract with Booking.com that she would pay them $150, and they would ensure she had a room at a specific hotel for that night.
Regardless of whether she'd booked the Ritz Carlton or a crummy Quality Inn, she had paid Booking.com for a night in a hotel. They were responsible to deliver that to her.
Halfway decent customer service would have, at the very least, entailed a room at the closest available equivalent or better hotel (not difficult in this case since it sounds like just about any property would qualify) and the cost of transportation there and back.
On another note to travelers: don't book hotels through an OTA (Online Travel Agency like Booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor and the like) unless you have to. Nearly every property in America now has a "best price guarantee" that lets you get the best possible price direct from them. And you'll often additionally be eligible to earn status and points on the hotel's own program.
DO book direct with the hotel/chain, or a traditional travel agent for higher-end properties who might have access to increased perks (aka Signature Travel, FHR etc.), and DO pay with a credit card that offers trip insurance so that if you find yourself in a situation like the above, you have some coverage.
> On another note to travelers: don't book hotels through an OTA (Online Travel Agency like Booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor and the like) unless you have to. Nearly every property in America now has a "best price guarantee" that lets you get the best possible price direct from them. And you'll often additionally be eligible to earn status and points on the hotel's own program.
None of that's worth the hassle of booking directly. Go to the hotel site. Skip the intro video. Find the booking button under two levels of menus. Try to figure out what their cancellation terms are... nope, haha, good luck. Enter your name, address (your browser has autofill but if you use it their javascript highlights all the fields as having errors), credit card information and three security questions. Bzzt, your 8-character password didn't have a numeral and a special character, re-enter all your information again. Bzzt, ' is not an allowed password character, re-enter all your information again. There you are, you're booked, now just unsubscribe from their mailing list and delete the 3 spam mails they've already sent you and you're good.
Oh, you booked with the wrong card? No problem, just click the link in your confirmation email, enter all your information and... haha, no, psych, the form just gives you an error page. Find their contact information under three levels of menus, email them, wait a week, and you'll get 2 more spam mails from the mailing list you already unsubscribed from, but no actual reply, nope. Wouldn't want you to miss out on having to make an international call.
It's not that hard. And you get the benefit that they actually book the hotel room.
I'm kind of mystified how Booking.com was able to say they booked a room at this hotel, when they apparently never even contacted the hotel to reserve the room. Clearly if they had contacted them, they would have learned that it was turned into a homeless shelter and not available.
> It's not that hard. And you get the benefit that they actually book the hotel room.
Haha no you don't. Hotels "forgetting" bookings that you made directly on their website absolutely happens. I'd be willing to bet that it happens (proportionately) more often than losing a booking that you made via a big aggregator.
> I'm kind of mystified how Booking.com was able to say they booked a room at this hotel, when they apparently never even contacted the hotel to reserve the room. Clearly if they had contacted them, they would have learned that it was turned into a homeless shelter and not available.
They might have had a standing allocation of rooms from the hotel, or they might have contacted the owners and had them straight-up lie about the hotel still operating. Certainly the article is describing a monumental fuck-up; as with any large system failure I suspect multiple things went wrong for this to happen.
> Haha no you don't. Hotels "forgetting" bookings that you made directly on their website absolutely happens.
If this happens at any major brand (Hyatt/Hilton/Marriott/IHG/Choice/etc), you will get sent a check for the expenses you incurred that night if you call the 800 number.
If those hotels are unable to accommodate your reservation for whatever reason, they are supposed to “walk” you to an equivalent hotel at their expense, including travel to and from the other and pay for your stay at the other hotel for 1 night and not charge you at all of course.
Not how it actually works out in my experience. Maybe if I'd been more persistent I'd've got some more money back, but it sounds like the person in the article was also offered more money once they were more persistent, so that doesn't seem like a clear win for direct booking.
The person in the article did not reserve a room at a major chain hotel, so they would not get the benefits of having the hotel brand’s policies enforced.
That is the benefit of reserving Hyatt/Hilton/Marriott/IHG/etc. They have contracts with the hotel owner (franchisee) that will allow them to get their money that they recompense you and heavy penalties to the franchisor for the franchisee not following policy, incentivizing the hotel to not screw the customer in the first place.
