[HN Gopher] Hotel booking sites overcharge Bay Area customers
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Hotel booking sites overcharge Bay Area customers
Author : ekelsen
Score : 178 points
Date : 2025-01-13 14:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| The article mentions that booking sites may come up with ways to
| neutralize the use of VPNs to circumvent geolocation-based
| pricing. I rarely book rooms in advance (most of my stays away
| from home are in motels on road trips), and I almost always
| prefer booking directly with the hotel when I do book in advance.
| I wonder to what extent fingerprinting the computer will defeat
| the use of VPN in this situation?
|
| I also wonder if/when AirBnB/VRBO may start doing a similar
| thing? But I guess that would involve the private property owner
| participating in the scheme.
| creer wrote:
| > ways to neutralize the use of VPNs
|
| Probably - unfortunately - and so we can expect buying online
| to become ever more cumbersome. Great /s. Although diminishing
| returns might save us: the platforms will focus on "most
| buyers" and hopefully leave techies alone. But we can see in
| the youtube story that in some cases there is sooooo much money
| that even the techies will be beat back through pharaonic
| efforts.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Another thought on that, if you use tmobile LTE data and
| tethering (or just book directly using LTE data on your phone,
| using firefox as a browser on android, with the user agent
| switcher extension installed to perfectly mimic a desktop
| useragent), it's near impossible for random websites to
| determine where you are at geographically. The CGNAT exit point
| for my tmobile service when roaming in Canada bounces around
| between IP space that geolocates to either chicago, texas or
| los angeles.
|
| Whereas if you use a residential cablemodem or DSL or FTTH
| connection in some specific city, where you're likely not
| behind cgnat and the ivp4 /22 or larger sized IP block you are
| "coming from" remains consistent on a multi year basis, 3rd
| party geolocation providers are much more likely to say "yep
| that person is in the SF bay area"
| scarface_74 wrote:
| With T-Mobile, I get a different public IPv4 and IPv6 address
| every time I turn on and off airplane mode and it got my
| approximate location correct
| cortesoft wrote:
| I will have to have my mother in law in Kansas book our hotels.
| Eridrus wrote:
| I don't think it is actually in business' interests to stop
| VPNs here.
|
| Using a VPN, with the associated hassle, likely indicates the
| person is stingy and very price sensitive, so you want to keep
| giving them the cheaper prices relative to others.
| htrp wrote:
| > Cavis explained that, "Partners also have the flexibility to
| create specific promotional rates, such as country rates or
| mobile rates, which are designed to offer discounts, not charge
| higher prices."
|
| > The implication is that the expensive rate that San Franciscans
| see is the "real" price -- while Kansas City and Phoenix
| travelers are getting a discount.
|
| Uber and their 'flash promos' come to mind here.
| creer wrote:
| > designed to offer discounts, not charge higher prices.
|
| And some of this has always existed. Think of stores which
| always offer a coupon. Customers only pay full price if they
| are in a desperate rush or if they don't know. But the fact
| that it has always existed doesn't make it any nicer.
| jerlam wrote:
| Hotels generally dislike third-party booking sites, because
| they're just skimming off profits while offering a worse service,
| so they usually offer to match all third-party quotes.
|
| I wonder if a single computer with a VPN could generate
| screenshots of those discounted quotes for the sole purpose of
| price-matching.
| chatmasta wrote:
| At that point why even bother making it legit? Just use dev
| tools to edit the price you want into the page and send a
| screenshot to the hotel...
|
| "Oh, you don't see that price too? Sorry Mr Manager, I guess it
| must be because you're booking it from another location.
| Nevermind then, I'll continue to book through this partner
| instead..."
