[HN Gopher] Booking.com makes a fortune - so why is it leaving i...
___________________________________________________________________
Booking.com makes a fortune - so why is it leaving its bills to
hotels unpaid?
Author : ksec
Score : 201 points
Date : 2023-10-05 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| jimt1234 wrote:
| This reminds me of a job I once had that was about 50% travel;
| the company required employees to charge travel expenses to their
| personal credit cards, saying they would be reimbursed. The
| company consistently dragged its feet on the reimbursement,
| sometimes for several months. They scrutinized reported expenses
| to an absurd level, or simply refused to pay. I once had a
| layover on a flight (because the company required the least
| expensive flight, which was generally not direct) that was
| cancelled. I was stuck in Denver for 9 hours, waiting for an
| available flight. I got something to eat and reported it as a
| travel expense. Denied; I was told the expense didn't occur in
| the city where I was working, so it was personal, not business-
| related. A colleague had her credit card maxed with business
| travel charges, and could only afford to make the minimum payment
| for several months. She requested the company pay the interest on
| the carried charges. Take a guess how that went? Denied. She
| ended up quitting, and last I heard the company refused to
| reimburse her because she was no longer an employee. I ended up
| quitting, too. But yeah, this article reminded me of that
| situation. When it's known that you're basically powerless to
| collect on a debt, you can expect to get screwed.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Why not name and shame?
| justinclift wrote:
| The "Denied" are probably only "Denied" because you didn't want
| to push back hard.
|
| You could always take them to court (even small claims court)
| or just outright get debt collectors involved.
|
| Probably better once you've quit though. ;)
| em-bee wrote:
| why wait until after you quit? before you quit you get to use
| your worktime to deal with the lawsuit (just because) and if
| they harass you at work for suing them, you add that to the
| lawsuit. if they fire you, add that too.
| tpmx wrote:
| I suppose many of us are lucky to work in high-margin software
| businesses. I spent 15 years often travelling for work
| (typically very distributed companies) before the pandemic.
| Four separate companies. Everything paid on my personal CC. I
| preferred it that way so that I could optimize the flights/etc
| to make it fit my personal life. Everything reimbursed swiftly
| with zero questions since I never did anything _really_ stupid.
| The only real bottleneck was myself; filing all of those damned
| receipts for every trip.
|
| Having some kind of centralized travel booking service that
| "took care of everything" would likely have caused me to find
| another job. For one company I did a monthly 6h travel + a few
| days of hotel + 6h travel thing for a decade. Not being in
| total control over that would simply not have been feasible.
|
| I have no idea how people doing a large amount of travel for
| stereotypical low-margin large companies manage to get by.
| justinclift wrote:
| > high-margin software businesses.
|
| I've heard similar stories to this from people working at
| high-margin software businesses before too.
|
| It could be something along the lines of "depends which team
| you're in", as to who's being screwed over or not.
| tpmx wrote:
| That's a great sign your company actually sucks and you
| should quit. Probably likely: It wasn't actually a high-
| margin company.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| > Having some kind of centralized travel booking service that
| "took care of everything" would likely have caused me to find
| another job
|
| Having worked at both kinds of companies, I vastly preferred
| having a travel agent that took care of everything.
|
| For example: one time I had a later flight with a layover.
| The initial flight was delayed on the tarmac before takeoff,
| and immediately upon landing, a person called me telling me
| there were no more flights that evening to my final
| destination, but they'd already booked me a hotel near the
| airport and the first flight out in the morning to my final
| destination, and asked me if I'd like any modifications.
| Perhaps someone else who wants more control would like to
| handle that stuff themselves, but for me, it was a massive
| luxury to have an experienced professional automatically
| smooth over any problem I encountered during my travel. I
| certainly didn't miss keeping all my crumpled receipts and
| submitting expense reports either.
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah, that kind of service would have been awesome.
| akamia wrote:
| This is the reason why I refuse to pay for any work travel
| expenses with my credit card.
|
| I once worked for a company that had a similar travel process.
| When I was asked to travel, I insisted that my VP have his
| assistant schedule and pay for everything. When I arrived at
| the hotel on one trip, the hotel asked me for a credit card to
| pay for the booking. I stepped out of line and called my VP to
| have him fax his card info to the hotel.
|
| I understand this wouldn't work for everyone but I think it's
| ok to question the policy and see how much flexibility there
| is. In my case, I was able to avoid taking on personal
| liability for my employer's expenses by pushing back and
| working with my VP to find a solution that I was comfortable
| with.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| While it's legal for employers to require employees to use
| personal credit cards for work-related expenses, it's a huge
| labor code violation not to timely reimburse employees for such
| expenses.
|
| As in, huge mandatory fines on top of reimbursing employees for
| 100% of their costs (including interest and other charges
| incurred related to late reimbursement) type of violation.
|
| If you're not willing to name and shame here, please report it
| to the state's Dept of Labor if this was within the past 5
| years so current employees can be protected.
| jiqiren wrote:
| if this is US, file a wage claim with local state government.
| Reimbursement for expenses while traveling is valid.
|
| Depending on the state you can file many years later after
| you've left the job. So feel free to get a new job and file a
| claim with a spreadsheet of what they missed.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| It's a wonderful business model. They are effectively just a
| proxy for scheduling and payments, where they take no risk and
| trim a bit of revenue off as payments fly by. Their biggest
| hassle is probably the moderation of reviews.
| croes wrote:
| Maybe they make a fortune just because they leave the bills
| unpaid.
| em-bee wrote:
| that was my first thought too ;-)
| bluecalm wrote:
| It's interesting to see prevailing negative sentiment about
| booking here. My experience is completely different: usually a
| very nice place, no surprises, two times the host has done
| something wrong (cancelled my reservation or didn't respond)
| booking support was very quick to help me.
|
| On the other hand I consider Airbnb to be a scam enabling company
| that does everything to screw the customer and appease the hosts.
| Their reviews are worthless as they remove mentions of problems
| regularly and you will never know what you're getting until you
| arrive at the location. Forget about getting your money back if
| the host screws you as well - they will string you along from one
| support call to another and then pretend none of this happened.
|
| It's no surprise shady hosts prefer Airbnb to booking as it's
| easier to keep your trap offerings online for longer.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| As a general rule, the reason a company does something nefarious
| is that it knows it can get away with it.
|
| We need to fix the broken & corrupt legal systems so that
| companies have not just equivalent penalties like individuals
| would (the equivalent of jail would be that all profits go to the
| state for the duration of the "jail" term), but be given even
| less leniency/benefit of the doubt since massive companies have
| way more resources to investigate & comply with laws than
| individuals do.