Hotel owners change brands all the time too, and the existing hotel brand notifies and migrates reservations to other area hotels when that happens. As opposed to this situation at some random unaffiliated hotel in NYC.
> None of that's worth the hassle of booking directly. Go to the hotel site. Skip the intro video. Find the booking button under two levels of menus. Try to figure out what their cancellation terms are... nope, haha, good luck.
Is this sarcasm?
Good luck getting any after purchase support from booking.com. Your hotel is now a homeless shelter -- too bad! How do you think something like booking.com makes their money?
Nope, not at all. Simple UI, go to book and the important stuff like when your booking is cancellable until is right there. And if I want to change my payment card, I just push the button and it works.
> Good luck getting any after purchase support from booking.com.
I have, and it was great, FWIW. (Hotel I booked at had stopped doing 24-hour checkin in between when I booked and when I arrived - I was able to message booking.com, no calling and waiting on hold, and they sorted it out despite a language barrier).
I think their point was that if the hotel website is less convenient than booking.com and doesn't give you any benefit: why do it on principle? Yes, if booking directly would give you better service it makes sense to go through more effort. But if they are both shit, why not do the thing that's easier and has the information up front.
Post-COVID, hotel booking terms are actually really generous, at least in my experience. Unless/until the status quo returns, I don't see any need for third-party booking.
> Post-COVID, hotel booking terms are actually really generous, at least in my experience.
Maybe, if you can actually find them. Booking.com tells me right there on the booking page when I can cancel for free until, and how much a cancellation will cost after that.
Or get an Amex platinum card and let the concierge deal with it. And get $100-200 in amenities such as resort credits, complimentary breakfast, and late checkin on top of that. And as an added bonus you get to visit some of the nicest airport lounges.
I'm a big fan of the Amex Platinum, but the Concierge won't book a hotel for you.
Amex has 3 separate similar services:
* Concierge, who can get you restaurant reservations and recommendations, event tickets and the like.
* Amex Travel, their online travel agency that actually runs on Expedia and shows bookings as Expedia bookings on the hotel's end.
* Platinum Travel Service, actual travel agents associated with Amex.
Only the 3rd option, PTS, will actually make a booking on your behalf, but their quality has slipped significantly in recent years.
This is exactly backwards in my experience. The OTAs are full of dark patterns and really want you to create an account. I don’t think that I’ve ever had to do so on a hotel website—-name, phone number, credit card, done.
I agree they're full of dark patterns (false "only x rooms left at this price" statements, misleading UI that implies the place you're looking at has just been booked), but frankly that's the lesser of two evils compared to a site that seemingly doesn't want your business. And while they do make you create an account, I entered my information once years ago and can now book a hotel in any town I want to go to, which is something nowhere else can match (if hotel websites reliably supported SSO that would be as good, but we're a long way off that at the moment).
I'm sympathetic to the client as I want large companies to be held accountable, however it's frustrating to read that she pretty much didn't even do 5 minutes of homework. It's the is/ought distinction
They usually are held to a higher standard by default because they have fewer or no resources to defend themselves. Or rather the larger companies are held to a lower standard than could be expected
It's good advice to book directly with hotels, but way too many don't make it easy to get this "best price guarantee" online as easily as via booking.com.
Booking.com is huge, they're part of the same group that owns Kayak, Priceline, etc. Now, I have friends that have had really bad experiences with Priceline.
I think the general rule of thumb if you're worried about having a bad time is to just stick to the big hotel brands and book directly.
Personally I use hotels.com and never had an issue but I only stick with the big chains (Hilton mainly).
Caveat: when booking directly you still need to confirm your reservation by phone.
I have twice had Wyndham hotels book for earlier dates than what I had input on their website when making the reservation. (After it happened the first time, I triple-checked the input fields, and it happened again.)
It appears that this hotel chain has a glitchy website. Traveller beware.
I've heard of people booking hotels with those services and the room doesn't actually get booked and the hotel is full. Or the service just puts up whatever they think is a hotel and makes up amenities.