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I recall working as contractor in 2000s to a company that had
| one arm trying to compete in a used car market niche and they
| had a laptops pretending to be consumers in the usual ways
| crammed in in shelves that were scanning craigslist and other
| websites to repackage and resell the info to used car dealers.
| IIRC craigslist blocked naive dedicated scraping at the scale
| they were doing it so I assume but don't know that they needed
| to mix up the IPs in way that required that volume of laptops
| to do it nation/world wide. This sort of thing probably has
| been going on as long as the web browser have been commonly
| available.
| fooker wrote:
| Most hotel chains won't price match due to agreements with
| third party entities that account for a majority of their
| bookings.
|
| One off hotels in popular supply constrained tourist
| destinations are the exception.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most hotel chains are trying to stop those agreements. Some
| of the agreements are fairly long term, but chains are
| starting to see that agents rarely give them enough to be
| worth what they are paying and so the chain is no longer
| making such agreements.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Some places have worse service than booking.com - mostly
| cheaper and / or smaller places. Most real hotels indeed have
| quite good service on their own.
| duxup wrote:
| In my experience it used to be direct booking was often more
| expensive. Often absurdly.
|
| Now I find it is almost always the opposite. Outside some more
| super low budget hotel options. Booking direct on the direct
| site more often than not is cheaper than the travel / third
| party sites.
|
| I like the new trend, the third party sites were too
| disconnected and wonky.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Hotels generally dislike third-party booking sites, because
| they're just skimming off profits while offering a worse
| service
|
| The problem is, the customers tend to want said third-party
| sites. Hotels have, at least for the masses, become a commodity
| - 99% of people just need a place to crash because they're out
| all day - and so customers expect to be able to shop around
| purely based on price and a bit on the location.
| briandear wrote:
| A lot of hotel websites are terrible too and I'll be damned
| if I have to actually call someone and waste my time when I'm
| trying to compare prices, or if there is a significant
| language barrier.
| bityard wrote:
| There is wider variability in hotel quality than you know...
|
| I live near a decent-sized college town and there is a hotel
| right off the interstate. It's a well-known hotel name in a
| decent (even semi-posh) location, so you'd think it was good
| and safe. In reality, it is run down, dirty, smelly, has pest
| problems, long-term residents, and lets just say is
| frequently the subject of police activity and only the
| occasional murder. The owner lives outside the country and
| has no interest in cleanliness, upkeep, or safety. The health
| department and local government have been trying to get it
| shut down but there's only so much they can do. The owners
| pay people to post positive reviews online and try very hard
| to get the bad reviews taken down.
|
| Their prices are only slightly below most other hotels in the
| area and all of the photos are from rooms at other locations.
| So unless you actively went and searched the Internet for
| reviews for this specific location, you wouldn't know what
| you were getting into.
| viraptor wrote:
| Practically if you go to a bigger city, it's just not
| feasible to look at hotels directly. Who has the time to
| check the 100 of pages, each with their own lookup/booking
| system, each possibly not available, each listing the size /
| facilities differently?
| creer wrote:
| I have run into a hotel where the staff sent people to the
| third party booking site. They had decided to bite the bullet
| and cut the booking function from their in-house staff. Third
| party booking is expensive so they might as well drop their in-
| house staff and realize these savings.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| My roommate works front desk at a hotel, a common problem is
| that a third party site books things incorrectly or promises
| things that don't exist, then the customer is in the hotel
| lobby mad at the hotel over something they had nothing to do
| with
| burningChrome wrote:
| This happened twice on two vacations and stopped me from ever
| using third party booking sites. I go to them, find a deal,
| then go directly to the hotels site and book. It was eye
| opening to know the discount from the third party was not
| that much more than booking directly with the hotel/resort.
| graywh wrote:
| I've had this happen when booking directly with an IHG hotel.
| My reservation in their system said I had a 2x queen room,
| but the hotel's end showed 1x king.
| viraptor wrote:
| I don't think that's only the third party problem. The way
| the inventory and availability is managed is not only
| delayed, but often done manually through a terrible
| interface. I suspect large chains get better automation, but
| I've seen how it works in smaller places. The mistakes can be
| either fat fingering something or just a concurrency issue
| where the booking happens at a third party while someone else
| books the same room on the phone. The responsibility there is
| somewhere in between.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| I'm taking an introductory economics course right now, and was
| surprised to find out that even _hardcover books_ are a form of
| price discrimination: The manufacturing costs aren 't
| significantly higher than paperback, but "enthusiasts" will buy
| them at inflated prices. I'm starting to think that like 80% of
| product diversity is really just pricing discrimination in
| disguise.