| mouse_ wrote:
| "We need to negotiate a better living arrangement with our evil
| vampire overlords"
|
| I'm not convinced
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Oh, the EU shows that even the biggest corporations can be
| brought to knee if they pull off too much bullshit. Apple had
| to introduce USB-C and will have to open up their App Store
| and NFC interface, Meta got slapped with a billion dollar
| GDPR fine, Microsoft to this day has to sell European
| versions of Windows that don't come with a media player or
| that allow everyone to choose their default browser...
| dantheman wrote:
| The EU is just shaking down foreign companies because they
| can't compete.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Aww, is that what you tell yourself?
| vertis wrote:
| The EU is protecting it's citizens. You don't have to
| spend very much time comparing the EU (and Europe in
| general) to the US to find differences in philosophy.
|
| US has a very individual centric attitude where everyone
| is an temporarily inconvenienced millionare and Europe
| has a much more collective attitude. I will take the
| European attitude over the US one any day of the week
| (and I'm from neither, I'm Antipodean).
|
| Every billionare is a policy failure.
| dotandgtfo wrote:
| Not to mention that Booking.com is a European company
| that has explicitly been targeted by the upcoming digital
| markets act.
| arp242 wrote:
| Aside from the fact that booking.com is a Dutch company
| (although Booking Holding is US, so who the hell knows
| any more as I have no idea how that all fits
| together...), no one is forcing anyone to do business in
| Europe. If you don't like the rules then don't play;
| that's fine, no hard feelings.
|
| That's how it works everywhere, including in the US.
|
| What you DON'T get to do is set the rules for OUR
| countries. Several of these companies have been under the
| misapprehension that's how things work, and they are
| being (slowly) cured of that delusion (far too late, but
| better late than never...)
| _jal wrote:
| You can phrase it in whatever way you prefer, but GP's
| point remains - a fine measured as a percentage of global
| revenue has been demonstrated to modify huge
| corporations' behavior.
|
| FWIW, I think the EU's recent legal behavior is only
| about 1/3 foreign-company envy. There's a lot of
| misguided do-gooderism and a large dash of control-
| freakery, too, not to mention intelligence and LEO
| wishlists.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| But look at what "to compete" means in the European point
| of view, look at how they see the practices that you
| describe as "being competitive": nefarious, unethical
| practices to fuel growth for the hell of it. If they
| can't compete on some short-term, enshittification-
| causing metric, fine by me.
| orwin wrote:
| The EU has actually enforce anti-monopolistic laws, even
| if it's quite slow. You should compare history of the
| food industry in Europe and in North America, I think
| this show well how much the US politicians changed over
| the last 50 years.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| People don't go to jail for not paying their bills.
|
| It's a case of "if I owe a hotel $200, that's my problem, if
| Booking.com owes a hotel $200,000 that's the hotel's problem"
| 83457 wrote:
| Unless that bill is to the government.
| ben_w wrote:
| It has to be a lot more than 200k, but the principle still
| applies.
|
| If you owe some government 500 billion, you are probably
| also a government.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| or to the ex spouse
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Unless fraud is involved, no. They might garnish your
| wages, seize assets, etc. but you won't go to jail.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I think it's even more true in this situation. If you or I
| owe the IRS $2000, they're gonna come after us and get all
| their money. But if EvilCorp owes the IRS $200-million, the
| lawyers will argue about it for 3 years, and in the end,
| EvilCorp will end up paying less than half of the original
| amount.
| gopher_space wrote:
| If you can't make rent the police get involved at the end,
| but society wouldn't really think of you as a person in that
| scenario.
| kbenson wrote:
| > the equivalent of jail would be that all profits go to the
| state for the duration of the "jail" term
|
| For punishing corporations (for whatever legal reason) I would
| rather see a percentage of c-suite compensation for a time
| period (including end of year bonuses) confiscated, maybe along
| with a fine based on profit (so stock values are hit as well,
| so that both can't be used to avoid penalties and also to
| signal to the market it's a bad idea).
|
| The problem with fining a company is that often you hurt a lot
| of the lower ranked employees that had no power and often no
| knowledge of the problems, and usually weren't involved in any
| way, sometimes to the point where they lose their jobs if the
| company is hurting to a much larger degree than the people
| running the company do, which is why punishing corporations is
| sometimes hard.
|
| We need to incentivize and punish the people that actually
| decide the problematic policies and actions and not those that
| just happen to be in proximity and/or are linked financially,
| to the degree that we can (obviously it's hard and no perfect
| solution exists).
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I'll do you one better. I think the C-suite should just go to
| jail, real jail. That will really incentivize the leadership
| to play by the rules.
| diogenes4 wrote:
| I imagine they'd be a lot more responsive to prison time,
| personally. A fine doesn't seem to capture the correct
| incentives here.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Hear, hear. And more corporate lawyers should be getting
| disbarred than the current status quo.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Why do you think it's any of the employees that are at fault,
| even the c-levels?
|
| Fine the investors. Everyone who owned a share when the
| violation occurred takes a lick.
|
| If you go after c-levels, what will happen is they'll devise
| some sort of time deferred compensation avoids the penalties
| you want to impose. The board needs a CEO after all, and CEOs
| are reluctant to run a company if they know they'll just have
| their paycheck confiscated.
| MakeThemMoney wrote:
| Why not both? Fine the company (i.e. investors), jail the
| executives.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I mean that's effectively already how it works: a fine to
| the company _is_ a fine to the investors, because they own
| the company (more precisely, a fine represents money which
| is not getting paid back). And clearly that isn 't enough,
| because this stuff keeps happening, that's why the GP and
| others are brainstorming alternatives.
| lefstathiou wrote:
| Very simple solution: the US should implement prevailing
| parties clause (prevailing party wins legal fees by default in
| a lawsuit) as law of the land by default.
|
| We had a guy in Australia trying to use our trademark, in the
| US they would call my bluff and I would have to spend tens of
| thousands to hundreds of thousands to sue. In Australia we sent
| a polite letter, outlined our case that was pretty clear,
| reminded him he would pay our legal if we escalated and made it
| clear we would, and the result was immediate.
|
| In short, companies shouldn't be incentivized to play game
| theory on whether or not you will sue me if I trample your
| rights.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| That sounds like an amazing way to empower corporate legal
| bullying and copyright trolls, and ensure that no single
| entity could ever take a company to court ever again.
| V__ wrote:
| How so?
| msandford wrote:
| Big company threatens to spend $100 million on the
| lawsuit to make sure they win. By outspending you they
| exhaust your funds and win by default. Then you go doubly
| bankrupt when you have to pay their legal bills.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| In places where "loser" pays (such as the UK), rates are
| capped at fairly low hourly levels and hours are also
| capped (or at least there is a known "reasonable" number
| of hours for a particular type of case).