Actual hotels can be converted into homeless shelter overflow. However in practice this almost never happens especially with more expensive hotels, only very temporarily in cases like natural disasters. I have heard hotel rooms being transformed into college dorms because the college enrolled too many students.
This happened to me before. I booked a room in Austin at a La Quinta Inn through HotelTonight, and when I showed up the place looked abandoned. Turns out, it had been turned into a homeless shelter, and you couldn't stay there even if you wanted to. There was a big fence around the whole building, those portable chain-link type fences which are used around construction sites. And obviously there was no one working there that could give you a key to a room or anything like that. It was pretty upsetting.
Actually, it does pay. Literally. Because the same hotel is often cheaper if you book it through the booking website, while mainly business travelers book the hotel directly.
There are a few exceptions, such as Hotwire-style hidden rates, or rates negotiated for conferences and events, but displayed rates from places like Booking.com, Expedia and the like nearly always qualify.
I just checked, our Holiday Inn here is 0.10€ per night cheaper on Expedia. That wouldn’t even trigger their best price guarantee (1% saving needed). But yeah, that is not worth it, I haven’t actually booked a hotel in a few years, so I guess things changed for the better.
edit: Of course, Expedia doesn’t even have Motel One which is a nice 50€ cheaper than the Holiday Inn, and that’s for their 2nd cheapest room.
edit2: Okay, actually this is pretty confusing. Apparently, Motel One website and Expedia have 2 completely separate contingents of available rooms. Some days I can get the cheapest room at Expedia with no rooms free at the M1 website, some days they don’t have any rooms while the medium room is available directly.
These best price guarantees are all garbage, though.
They'll say that the room type offered on the OTA is different than the room type booked direct - even if it's the same room.
I stayed at the Kimpton Epic Miami. Paid almost $150/nt less through Priceline. Tried to use IHG's Best Price Guarantee and they said it's a different class of room.
Certainly not all garbage, though IHG (and Hilton) are two of the worst. Marriott[1] and Hyatt[2] seem to be much more dependable, per literally thousands of posts on their Flyertalk threads.
BUT, the practical consequence is that seeing drastically cheaper rates on OTAs than direct booking is much rarer than it used to be.
Marriott did the same thing for me with the New Orleans Ritz. In their case, they said the OTA room isn't guaranteed, direct is, therefore, different class of room.
Do you actually have any experience with these best price guarantees? Because I've only tried a handful of times and every time I end up booking through the OTA.
Look how fast you walked back your initial claim:
> Every major hotel chain and many independent properties have "Best Price Guarantees" that, well, guarantee you'll get the best price with them.
> Certainly not all garbage, though IHG (and Hilton) are two of the worst.
This used to be the case, and most people think this without ever actually confirming this while traveling. The hotels have been working hard to incentivize away from this mentality with very tangible perks for directly booking with them which makes them, as you put it “literally cheaper”.
All the major hotel chains IHG, Hilton, Marriott, and Wyndham, which collectively account for over 98% of hotel properties across their various brands, now offer best price guarantees. In order to do this, hotels are strictly enforcing that travel aggregators can not advertise below certain prices.
Now admittedly, there are still deals out there cheaper than the direct hotels such as Hotwire and Priceline’s “name your price” programs. But the trick here is that they aren’t advertising specific prices for hotels. They are hiding the exact location or price unless you go through an extended process, which usually means committing with your credit card number before revealing the location or hotel chain. However, even these have caveats as they often lack perks that hotels offer direct customers. Often they don’t even guarantee a room type.
Most commonly hotels are removing the perk of free breakfast from travel aggregator deals, but still reserving it for direct customers. Also, with only a few exceptions, most hotels now only offer points and loyalty programs to direct purchase customers. You miss out on these by using aggregators, which usually equates to a roughly 5-10% value. This trickles down to other perks like the likelihood of getting a room upgrade, which is generally nil when booking through a travel aggregator. Some travelers like me that have even modest loyalty can get guaranteed room upgrades when available if booking directly. Even with status you miss out on these by booking through aggregators.