| creer wrote:
| > 80% of product diversity is really just pricing
| discrimination in disguise
|
| Very good and yes: Think of it from the manufacturer / seller
| perspective. Why shouldn't it be? If the goal it to optimize
| profit or return (and it is), then anything less would be a
| waste of opportunity. Even kickstarters go to great effort to
| think up ways to "justify" "bonus offers".
|
| This is often one of the great failures of new ventures not to
| try and offer versions or features that SOME customers would
| love to pay for.
|
| Except not pricing discimination in that these prices apply to
| everyone (who doesn't know the discount code). Just
| "differentiation" and "price point". Offering a different price
| to someone who "calls" from San Francisco, Kansas City or
| Mumbai is a different issue, and less palatable.
| cafard wrote:
| American publishers tend to give one a choice: hardbacks, more
| expensive, clumsier, but made for heavy duty; paperbacks, less
| expensive, handier, but not holding up as well under wear. And
| in general the first year of publication one can buy only the
| hardback--which is why I don't like book clubs that want to
| read only new books.
| briandear wrote:
| Or just buy the ebook and save the paper, transportation, and
| shelf space.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Assuming you can in fact buy it DRM-free. Otherwise it is
| just an indefinite-term rental.
| bluGill wrote:
| I've sometimes found library editions which are a middle
| compromise - cheaper than hardcover but higher quality that
| paperback.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| A lot of luxury products are like this. For example a lot of
| wine on shelves are literally the same wine under different
| labels and price points.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| I remember when I was looking for new cookware a while ago,
| there were rumors that Kitchenaid was selling rebranded
| Demeyere pots and pans. It sure looked like the exact same
| cookware in the photos. But Zwilling is known to disguise the
| same pan in 30 different ways, and for anyone willing to trade
| the "Demeyere" label for a "Kitchenaid" label, they were
| getting a steal of a deal.
| nomel wrote:
| Coming from the hardware world, wait until you learn about
| e-fusing chips to lower tier products!
|
| I've worked at a place where there was exactly one chip and ~8
| ways to disable different things to make the whole product
| family, with nearly 2x difference in cost between low and high.
| This is usually done by disabling _bad_ sections of the chip,
| but if yields are too high, you just disable functioning bits
| of good chips. Our yields were great. :-|
| arnarbi wrote:
| Is that really price discrimination?
|
| "Enthusiasts" might have legitimate reasons for preferring
| hardcover (durability, aesthetics, etc) and are willingly and
| knowingly paying extra for that.
|
| How much it cost to manufacture is mostly irrelevant.
| danans wrote:
| > I'm starting to think that like 80% of product diversity is
| really just pricing discrimination in disguise.
|
| I think the term used for this practice is "market-
| segmentation".
| rconti wrote:
| Often the hardcover version comes out well in advance of the
| paperback, so if you want the book as soon as it comes out, you
| have to pay the premium for the perceived "premium product".
| Only later does the paperback come out at a lower cost, while
| the hardcover retains its higher cost -- I'm not sure if it
| drops a bit when the paperback comes out or not.
|
| This is a lot like back in the movie rental days. The VHS
| cassette for a new release would be $120 or something, and only
| a few months later could you buy it at the grocery store
| checkout for $25.
| creer wrote:
| The article is refreshing in its research and writing: the
| research is crude, testing just a very few alternatives - just
| enough for something to write about. And that's okay, this is not
| a scientific paper. And then the author collects a few quotes and
| does not dilute things too much. Good job.
|
| I propose another workaround alternative that doesn't exist yet.
| A "multi-browser" which lets you browse and visually diff the web
| from different points of view. See the web from deep china,
| europe, Kansas City, San Francisco, Chrome, Firefox, daytime and
| nighttime, incognito, logged-in, etc all at once (modulo some
| time spreading for opsec or something) so we can get back to
| peace and what matters: booking a bloody hotel room or reading a
| magazine article without making a project of it.