|
| Note also that the "loser" factors in offers to settle.
| So if I offer you $10,000 to settle and you refuse and
| the court awards only $5,000 to you, you are the one that
| has to pay my legal bill, even though I am the one that
| "lost".
| lefstathiou wrote:
| That's not how the calculus works actually. Today a
| corporate bully can safely count on you being a rational
| actor (and not spend $1mm to win $400k) and push the
| envelop of competition and appropriation of data and
| trade secrets with limited recourse. Under a prevailing
| party construct, the risk of doing so is enormous.
|
| Thus, in instances where they are objectively wrong, they
| lose big. In instances you are objectively wrong, you
| lose big. In instances where it is not black and white,
| where there is merit to both sides of the argument, you
| settle. All this is achieved with little intervention by
| the courts.
| babypuncher wrote:
| the equivalent of jail time should be actual jail time.
|
| determine which members of the executive team decided it was OK
| to literally steal from people and put them in jail.
| CM30 wrote:
| Not even just compared to individuals, but even to smaller
| competitors. If a smaller company acted like Booking did here,
| they'd be sued into oblivion or out of business in no time.
| Same with a shop that sold counterfeit goods as casually as
| Amazon or an app store seems to, or one that fired people as
| suddenly as Twitter/X did those months back.
|
| The problem is that laws are basically just 'suggestions' if
| you're rich/your company is rich, and life altering
| consequences if you/your company is not.
|
| There should actually be jail time for corporate leaders that
| break the law, and the potential of being forcefully removed
| from office or the company itself forced to shut down if poor
| behaviour continues.
| croisillon wrote:
| it's the other way around: booking.com is leaving its bills to
| hotels unpaid, and makes a fortune that way
| davelondon wrote:
| Their support is pretty bad.. they refused to refund a PS20
| booking when the hotel was 500km away from where it was shown on
| the map. There were no other contact options, so I took them to
| the UK Small Claims Court... They paid up before the case went to
| court.
| robbywashere_ wrote:
| why was hertz practically issuing arrest warrants? Because they
| can. Malicious artificial intelligence is here. The boring part
| is its these faceless bureaucracies they behave (intelligence?)
| without responsibility or repercussions whatsoever. That AI
| bogeyman your think of, its just going to be these kinds of
| companies blaming it on amok algorithms, in place of which is now
| some sort of 'failed process'
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| I had a few horrible experiences with Booking.com and the others
| where I'd arrive at the hotel and they'd never heard of me, or
| I'd ask for an extra day in person but the hotel couldn't help me
| because I didn't book directly with them, or they didn't serve
| breakfast but Booking said they did and the hotel was in the
| middle of nowhere etc.
|
| I finally wised up. Hotels basically hate guests who book with a
| service like Booking.com and they will not lift a finger to help
| you if anything goes wrong.
|
| Now I use Booking.com, Kayak, etc to find hotels in the general
| area I need, then use google or DDG to find the website of the
| hotel (a process much easier said than done because the booking
| sites SEO the hell out of search engine results), then book
| directly with the hotel or its parent chain.
| rurban wrote:
| Because it's a perl shop
| codr7 wrote:
| I'm not touching booking.com again, and I recommend anyone else
| to stay the hell away.
|
| Made a reservation a few months ago, searched for hotel rooms
| that would allow bringing a dog, and got a confirmation via
| booking.com that said everything was ok. But when I arrived at
| the hotel, I was informed that they don't allow dogs at all. And
| since the reservation was made through booking.com, there was
| nothing they could do about it. So I ended up paying for a hotel
| room that no one slept in and have been given the silent
| treatment from booking.com since then despite several contact
| attempts.
| dybber wrote:
| I didn't get my refund after a trip was COVID cancelled in
| 2020. The money had already been paid to the hotel, and the
| hotel owner (in Marrakech) only wanted to promise me I could
| come back in 2021. So they are not acting as an escrow as I
| thought.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| CC charge back. I had this during covid with an online travel
| agent that decided aeromexico was the one I should get
| refunded by while aeromexico didn't want to know me.
|
| He who takes your money has the responsibility. The travel
| agent cried foul but what are they going to do.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Always pay by credit card for such things. You can do a
| chargeback if the service you paid for is not delivered.
| andersrs wrote:
| I just hate all the dark patterns that create feeling of
| scarcity.
| IKantRead wrote:
| I worked for a travel startup for a bit, it was by far the
| _most_ toxic org I 've ever worked for with a smiling disdain
| for their users (meaning they would chat about how much they
| loved users while actively implementing features that hurt
| them). I learned talking to other people that this is pretty
| par for the course for travel companies in general.
|
| The biggest lesson I learned there: never book through a 3rd
| party for travel.
|
| For airlines the price is already dictated to not be lower than
| the airline offers, you're far better just working through your
| favorite airline directly. It makes it much easier change
| plans, and anyone who travels a lot will agree not all airlines
| are equal. I've learned to have a favorite airline and not
| worry as much about _lowest_ prices.
|
| Hotels _can_ be cheaper through a third party, but imho, not
| worth the hassle of having your trip depend on an untrustworthy
| middle man.
|
| At most, use 3rd party tools as search engines, and then just
| book directly.
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| This is a job for a chargeback from your credit card company.
| jslaby wrote:
| Yes, and it's the same issue with accessibility. My wife is in
| a wheelchair and we always call directly to the hotel to make a
| reservation, rather than going through these services. It only
| took one time to never make that mistake again.
| aurelius83 wrote:
| Isn't that fraud?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| So you tried calling Booking support by phone and they didn't
| pick up? I ask because I personally had to call their support
| before a couple of times and they responded almost immediately.
| You do need to provide booking ID for that to happen though.
|
| Contrast to Airbnb, which was so bad I deleted my account in.
|
| Contrast to Agoda, which after charging my debit card required
| government ID scans within 2 hours-- or immediate cancellation
| & no refund. Stay next morning in foreign country, what if I
| was on the damn plane already? Never had an account with them
| and probably never will.
| edgyquant wrote:
| This happened to me via Expedia, more than once. Both times I
| had driven hundreds of miles and was forced to pay for a second
| hotel due to this issue.
| ratg13 wrote:
| I've never had this happen because I always call the hotel
| directly and ask them.
|
| Trusting a 3rd party booking system to have accurate up-to-
| date information is a fool's errand.
| zdw wrote:
| Funny, I always look for hotels that _do not_ allow dogs, as
| most of the time the rooms tend to smell like a wet dog, or
| sometimes feces.