So no, it doesn’t pay to use a travel aggregator. It’s great for discovery or maybe a quick last minute purchase, but generally it’s better to book directly with the hotel.
None of this mentions non-tangible benefits like the fact that if you have a problem with your room and you booked directly you are going to find the problem getting corrected much quicker, easier, and better because the hotel can resolve the problem themselves. Disputes when you book through the travel aggregators requires you to call the aggregator. Which then, like the woman in this story, requires them to make you wait while they call the hotel and play phone tag back and forth, rarely yielding positive results.
"Most commonly hotels are removing the perk of free breakfast from travel aggregator deals, but still reserving it for direct customers."
I'll be honest, this is a perk I've seen advertised alot but never really understood. Maybe I just don't stay at good hotels or something but the breakfast I've always seen is a open bar with like coffee, milk, orange juice, cereals, toast/bagel, breakfast sausage, some fruit and a waffle iron. Is that really worth more than like 5$? Is it even worth factoring into the price of a 100$+ a night stay? Almost feels petty on the part of hotels to say no you can't have this bowl of offbrand cheerios and milk
It's $5, plus the convenience factor of finding somewhere to have breakfast in an unfamiliar city when you probably just want to get on with your business trip/holiday.
I don't doubt though the pettiness of hotels; I've seen way too many pictures of "this water bottle is free if you have Quadruple Osmium status with our loyalty programme, or $3.50 added to your bill otherwise."
Just feels like you could throw a handful of oranges and oatmeal packets in your luggage for the same experience til you find a grocery store. Like it's nice they have it but specifically pushing or pulling it as a perk? I guess I've just never felt that rushed. Your probably right on the pettiness of hotels though.
The concept might work, but I've never seen a regular hotel that provides a meaningful set of dishes. So if you made oatmeal, you'd have to do it in a coffee cup and try to drink it, or carry cutlery with it.
TBH, that's the perk I want in a hotel room-- a couple of sets of plastic silverware, so I can just bring back a takeaway (or leftovers) at the end of the day and be able to eat it without some comical scenario like trying to use plastic straws as chopsticks or smashing my face into a bowl of Pad Thai.
> So no, it doesn’t pay to use a travel aggregator. It’s great for discovery or maybe a quick last minute purchase, but generally it’s better to book directly with the hotel.
> All the major hotel chains IHG, Hilton, Marriott, and Wyndham, which collectively account for over 98% of hotel properties across their various brands, now offer best price guarantees.
The hotel cannot offer a cheaper public rate than Booking.com or Expedia, even though they take 15% or more. The hotel has to include other perks not available or limit the availability of the offer to members. The aggregators can run promotions that discount the rates, which the hotel still covers the difference.
The hotel can offer a cheaper rate, if you are a member of the hotels’ free rewards program. All the chain hotels offer a discounted “members” discount price for reserving directly and saving them commissions.
I've heard of booking.com and travel agents aka aggregators. (And I do frequently end up booking with a hotel directly.) However, I've also booked packages of various types through specialized agents that would have been very difficult to have done myself if even possible. So I don't think there's a general rule.
I do expect that there is a general rule with a lot of things that if you're fishing for deals that are too good to be true sometimes you'll be burned.
I’ve compared direct rates with these travel “aggregators” many times, and the rates I get through expedia, etc., are always cheaper. Also, the hotel never treats me like crap. I have been treated like crap by hotels, but those occasions happened to be when I booked directly.
EDIT: Some commenters suggest asking the hotel to match the aggregator price. This seems like a good idea, and I may try it next time.
I thought an interesting point of the article was that the customer wasn’t entirely blameless and the article said as much. Read her situation a couple more times over.
This person arrived to check in at 11:30 PM and intended to catch a 6 AM flight the next day. So their original plan involved only sleeping from around 11:45PM to 4:30AM assuming they were right next to the airport.
This is a complaint about missing out on less than 5 hours of sleep in the first place.
Here’s the real issue: her itinerary wasn’t realistic to begin with, and she was never going to be properly rested regardless of her possession of a hotel room.
You can’t catch a friend’s wedding on Saturday night and then expect to make your husband’s family reunion in a whole different state on Sunday without some major fatiguing circumstances.