| ikr678 wrote:
| Location based price discrimination has it's own affectionate
| nickname here, the 'Australia tax'.
|
| When I travel it is often cheaper (hundreds of dollar cheaper,
| even after currency conversion) to book parts of a trip from a
| UK or US based device, than from an Australian one, directly
| through the airline or hotels website. Same for digital goods
| -even for services that do not have a business or support
| presence locally ie no local overheads, we still get charged a
| premium.
| vrosas wrote:
| I've done that from the US as well. Book the ticket from the
| destination country's website (google translate is perfectly
| fine, typically) and pay in the local currency using my no-
| fx-fee credit card.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Back before Creative Cloud was a subscription, to get
| Creative Suite in Australia, it was cheaper to book a flight
| to America, a hotel for three nights, buy Creative Suite
| there, and a flight home, than to just pay the markup Adobe
| gave us as punishment for being Australian.
| remus wrote:
| Sometimes there are costs associated with operating within a
| particular country that a company might want to pass on to
| those particular customers. For example business insurance in
| the US can be pretty high in some sectors, or cost of
| compliance with some piece of legislation unique to that
| country.
|
| It seems fairly reasonable to me to pass those costs on,
| though of course it can be hard to tell whether that is
| happening or whether you're just getting gouged.
| costco wrote:
| That exists, it's called "Linkensphere" and more generally an
| antidetect browser. They even have a marketplace for browser
| fingerprint profiles which include language, timezone, user
| agent, etc. But they're often used to look like real Americans
| to avoid fraud detection systems.
| ctchocula wrote:
| It's interesting that the name Linken Sphere comes from the
| DotA game. It's a piece of equipment that when equipped
| blocks one harmful spell from hitting your character. The
| analogy seems fit the anti-tracking as well, by preventing
| you from being tracked.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| I still wanted to see what the price was for each test. Maybe
| the author didn't want to say which hotels IRL, so call them
| Hotels A-E.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| have been booking 3 weeks last fall for a road trip exclusively
| with "Booking". The more I booked, the higher the discounts
| became, going from 15% to a staggering 30% off. When sharing
| the location with my partner (via verbal communication and
| without us being on the same network) they got an even lower
| price for the same spot without her having gone through the
| same booking history (or barely any booking history).
| kurthr wrote:
| I understand this is only a nitpick, but I'd point out that if
| you've spent any time in "deep china" you'll realize that there
| isn't connection to much of anything beyond the firewall. Even
| if you're in a western hotel, you will be hard pressed to
| connect to anything other than your in-country company VPN.
| Having a foreign phone helps a bit too with mobile data. The
| great firewall treats cloudflare, GCP, AWS and many other ip
| ranges as damage to be "routed around". Azure is a bit better,
| presumably because many computers still have to do windows
| update regularly.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| They do it because they can:
|
| Booking.com operates as a de-facto monopoly.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| Booking.com has nothing. The article names 4 competitors,
| besides booking directly on the hotel's website.
| jp42 wrote:
| I had theory long time ago that booking hotel or airlines tickets
| from mac used to be more expensive than windows. Many of my
| friend also experienced as well. Its just theory so don't know if
| others had similar experience.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| There were news about that really happening a decade or so ago.
| bityard wrote:
| Yes, here's the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20141113
| 121420/https://www.washi...
|
| It would be an amazing miracle if sites weren't still doing
| this.
| divbzero wrote:
| So I should really be booking from a logged out incognito
| browser on my Linux machine with VPN to a less wealthy
| region.
| lisper wrote:
| Sounds like a business opportunity.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Then sell a the detection of such behavior back to the
| site owners.
| dageshi wrote:
| I imagine they'd think you were a bot and you'd end up in
| a captcha loop.
| jigneshdarji91 wrote:
| Similar report from Christmas 2024 about Uber charging
| differently on iPhone vs Android in India.
|
| https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-
| news/as-...
| newhotelowner wrote:
| Their(hotel) tech is 5 years behind.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It's still true. Recently looked at hotels and airline tickets
| on my droid while a friend checked the same with their iPhone
| and the prices they saw were 15-20% higher for the same
| rooms/seats/etc.
|
| This was also true after we logged into loyalty accounts (the
| discounted loyalty price on iPhone was still higher than the
| general public price on Android).