|
| I appreciate people who want to travel with their animals, but
| saying "we allow dogs" then not having rooms designed to
| ameliorate the issues with such a policy - hard surface floors
| everywhere and thorough cleanings - is unfortunately very
| common.
| baz00 wrote:
| This is what Mr Chargeback is for. Had a similar experience
| with them and my CC refunded it. I had flights booked with them
| as well so they refunded those too! Basically got 3 nights in
| Reykjavik for PS290
| lrem wrote:
| Chargeback in Europe can, at least with some major banks,
| require first a fraud report with police.
| baz00 wrote:
| UK at least you just fill in a form and it happens.
| Basically "I paid for something, I didn't get it, I
| contacted the vendor and they did not deal with it, I want
| my money back"
| ugh123 wrote:
| You can probably get refunded by your credit card company
| ferminaut wrote:
| I have to ask, why use 3rd party booking sites at all? From
| what I can tell, the prices are usually the same as the
| hotel... needlessly adding middlemen into the booking process.
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| If you're traveling to an unfamiliar area, and especially if
| it's last-minute, and you aren't wedded to one particular
| hotel brand (or they have no availability), then finding a
| decent room is currently a big pain in the butt and there's
| no good centralized way to do it.
|
| booking.com frequently appears at the top of searches for
| "hotels near..." and other third-party travel sites, like
| tripadvisor, link to it.
|
| They've done a good job of getting their site in front of
| eyeballs. Like others, I've tried them, and like others,
| found them to be awful and now actively avoid them.
| distances wrote:
| I have never ever found a hotel to have the same or cheaper
| prices when booking directly on the hotel website. I travel
| in Europe.
|
| For my last booking the difference was almost 20% (340EUR at
| Hotels.com, 420EUR direct booking). I don't know if they
| enforce some most favourable pricing rules or what, but one
| of the booking sites is _always_ the cheaper option.
|
| I would prefer to book directly so that the accommodation
| gets all the money, but I'm obviously not going to pay that
| much more just out of generosity.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| > I have to ask, why use 3rd party booking sites at all? From
| what I can tell, the prices are usually the same as the
| hotel... needlessly adding middlemen into the booking
| process.
|
| It can be worse. I once called the hotel and didnt realize I
| was calling Hotels.com (which used a tricky website to make
| it seem like I was calling the hotel.)
|
| Worse, the [Hotels.com] agent pretended to be a the hotel
| reservation desk. I gave him several discount codes (my
| consulting company code, my AAA code) and each time he said
| it wasnt reducing the price. That got me suspicious...because
| my consulting company Accenture always had discounts.
|
| So I asked the person outright, "do you work for the hotel,
| which company do you work for, etc" and learned he was a
| Hotels.com employee.
|
| Based on this, i'd note that Hotels.com might not be the same
| price but might actually even be _more expensive_ that
| booking direct with the hotel.
| dybber wrote:
| I want a middleman to hold my money, if the host fucks up, he
| will not get the money. That's why you use escrows, but
| Booking.com doesn't act like an escrow, so don't use it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Credit cards perform that function.
| gog wrote:
| Not in the whole world, my guess is that it's usually
| credit card companies in USA that protect you.
| tiew9Vii wrote:
| For me booking.com has always been cheaper than booking
| directly with hotels.
|
| I do a lot of motorcycle travelling without a plan. I often
| do not know where I'll be at the end of the day, just a
| general direction.
|
| Late afternoon when I have a better idea where I'll end up
| before it goes dark I'll look at booking.com, find some
| hotels/motels that match my criteria and head to them without
| booking.
|
| Countless times I've turned up and said "I found you on
| booking.com and it says you have vacancies, I want a room"
| only to be given a price higher than booking.com. Some
| reluctantly negotiate down to match it, some look confused
| how booking com can offer the price they are while I book
| through booking.com at the hotel desk as the hotel won't
| match the price booking.com are charging.
| Zanni wrote:
| If you just walk in off the street, hotels will quote you
| the "rack rate," which is going to be higher than anything
| you can find online, even on the hotel's own website.
| faster wrote:
| One data point, but it was only 2 days ago. I needed a place
| to quarantine while I was the only one in my family who
| caught covid on a trip, so I went to the hotel a few blocks
| away and asked about their rates. They told me that the
| lowest they could go was $183. I asked why Google showed 6
| third-party sites advertising their rooms at $135 and they
| said those sites reserve rooms in bulk and they aren't
| normally refundable. So I booked the room with credit card
| rewards points for about $120/night and everyone was happy.
|
| I always thought that booking direct got the best rates also,
| but that seems to be incorrect, at least in this case.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Prices are very often not even remotely the same.
|
| I've regularly scored things like 70% off regular price when
| booking the day before.
|
| They continue to advertise their regular full price on their
| official site and other mainstream sites that business
| travelers use.
|
| But they advertise at a massive discount on certain discount
| sites that attract budget travelers.
|
| They want to fill the rooms, often in response to last-minute
| cancellations, and they hope they get lucky with somebody at
| full price first, but they advertise budget prices on budget
| sites because a deeply discounted rate is better than no
| money at all.
| lrem wrote:
| Can you list some of these discount sites?
| travoc wrote:
| Hotwire and Priceline.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Hilton at least has a price match guarantee. I don't know
| about the others.
| isilofi wrote:
| Availability: Often, booking sites like booking.com have
| reserved bunches of rooms at hotels that you can only book
| through their site. So the hotel's own website might show "no
| rooms available", while on booking.com you can still book.
| Many hotels even have given up on their own website and only
| offer rooms through booking.com.
|
| Price: The hotel website often is no cheaper than booking.com
| (I guess thanks to very one-sided contracts), and sometimes
| only gives you a better price if you join a "club" and give
| them permission to spam you, sell your data, etc.
|
| Payments: booking.com is shady, but less shady and far less
| broken than a random hotel website where some credit cards
| might not be working, your CC data turns up in some data dump
| "found" somewhere, or payment is held by the CC company
| because you are the first person in months to directly pay to
| that hotel's website.
|
| Language: booking.com offers an interface and descriptions at
| least in English. Many hotel websites are only in the local
| language plus maybe some awkward machine translation that
| leaves lots of important points to guesswork, especially in
| the payment flow.
|
| Convenience: booking.com at least offers some kind of
| searchable database of hotels so I can easily compare them.
| The hotels themselves make this rather impossible.