Arguably, Booking upheld their end of the bargain by refunding the hotel. This is all they’re obligated to do. No other type of business gives you any more than that.
Sure, Booking had crappy ineffective customer service. What else is new with the corporate world? Even if they had a perfect concierge level process they physically couldn’t accommodate the customer’s needs because they can’t materialize vacant rooms.
Every minute wasted in this situation defeats the purpose of a hotel room in the first place (I.e., she could have gotten a room further from the airport but that would have eaten up travel time that would have netted her 2 hours of sleep instead of 4, because of her own bad itinerary. If she could check in at an earlier hour this wouldn’t be a problem).
When your flight gets canceled, you aren’t owed another flight at the same date/time. I’m not sure what kind of emergency service anyone would expect to receive from a business like this. At no point was she in tangible danger, and this entire experience was a piece of inconvenience that was essentially self-inflicted.
> When your flight gets canceled, you aren’t owed another flight at the same date/time.
No, but you are owed another flight in a reasonable timeframe. The airline doesn't get to give you your money back and say "we've upheld the end of our bargain" and leave you stranded. I'd argue that Booking (and friends) have a similar obligation not to leave you homeless in a city you're probably unfamiliar with. In fact, the article itself claims that it's standard policy for Booking to find you alternate accomodations and that their rep (allegedly) screwed up.
> At no point was she in tangible danger
She was a 5-month pregnant woman who found herself without a roof in front of an NY homeless shelter at (almost) midnight with no place to go. She may not have been in actual danger, but that's pretty high on the "unsafe" scale.
You actually aren’t owed anything for a canceled flight beyond a refund. Rebooking is a courtesy provided by the airline. They are not legally obligated to do it.
The only time you are owed anything in addition to a refund is in the case of being bumped due to overbooking.
Her situation was high on perceived danger. You said so yourself. She wasn’t in any tangible danger, it’s best described as discomfort.
Being in front of a homeless shelter is not a permanent affliction. You can just…not be in front of it.
…Which is what she did. She got an Uber to the airport. She wasn’t stranded. She didn’t have “no place to go.” Even though the airport was closed for the time being, I’m sure she could have found a 24/7 diner to kill some time. It’s New York, there are establishments open.
But as soon as someone says “stranded in the big city” our minds wander over to getting mugged or getting initiated into a gang or something like that.
Sure, but having more time in the first place would have opened up more options for alternative lodging. If you’ve only got 5 hours then you basically have to stay at a hotel within spitting distance of the airport, and that severely limits your options if something goes wrong.
One of those options would be to find a hotel elsewhere in NYC. If her check-in time was more like 9PM that would have been entirely reasonable.
The golden rule of travel is “shit happens” and that’s why you run a risk of all kinds of issues when you run a tight itinerary. When that shit happens, correctly assigning fault doesn’t tend to change one’s predicament.
If I had a weekend with a family reunion and a friend’s wedding in two different cities I would personally just pick one.
They had no indication as to which door they were supposed to go through or how to get through it. There was nobody in sight at the facility. After trudging up a few flights of stairs and back down again, they elected to ask some students passing by where they could find a hotel. Fortunately they were able to find a place that had a vacancy.
Then they had to fight the OTA for a refund. Fortunately they are retired and had nothing better to do all day long than call them until they finally gave a refund.
I've had a couple of really obnoxious problems with OTAs involving event tickets. In one case I bought the wrong type of Disneyland tickets. I had to purchase different tickets once I got to the park. Then trying to get a refund from the OTA was a living nightmare. After about a week of daily calls I finally reverse-engineered enough of their process of moving money between them and the park and what not to convince them to refund me for the wrong (and unused) tickets. Another time an OTA with a customer service stand at a hotel in Hawaii had worked with me for 20 minutes to book tickets for an event, and then at the very end they said, "The booking fee is $250. But we'll waive that if you attend a 1-hour sales pitch!"
My strategy these days is to use an online travel agency to learn about hotels with vacancies and events in the area and then to go directly to the hotel or event web sites to purchase. If there's no way to book except through the OTA, I'm not going to have anything to do with said hotel or event.