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Doesn't sound crazy. Plug a vector that includes the user agent
| into a model used to determine price sensitivity and that's
| what you'll get.
| gspencley wrote:
| > I had theory long time ago that booking hotel or airlines
| tickets from mac used to be more expensive than windows.
|
| I currently work remotely for a company based in California and
| they issue MacBooks by default to employees. We can request
| Windows devices but our IT department prefers to have as many
| people on Macs as possible for admin efficiency reasons.
|
| We hire remote workers from all around the world and so this
| Mac-first policy has raised quite a bit of discussion about
| what the majority of our workforce is accustomed to and has
| been trained on. It has come up time and time again that Macs
| are really popular in California but outside of that state
| Windows still dominates by a large margin.
|
| Now, not all parts of California are affluent of course. And
| like every state the demographics are all over the place in
| terms of income. I bring this anecdote up because I wonder if
| both the Bay Area discrimination discussed in the article and
| your hypothesis about Macs stems from California stereotypes.
| Outside of the state, even though wildly inaccurate and unfair
| for a great many Californians, a lot of people tend to think of
| California as if everyone in the state is extremely privileged.
| nemomarx wrote:
| the Mac thing is more direct - see iOS apps being more
| profitable. there's an association because they aren't budget
| devices generally.
| spokaneplumb wrote:
| At least back last I saw stats on this (maybe 2017?) iOS
| users were not only a ton more likely to be willing (/able)
| to pay for software, goods, and services, but also _used
| their devices a ton more_.
|
| One might think they spent more time in apps, and more time
| total, but perhaps Android users would spend more time on
| the Web--but no, iOS users also spent markedly more time in
| their browser than Android users. They used everything on
| the device more, period.
|
| Who knows why. SES-related stuff--maybe more free time?
| Their devices just being way more pleasant to use (this was
| a leading hypothesis among my fellow mobile devs who spent
| lots of time in both operating systems)? Hard to say.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I would think it's because the large group of people who
| don't really want to use a smartphone buy a cheap Android
| one.
|
| Could your statistics compare iPhones with premium (e.g.
| largest screen size) Android phones, therefore excluding
| most of the budget Androids?
| kube-system wrote:
| The phones don't make the people use them more or less.
| People choose different phones based on their inherent
| usage patterns.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Trying to distinguish between what I consider good and bad
| discriminatory pricing, I think a useful litmus-test is whether
| it is being done secretly or has secret criteria.
| yumraj wrote:
| I wonder if this happen while using Costco Travel or AmEx travel
| etc.?
|
| What about travel agents? Do they also get price discriminated
| against depending on where they are?
|
| This can lead to startup ideas as in book-from service which
| scans all the zip codes and helps book from the cheapest one.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| My wife and I travel a lot as a hobby. The first rule is never
| use a third party portal for hotels or flights
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I agree with this for _purchasing_ things, but not aggregating.
| I use a lot of these services to aggregate results and then
| visit airlines/hotels independently to see if the price is
| reasonable.
| walrus01 wrote:
| In some places in Canada there's many airports that are
| served by literally only two airlines. Air Canada and
| Westjet. It's certainly possible to use a 3rd party booking
| site to try to find a 'cheaper' price to go to/from those
| places, but as you'll see when you get your search results
| for a flight, there's basically no competition. Go directly
| to the Air Canada or Westjet websites themselves and the
| prices will usually be the same or slightly better.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| Sure, of course aggregation makes no sense when there are
| only two options. But we recently traveled internationally
| to an extremely populated place with literally hundreds of
| hotels, and these aggregation services were invaluable in
| deciding where to stay.
| rescbr wrote:
| I've seen online travel agencies with better prices
| compared to the airline/hotel website even with fares at
| the same changes/cancellation policies.