|
| I do make a point to try to book via a hotels website after
| having found it on booking.com. However, in more than half of
| the cases, for the aforementioned reasons, I end up going
| through booking.com after all. So while lazy users might be a
| large part of the reason for the existence of booking
| middlemen, the hotels do have to bear their fair share of
| blame here.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I agree, this is why I book through Booking as well, it's
| usually cheaper than calling rhe hotel directly. Plus, I
| get discounts in the Booking app with repeat bookings, just
| like a hotel chain club.
| alwa wrote:
| As far as payments go, I have been surprised, when booking
| through booking.com (especially in foreign countries) to
| see my full credit card details printed in plain text on
| the Booking.com reservation email that the proprietor
| printed out and referred to when I checked in. This even
| when I indicate in the reservation that I intend to pay in
| cash or with contactless on-site.
|
| While it makes sense to take a card to guarantee against a
| no-show, it's always felt a little slimy to me that they
| make it feel like they, rather than a random property
| someplace far-flung, are the ones who would collect the fee
| if I didn't make good on the reservation--and only if I
| actually didn't show up.
|
| It looks like they still pre-emptively give out your full
| credit card details directly to every property in
| plaintext, but that they might now make a notional effort
| to record when the property accesses the CVC?
|
| https://partner.booking.com/en-us/help/policies-
| payments/gue...
| orra wrote:
| That sounds shockingly non-PCI compliant.
| ztetranz wrote:
| At least it says:
|
| "Never take a screenshot of your guest's credit card
| details, and never write them down."
|
| That's a bit like instructions for an eBike.
|
| "This bike is limited to 20 MPH. Do not go to the third
| option on the settings menu and remove this limitation
| with a long press of the plus button".
| maverick2007 wrote:
| I just got back from a trip to Japan where I stayed at a lot
| of non-western brand hotels. But when I went to their sites
| directly, they were obviously all in Japanese which I don't
| speak. I could've relied on Google translate to book directly
| but I'd rather book through a 3rd party site in native
| English. Which I did.
| kernelbugs wrote:
| What service did you use, and anythings to stay away from /
| definitely try?
| Zetobal wrote:
| Like with everything... convenience.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| Inertia. You used to be able to get some good deals on those
| sites, now they're coasting on that reputation.
| 8jef wrote:
| The middlemen argument isn't valid anymore. Hotels have for
| the most part forfeited their right to sell directly. Which
| means whatever they do, they still pay full commission to
| whomever they are under contract with, unless said booking
| concerns 10 rooms or more.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| What hotels don't allow you to book directly?
| danpalmer wrote:
| Because there are hundreds of hotels with a hundred different
| websites or no website at all in any given city, and hotel
| rooms are largely fungible. I want to sleep somewhere and I
| have a budget. Searching hotel by hotel is infeasible even if
| you can find them, and you often can't.
|
| A "middleman", or search engine, or discovery system, or
| price comparison site, is worth a lot to me and to most
| travellers.
|
| Edit: it's worth a lot when you... don't speak the language
| in the country the hotel is in... when you want the consumer
| protections of the country you or the middleman is based
| in... these sorts of concerns are much more of an issue in
| some parts of the world, and this might be reflected in the
| fact that Booking.com grew up in Europe.
| bombcar wrote:
| You can still search and then book directly. Enough of that
| would perhaps make booking fix their issues.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I search and then call/email the hotel directly to see if
| they want to give me a lower price for buying directly so
| they avoid 15%+ commissions to the travel agent.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| How successful are you? I assume that the person picking
| up the phone does not care about the extra booking, nor
| do they have the authority to offer spot deals.
|
| Maybe I am wrong and this is a common tactic?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I estimate 50% success. I find it more successful when
| emailing the sales person, or the manager directly.
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| Not the op, but it's the opposite, at least in the UK. I
| worked in hospitality as a yoof, was manager of a small
| hotel and a receptionist in big (independent) 5 stars. I
| absolutely did care about extra bookings because I got a
| big commission on walk-ins and a smaller commission on
| phone bookings. I also had leeway to discount rooms on a
| sliding scale down to "barely covers the cleaning costs"
| levels on the night. As a booker if I have the time I
| still call places up and can usually get a decent
| discount if they have availability, especially off season
| or last minute.
| bruceb wrote:
| I have tried this but most of the time its the same
| price, sometimes it is more. Even standing in person at
| hotel the person at the desk cant even match the online
| price. Not empowered to.
| orra wrote:
| > Even standing in person at hotel the person at the desk
| cant even match the online price. Not empowered to.
|
| True, but not uncommon! Captive market.
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| In many countries, the majority of hotels do not have a
| way to book directly. The just use Booking/Agoda.
| b8 wrote:
| I've been using Booking.com, and then booking via the
| Hotel's site after I find the one I want to stay at. I
| suppose you could Google to find their number if they don't
| a website.
| Moru wrote:
| Yes, but you don't have to book with the search engine. I
| search with hotels.com and then book by calling the hotel.
| Every other time I used hotels.com or booking.com the
| booking didn't exist when I arrived at the hotel...
| starik36 wrote:
| Do you find you get a better deal by calling the hotel
| directly?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I get worse deals calling the hotel, usually, as Booking
| gives better discounts and they buy room inventory at
| bulk prices to resell.
| danpalmer wrote:
| This varies, some inventory is bought "wholesale", other
| inventory is on-demand reselling. Booking has a range of
| terms and systems for different regions, types, volumes,
| etc.
| Moru wrote:
| The hotels are required to have the same price on direct
| contact as they post on hotels.com so no. But I can be
| certain that there is actually a room waiting for me when
| I arrive. I have been standing there enough times with a
| booking confirmation in hand but the hotel not finding
| any booking and out of rooms. So far they managed to get
| me somewhere to sleep even though they have had to pay to
| house me at another hotel a couple of times.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| They have to have the same price for "non members". You
| can sign up for free to the hotels loyalty program and
| book a lower price.
|
| You also get points if it is a chain hotel that can be
| used for future stays. The points can be worth from 7% to
| 20% of the cost based on what combination of base points,
| credit cards, and status you have.
| dandy23 wrote:
| If I'm not remembering wrong, since a while back, in EU
| the hotels are free to set their prices lower even if
| they are on Booking.com.
| Moru wrote:
| I'm very happy to hear that
| afandian wrote:
| I guess that's why grubhub faked restaurants' websites.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321260
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And heavily implied they were the restaurant with fake
| phone numbers too.
|
| You'd call a number, "I can take your order for XYZ
| whenever you're ready!"
|
| "Is this XYZ restaurant?"
|
| No yes or no answer, just "What's your order for XYZ
| restaurant?"
| jll29 wrote:
| Booking get 15% of the transaction so it makes sense to
| ask for 10% off when calling the hotel directly (which
| increases the profit of the hotel by and saves you some).
