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.