|
| OTOH, I prefer to purchase tickets directly with the
| airline because dealing with them directly when something
| happens is way better compared to having the OTA in the
| middle. Sometimes paying a small difference is worth the
| peace of mind.
| _puk wrote:
| Does the air Canada website work nowadays? Last time I
| tried (admittedly 2 years ago) I found myself literally
| screaming "just take my goddamn money".. the most painful
| website I've used for years.
|
| And then they lost our luggage (tents and all), but that's
| another story.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| For context, my wife and I did the digital nomad thing flying
| one way trips across the US for 10 months between
| 10/2022-10/2023 staying in hotels and I was traveling for
| work and she had conferences so we were staying in two hotels
| at a time sometimes.
|
| Last year, we had around 70 days and this year we are looking
| at between 60-70 days.
|
| At that point, hotel loyalty has benefits - loyalty points
| for free hotel stays , seat upgrades for flights and hotel
| room upgrades, lounge access when you fly a preferred airline
| etc.
|
| Right now, if at all possible and the rates aren't too much
| different, I'm going to stay in Hilton or Hyatt brand hotels.
| While I don't care about 5 star hotels, I'm not staying at a
| Days Inn.
| rconti wrote:
| It's worth explicitly stating that you (often?) don't get
| hotel rewards when your stays are booked through a third
| party.
|
| This isn't the case with airline miles; you get them either
| way, it seems. But there are often other benefits (eg, you
| get 5x miles if you book with your airline credit card
| directly through the airline).
| scarface_74 wrote:
| That's true. The issue with airlines is that if you have
| to make any changes, it's harder and in the case of st
| least AA, they charge a fee when you change a flight that
| was booked through a third party portal that would be
| free if you book directly.
| varjag wrote:
| Third parties often have their own fairly reasonable
| reward systems. And you are not tied down to a specific
| chain.
| walrus01 wrote:
| 100% seconded. One of the things that's often buried in the
| terms/conditions and booking if using an expedia/booking.com
| type 3rd party site is that your reservation cannot be modified
| in any way. Often if you book directly with the hotel chain in
| question you'll have a better experience in the event that
| unforeseen circumstances require a change in plans.
| dcrazy wrote:
| Some large chains will only give you rewards points or honor
| your status if you book directly.
|
| My wife and I just spent several days finding and booking
| hotels for a 2 week trip with several stops. We searched on
| aggregators (Booking's "king size bed" filter was particularly
| useful) but always defaulted to booking directly with the
| hotel. Oddly enough, one hotel had no means of booking
| directly; they only supported booking through an aggregator.
| One other hotel was offering the same price via Chase Travel,
| so I took the extra bonus Chase points.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| No hotels that I'm aware of will give you loyalty points
| unless you book directly. You can also get more loyalty
| points by using a cobranded hotel card. But only by booking
| directly.
| dcrazy wrote:
| I've had mixed success asking to add my loyalty number at
| check-in, even if I already provided it to the aggregator.
| ta1243 wrote:
| I stay in IHG hotels a fair amount booked through work's
| travel agent - indeed I'm about to check in to one when the
| train gets in. Always get the points and credited stay.
|
| Don't get them if you book it through booking.com or
| similar though (although hotels.com at least used to give
| you a 10% cashback as a credit for free nights, which is
| handy when you can't stay in one chain)
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Booking through something like Concur is different.
| Concur doesn't charge the hotel a fee for booking through
| them. Concur gets paid by the company.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I bet Concur gets paid for having slow page loads and
| thereby discouraging employee travel. It's the only
| explanation.
| dismalaf wrote:
| And some booking websites will also give you rewards points
| and free hotel stays.
| dcrazy wrote:
| Yes, but when you show up to your hotel across the world
| and they can't find your reservation or they gave your room
| away because they didn't know you were arriving after at
| 8pm, they then tell you to take it up with your third party
| booking company.
| sanj wrote:
| Same.
|
| I feel so strongly that I built a site to help with finding
| those prices.