| Moru wrote:
| Eccept that is breach of contract with the booking
| service and can cost them the contract[1]. Since everyone
| is using booking.com or hotels.com, they will quickly
| shut down due to no customers. Hostage situation.
|
| [1] At least last time I looked into it. Haven't had a
| change to travel since a few years.
| garciasn wrote:
| I just tell them that I saw a better deal on _gestures
| broadly_ the Internet and they give me some discounted
| rate.
|
| This happens all the time with every single type of
| service provider, why would some shitty service like
| Booking.com get to mandate no one can offer any other
| discounts?
|
| What, just because there's some sort of aggregator
| service out there that you've partnered with you are not
| allowed to offer coupons, discounts, or your own booking
| services yourself? I would find that VERY difficult to
| believe.
|
| Plus, based on what we're hearing everywhere, potentially
| losing your contract w/Booking.com seems like a blessing.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I would generally rather book with a bigger company,
| especially when travelling abroad where I may not be
| knowledgeable of local language, customs, or consumer
| protections. If I buy from Booking UK I get UK consumer
| protections, even if that hotel does not provide those.
| In some parts that's worth a fair bit. Calling the hotel
| only works if you speak the language. I've also only ever
| seen identical pricing when I've checked hotel websites.
|
| Perhaps perspectives are based on whether you're booking
| domestically or not. Domestically you get the same
| protections, same language, not much benefit. In the US
| most of the market is domestic.
| IKantRead wrote:
| > Perhaps perspectives are based on whether you're
| booking domestically or not.
|
| I've had the best success when traveling abroad booking
| directly. Anyone in the hospitality industry is going to
| have someone on staff with enough English to assist you,
| and most of the nicest places are smaller hotels that
| often don't work well with big booking companies.
|
| > If I buy from Booking UK I get UK consumer protections
|
| I worked in a travel startup (not Booking), there's _a
| lot_ of fine print to all those "protections" that will
| leave you high and dry in most cases.
|
| Only use 3rd party apps for search, never book directly
| through them _especially_ , in my experience, for
| International travel.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I'll take letter-of-the-law fine print consumer
| protections over "eh, sorry" any day.
|
| You're right that we're lucky as English speakers,
| there's often someone to help, but that's not true of
| most other languages. Small places can provide some of
| the best experiences I agree, but finding them and
| getting in contact can be difficult.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| I guess I've been using booking.com for a decade or so
| and this has literally never happened to me.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I stay loyal to two hotel brands - Hilton and Hyatt for the
| most part.
|
| The very reason I don't use third party portals is because
| it's always a hassle when you need to make any changes.
|
| Last year I booked a week at the Hilton San Francisco
| Financial District for a hybrid work/personal trip.
|
| We arrived late that night and we were not impressed. We
| went downstairs the next morning, shortened our stay to
| that one night. Paid it and moved over to another hotel -
| the Hilton Parc 55. This would have been much more of a
| headache if not impossible going through a third party
| portal.
|
| I've also increased my stay by a day before arriving and
| the published price had changed. I called the hotel and
| asked them to extend my stay by one day at the original
| price - no problem.
|
| I was a customer of the hotel, not the third party portal.
|
| In my specific case, I am Diamond with Hilton and Globalist
| with Hyatt. I would get no status benefits or points for
| going through the portal.
|
| That incident in S.F. I mentioned? When I changed hotels I
| got an upgrade for free to the "fitness room" with a gym
| inside the room.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| Google Maps shows hotels and prices now. That's what I've
| been using lately. I book on the actual hotel website.
| Always choosing the cancellable booking option in case
| plans change. Often it's the only option, but not always.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The problem is that hotel rooms only _appear_ fungible: a
| space that is a rectangular solid, with a bed. Sounds easy.
|
| However, in reality, people want more than a place to lay
| immobile for roughly eight hours. These are not
| commodities. Check-in time. Check-out time. Type of bed.
| Bathroom? Bathroom with tub? Bathroom with waterjet tub?
| Pets? Dogs? View. Floor. Proximity to whatever. Bedbugs.
| Television, microwave, refrigerator, coffee pot, hair
| dryer. Free wifi? Breakfast? "Continental" breakfast?
|
| If "hotel room" were some kind of spec, it might take years
| to hammer it out. And then hotels may or may not be honest
| about their rooms, or even understand the spec. Then
| there's the periodic keeping the listings up to date. "We
| had to take the TV out last week, it was on the fritz."
| "This room was upgraded." When was the last bedbug check?
| Finally, who is the system of record for any given room?
| And then the discount policies, wowza.
|
| Looks fungible, really isn't. These aren't pork bellies.
| prepend wrote:
| I really don't care about any of the things you mention.
| I literally only want a room with a bed and a bathroom.
| And maybe I'll sort my three stars and up or something.
|
| There's a lot of variability, but it's also pretty
| impossible to know at a non-commodity level unless I've
| stayed there before or do a ton of research.
|
| I'm not going to trust anything online for the latest
| bedbug check. Id like to know, but let me know how they
| factors into your decision making process.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| That's the great thing about booking directly especially
| with a chain hotel. If you don't like it, you can cancel
| the rest of your reservation and only pay for the time
| you are there. With travel portals it's much harder.
|
| Even if you're not happy with the response from the hotel
| - and I've never had a problem with a chain hotel making
| things right, I can call corporate customer service.
| danpalmer wrote:
| These are all the reasons I said "largely" fungible.
|
| You're right there's certainly no formal spec here and
| everyone is going to have the things they care about that
| others may not, but for any given person there are going
| to be _many_ places that satisfy their needs, basically
| interchangeably.
| codr7 wrote:
| Convenience mostly, and I've sometimes gotten better prices
| that way.
|
| They make it easy to see available options in a city and
| compare prices. And making the reservation through them is
| often easier than getting in contact with the hotel.
|
| Assuming it works, that is.
|
| Never again.
| notreallyauser wrote:
| booking.com allows guest bookings without verifying email
| address by design, so I had a booking added to my account that
| was nothing to do with me.
|
| Couldn't cancel automatically. Support only seemed to be able
| to do the same I could. I assume the booking was some kind of
| fraud or credit card test -- anyway, the result is my account
| is suspended and support won't respond to me.
| NavinF wrote:
| I presume you never filed a chargeback? If you didn't bother to
| get your money back, they have no incentive to fix problems
| like this
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| If you booked with a credit card, you might be able to claim
| the money back via the credit card provider.
|
| It also sounds like the hotel screwed up if they listed
| themselves as pet-friendly but actually aren't.