|
| https://directbooker.com
| dewey wrote:
| What's different than just using any other aggregator and
| just not clicking the "book" button on their side then?
| spike021 wrote:
| I travel in Japan a lot and quite frankly Booking/Agoda have
| been comparable in most cases and extremely accessible for
| making reservations and even communicating with hotel staff.
|
| I used to use sites like Expedia for flights but lately i just
| book those directly through the carriers and i think the
| experience on that end is better.
| dcrazy wrote:
| On a previous trip to Japan I used my CC travel portal (can't
| remember if it was Chase or Amex) to book one of the hotels.
| It took several days of back and forth with the CC company
| acting as a middleman to clarify whether "twin bed" meant a
| single bed sized for a child, or two beds which could be
| pushed together to approximate a U.S. queen size bed. (Japan
| seems to translate "two beds" as "twin room", but it was
| unclear whether that had been re-translated when shown on the
| CC company's whitelabeled Expedia instance.)
| Ekaros wrote:
| I on other hand prefer the added security from Europe from
| getting both from same agency. As long as they are packaged.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The agency is still a third party and if something goes wrong
| with either the flight or the hotel, you are still having to
| deal with both. What happens if the hotel isn't satisfactory?
|
| The agency isn't going to do anything for you.
| silversmith wrote:
| Have not travelled for a while now, but the relatively tiny
| travel agency I used to use had a 24/7 support phone line.
| Did not personally have a need to use it, but a friend did,
| and the agency indeed handled the situation to his
| satisfaction.
|
| Moreover, booking international flights through that agency
| somehow always ended up cheaper than what I could find
| myself, even when accounting for their fees.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| A travel agency works differently than a portal. It's
| considered a first party booking.
| lisper wrote:
| I mostly agree with this, but with two exceptions. First, I've
| had surprisingly good experiences with booking.com (no
| affiliation, just a satisfied user). And second, if you're
| booking a cruise, it's actually better to book through an
| agent. The cruise lines all have deals with agencies that
| forbid the cruise lines from undercutting the agents. If you
| find the right agent, they will give you kickbacks on their
| commissions so you actually end up paying less than you would
| booking direct.
| grujicd wrote:
| Booking.com is great in discovery phase, when you want to
| find out what's available at certain date at certain
| location. After that you can book directly if you want, but
| surprisingly it can be even more expensive that way in some
| cases. Or terms can be worse, for example for cancelation or
| whether you have to prepay.
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, exactly. The first time I used booking.com it was
| because I was trying to book a particular hotel in an
| under-developed country and the hotel's web site wasn't
| working so I had no other option. I then had to cancel the
| reservation because covid happened, and I expected to have
| all kinds of problems, but it all went smoothly. So I
| started using them more often, tentatively at first, but
| now with full enthusiasm. I have yet to have a bad
| experience with them. They seem to be one of the good guys,
| which is one of the reasons I'm advocating them. We who
| value having good guys on the internet need to support them
| when we find them.
| _puk wrote:
| Have to agree. Die hard Airbnb user for years, then
| recently using booking.com more and more as it's clear
| and obvious what you are paying for (in most instances),
| and no insane "we're not a hotel, so change the sheets,
| wash them and put the rubbish out in these specific bins"
| list of exit rules.
|
| Accidental discovery, but have to say they've helped far
| more than hindered (especially with last minute bookings
| in distant lands).
| zoover2020 wrote:
| Welcome to Europe, Airbnb is dying since Covid. Booking
| is the clear winner. The only gripe I have with them ks
| their usage of dark patterns, not fully kosher
| WA wrote:
| And their insecure platform. You occasionally get
| completely legit-looking phishing emails from the hotel
| you wanna stay in, because the hotel's account was
| compromised and attackers now send phishing emails
| through their side of booking.com.
|
| Booking blames this on the hotels (probably true to some
| extend), but the problem is quite widespread so that
| Booking probably bears some responsibility, too.
| two_cents wrote:
| Booking.com or frankly any other aggregator are great until
| the moment you have a problem and need to talk to their
| customer service. In that moment you realize that Booking.com
| does nothing that you can't do by yourself with same effort.