| moeadham wrote:
| You can do a chargeback, but Booking.com bans you after -
| even if it is completely their fault
| poizan42 wrote:
| Isn't retaliation for chargebacks a violation of most
| merchant contracts with the credit card companies?
|
| The one time I have had to request a chargeback I was
| basically told to contact the financial institution[1] in
| case the merchant tried anything funny.
|
| [1] In this case Nets A/S who acted as a middle man between
| my bank and VISA. But I assume my bank would have said the
| same thing if they had the agreement directly with the CC
| company.
| d3w4s9 wrote:
| Suppose it is true, I would like to know what you would
| do after your account is banned. You are not a part of
| that contract so you cannot sue the merchant. And credit
| card company likely won't bother with a lawsuit because
| there is one person affected by this.
| belter wrote:
| If that helps you...Hotels hate Booking.com as much. Just ask
| them.
| arp242 wrote:
| So who is responsible for the listing on booking.com? I always
| figured it was the hotel who managed the listing on the site,
| similar to e.g. AirBnB, but if I understand you correctly it's
| completely separate and booking.com is responsible?
|
| Or: obviously booking.com should have gotten back to you, but
| I'm also not entirely sure the hotel _also_ didn 't just fob
| you off with a bullshit story for their own mistake.
| MakeThemMoney wrote:
| The hotels are responsible
| foooorsyth wrote:
| For reliable travel with a dog, I highly recommend BringFido.
| I've done two cross-country trips with my dog and BringFido
| delivered both ways. Half the reviews in their app are just
| from dog owners talking about the hotel experience from that
| perspective.
| mempko wrote:
| Reminds me of the quote from that Simpsons episode with Bill
| Gates "buying out" Homer's internet business.
|
| Bill Gates says: "I didn't get rich by writing checks".
| dcdc123 wrote:
| This sounds like a trigger for hotels to treat booking.com
| customers poorly. I imagine people would be better off booking
| somewhere else. I would suggest directly with hotels but that
| pretty much always costs more money than booking through a third
| party so maybe Expedia/Hotels.com or something.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| I've 2 times out of 2 successfully done credit card chargebacks
| against Booking.com for their customer support's tomfoolery when
| their "third party hotels for whose actions we are not
| responsible" messed with me.
|
| You processed my credit card, so now you're gonna deal with my
| refund too.
| schultzie wrote:
| Ditto.
|
| I stayed at a hotel that had bed bugs, the hotel was
| uninterested in refunding us or giving us a new room (I had
| only been in the room shortly before discovering them). I went
| back to Booking.com and they said I had to be refunded via the
| hotel and they would only act as arbiters. After showing proof
| the hotel wouldn't refund me, they continued to not refund.
|
| To really add insult to injury I wrote a review of the hotel
| explaining the situation and it was removed!
| whstl wrote:
| Amazing, I had the exact same thing happen to me.
|
| They instantly flagged and deleted my review claiming I only
| stayed one night (I did - in a sleeping bag no less) instead
| of four. This claim from them actually helped in the
| chargeback.
| [deleted]
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| I made the mistake of telling the apart-hotel owner in Turkey
| I work in IT, so he would knock on my door at 2am and
| Whatsapp me over and over to help him solve router problems.
|
| "It's urgent"
|
| "Can I talk to you?"
|
| "Can you please come downstairs? Just 2 minutes." (it's 2am)
|
| "There is a big problem" (with me not being willing to pay a
| network tech to deal with my IT problems instead of badgering
| my guests)
|
| No thanks. I had booked a month and left after a week.
| [deleted]
| op00to wrote:
| Why would booking.com keep you as a customer if you're going to
| chargeback? Many retailers seem to treat a chargeback as some
| sort of horrible unforgivable curse.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| I assume their processes are so broken that they have no idea
| who is and isn't doing chargebacks, and also they couldn't
| care less. The Casino keeps winning on average anyway.
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| From this article:
|
| _A Booking.com market manager in south-east Asia admitted at a
| recent industry event that payment delays were caused by the
| installation of a new payment system. Staff salaries were also
| affected, she said, explaining it as a risk they had to take._
|
| From an earlier article:
|
| _In the company's August results, CFO David Goulden said there
| were "lower than expected" IT expenses in the second quarter of
| this year, in part due to phasing IT spend into the third
| quarter, but did not outline what this IT expense included._
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/03/bookingcom-...
|
| Is this all just a fancy way of saying, "They 'restructured' IT
| and payment problems resulted?"
| kbenson wrote:
| I've taken to calling hotels directly and dealing with them, or
| their chain's booking, as they offer the same or better rates
| usually, are more accountable, are more willing to refund or
| cancel without problems, and are much more interested in keeping
| you happy and wanting to come back.
| wordpad25 wrote:
| Hotels always offer worse rates offline than online
| kbenson wrote:
| Not my experience, especially when you actually break down
| the cancellation policies (which booking aggregators will
| sometimes charge extra for) and whether they require payment
| up front or at the time of arrival.
|
| When I last did this, for a vacation, the cost at an
| aggregator was less if there was no cancellation allowed, and
| more if the option to cancel was added (but to a couple days
| before I believe), and needed to be paid at time of booking.
| When I called, I got a rate slightly less than the
| online+cancellation, I was able to cancel up to 24 hours in
| advance, and I only needed to pay on arrival, meaning I
| didn't tie up a few thousand for a few months.
|
| There's also always the option to state the rate you found
| online and see if they are willing to match it. It's not like
| there usually some magic involved, if they're willing to
| offer it to an aggregator, why wouldn't they at least
| consider offering it to you direct?
| lepus wrote:
| > It's not like there usually some magic involved, if
| they're willing to offer it to an aggregator, why wouldn't
| they at least consider offering it to you direct?
|
| The magic is actually being given the direct authorization
| to give you a matching rate or if not then having to get
| management to authorize that rate for you. That depends
| entirely on the hotel. Some employees might also recognize
| a deal seeker as someone who's also more likely to be picky
| and complain more and so would rather deny your price
| negotiations and avoid working with you if they have the
| choice depending on how filled they already are.
| dcdc123 wrote:
| I am a full time digital nomad and stay in a ton of hotels. I
| have once gotten the same rate directly, usually it is 20-30%
| higher. Hotels basically force you to third parties.
| avgDev wrote:
| Not always the case.
|
| In Dominican Republic I was told to just use an online booking
| site as it was much cheaper than doing it in person. Their own
| site was also more expensive than expedia.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Similar in Israel and Thailand, they upfront say it'd be more
| expensive to book at reception. I wonder if it's only
| different in US.
| justinclift wrote:
| Bearing in mind that booking.com famously offshored most of their
| customer support staff last year:
|
| https://skift.com/2022/02/11/booking-com-to-eliminate-2700-c...
|
| Seems like that's going as well as everyone except their
| executive team predicted. ;)
| skilled wrote:
| Hmm, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever,
|
| > A Booking.com market manager in south-east Asia admitted at a
| recent industry event that payment delays were caused by the
| installation of a new payment system. Staff salaries were also
| affected, she said, explaining it as a risk they had to take.
|
| What do you mean a new payment system? How do you not create a
| fallback for this situation when you're dealing with hundreds of
| millions of dollars in transactions?
|
| I mean I am _willing_ to give Booking.com the benefit of the
| doubt here in case that is actually the root cause, but it doesn
| 't compute for me. You don't just throw thousands of people (who
| drive business for you in the first place) under the bus by not
| properly preparing for a software rollout.
|
| You still have the old system or whatever it is that you were
| using, how hard would it have been to detect an issue if they did
| a A/B or a gradual rollout at first.
|
| As a Booking.com user myself - I am _pissed_ that this is a
| thing.
| 8jef wrote:
| I wish someone from the accommodation industry would tell us all
| how the central booking system and most hotel chains are abusing
| everyone, from inn and hotel owners to end customers. Their
| contracts are pure gold, in the sense that they cloak all
| possibility of independence under a thick cover nothing can
| pierce through. Tourism, they are killing it, literally.
| gvedem wrote:
| What do you mean by "central booking system"? As far as I know
| (working on a rental car contract for a couple years), there
| are just various travel industry standards for bookings and
| whatnot.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| It's called the GDS:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_distribution_system
|
| It started with airlines, but eventually included everything
| from hotels to rental cars.
|
| The space is more or less dominated by a few big players.
| Sabre. Amadeus. Travelport.
|
| GDS is the backbone of all of these booking platforms as far
| as I'm aware.
| ramses0 wrote:
| GDS. A Global Distribution System is a worldwide reservation
| system that acts as a conduit between travel bookers and
| suppliers, such as hotels, other accommodation providers and
| other travel related services.
| 8jef wrote:
| I mean there is only one pipeline, to which are contributing
| many actors, like big agencies (booking, expedia), car
| rental, airlines, etc. Together, they act as one.
| jwhitlark wrote:
| There are multiple GDSs, and AFAIK neither Expedia nor
| Booking.com use them. The space is way more confused and
| competitive then your comment implies. The best writeup I've
| seen on the space is https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/hotel-api/,
| if you really want to dive into the details.
|
| Edit: been typing markdown all day, oops.
| hoppla wrote:
| <<A Booking.com market manager in south-east Asia admitted at a
| recent industry event that payment delays were caused by the
| installation of a new payment system. Staff salaries were also
| affected, she said, explaining it as a risk they had to take.>>
|
| It seems like there is a misunderstanding of who is on the taking
| and receiving end of risks
| ratg13 wrote:
| Sad to see the top comments in the thread not even bothering to
| discuss the technical reasons and legal implications behind
| this .. and instead everyone wants to just discuss unrelated
| anecdotes about their personal travels.
|
| The story here is about how booking.com is screwing over hotels
| and hostels, not guests. Someone should create a different
| thread for that, because apparently people have a very strong
| need to tell their tangentially related stories.
| gnu8 wrote:
| Real companies have competent adults build and test this type
| of thing so they don't stiff their vendors or miss payroll.
| It's not an area where you should let techbros move fast and
| break things.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| It's booking.com, they are notorious for not being competent
| adults. Just check out this article about their working
| conditions [1] (you might want to google translate it you
| happen to not speak Dutch).
|
| 1 - https://www.computable.nl/artikel/nieuws/development/6777
| 910... (
| diggan wrote:
| > the developers complain about Perl programming language,
| which forms the basis of the online platform and to which,
| according to them, is held far too rigidly. Criticism of
| Perl may even result in dismissal, according to an
| anonymous source.
|
| If this machine translation is correct and the statement
| true, then this is borderline hilarious. I know that some
| companies keep their languages dearly, but that's taking it
| to the next level.
| laurent_du wrote:
| After duckduckgo, this is the second time in a few days
| where I hear about some relatively big company using Perl
| for their backend.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Any hosting provider running cPanel is running on Perl
| zeagle wrote:
| There is other good discussion here about booking direct vs
| resellers so I won't rehash it, but I just wish savings or other
| benefit were passed on by booking direct more often, e.g. room
| upgrade priority or breakfast. I've had that experience with
| airlines before having status.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Call the booking.com property and negotiate a better price
| directly with the host. They offer virtually no protection anyway
| if a booking goes bad.
|
| Guests and hosts both win if you cut the booking.com middleman.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| It's a de facto monopoly - break them up!
|
| They don't care about screwing up because they dominate the
| market so much. They're enjoying the benefits of the existence of
| little alternative to them.
| standardUser wrote:
| I can't think of many industries with more competition than 3rd
| party travel sites.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Proof: the reality is that just right now we're talking about
| (yet another) report on how they can behave badly and get away
| with it.
|
| - Isn't that market distortion?
| ben_w wrote:
| No, not a monopoly. AirBnB is clearly a competitor in this
| space despite the various differences in targeted properties,
| and Google Maps also fills in this space.
|
| You could call them rent-seeking middlemen, but not a monopoly.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| [flagged]
| tyingq wrote:
| Or perhaps just some group of hotel owners that's tired of not
| being paid?
| MakeThemMoney wrote:
| A multi-billion dollar corporation is withholding payments from
| smaller businesses. Is that not enough reason to publish such
| an article?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Are you saying that Media does not publish articles unless a
| multibillion dollar corporation or its multibillion dollar
| competitor needs one? That sounds newsworthy itself!
| possiblelion wrote:
| The prevalence of PR work means that such direct hit pieces
| are usually at least nudged by a competitors actions, yes.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Cui bono is a fine question to ask, but why let booking.com off
| the hook for stiffing smaller players?
| lawlessone wrote:
| Does everything have to be second guessed?
|
| A big rich company not paying their due is stuff most
| journalists would jump on.
| terminous wrote:
| The "competitors" who would benefit the most from this article
| are the individual independent hotels who have to eat the cost
| of stays booked through booking.com and aren't part of a big
| chain network that has a big enough legal team to be taken
| seriously.
| [deleted]
| totallywrong wrote:
| I used it a whole lot when I was doing the nomad thing but avoid
| it now if I can help it at all. I can recommend the trip.com app
| if you want actual support when you have any issues. With booking
| you're on your own, it's terrible. Unfortunately they usually
| have the most options though.
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