| dcrazy wrote:
| Kayak was the absolute worst about this to me. I had
| purchased premium economy tickets to Japan for several
| thousand USD from Kayak. Japan closed. The FAA made it
| clear that refunds were to be awarded. Kayak jerked me
| around and tried to keep half my money. Eventually I got it
| back less $400.
| tmnvix wrote:
| My one and only experience with booking.com was around 10
| years ago. I made a last minute late night booking, only to
| turn up and be told the room wasn't available. This was
| followed by a week of wrangling with booking.com to get the
| refund which was extremely annoying given I was traveling on
| a shoestring budget at the time. Never again.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Nah often third party hotel rooms are cheaper. I've literally
| been in a hotel lobby, asked about the rate, only to see that
| it's about 20% cheaper on Hotels.com, ask the front desk person
| why they can't match, only to then use the app to book right in
| front of the clerk and then get my room.
|
| The backend system lots of hotels uses will sell rooms at what
| is essentially the market rate, based on occupancy, demand,
| etc..., whereas the posted room rate is more stable, for better
| or worse (better if the hotel is close to full, worse if it's
| empty).
| scarface_74 wrote:
| If you stay at the sane hotel brand often, the loyalty points
| make up the difference.
|
| If Hilton isn't running a special - and they are always
| running a special - if you have the Hilton Aspire credit
| card, you get 34 points per dollar worth usually around 20%
| in all. But often higher.
|
| We will be staying at a hotel in Manuel Antonio n Costa Rica
| next month that would cost $4700 for 400K points.
| dcrazy wrote:
| The aggregators are often buying inventory at below cost.
| They exist to help fill rooms that otherwise won't sell.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You obviously do not have an Amex platinum card, and you
| haven't had the delicious experience of a guaranteed 4PM
| checkout, free room upgrades, and paid for breakfasts.
| spokaneplumb wrote:
| Recent-ish recipient of a Venture X. It and the Platinum were
| my two finalists, but the "coupon book" aspects required to
| really benefit from the Platinum pushed me away. Have I made
| a terrible mistake?
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I ended up using many of the "Coupons" (not all), but the
| travel benefits after 2 international trips more than pay
| for the yearly price - and that's without the generous 150K
| points. Lounge access at airports is a life saver.
|
| I hate credit card companies too - but I can't deny that
| it's cheap to be rich and expensive to be poor. Just bite
| the bullet and get it or equivalent nice credit cards and
| use their (the credit cards) own travel booking websites.
| You'll be happy you did.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Currently we have:
|
| - Amex Platinum + paid authorized user
|
| - Amex Delta Platinum, Business Platinum and Reserve -
| having all three got me halfway to Delta Platinum
| Medallion. They each have a buy one get one free ticket
| and Delta Stays credits
|
| - Amex Green and Blue Business Plus
|
| I'm also a credit card churner, I'm looking to get four
| this year for sign up bonuses
| scarface_74 wrote:
| This is only for Fine Hotels and Resorts bookings and those
| prices are usually more than booking directly.
|
| Last year I was Hyatt Globalist and Hilton Diamond, so I got
| those benefits booking directly.
|
| This year I will be Hilton Gold and Hyatt Explorist.
|
| But I will get free C+ upgrades on Delta at time of booking
| because we are both Delta Platinum Medallion
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Amex Platinum gives you Hilton Gold as part of the "coupon
| book" of benefits for holding it.
| dewey wrote:
| Flights...agreed, but hotels sometimes have such shitty booking
| interfaces that I'd rather use the one from Booking which is
| solid and already has all my data.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Hotels are worse. Especially if you need to change anything.
| I stay loyal to Hilton and Hyatt
| briandear wrote:
| Going to play devils advocate here: San Francisco has a very high
| cost of living so is this any different than charging people
| different tax rates because of their income? Geolocation is a
| sloppy proxy for income, but statistically, a person in San
| Francisco makes a lot more money than a person in Kansas City.
|
| (I don't agree with the practice, but I am also opposed to
| progressive taxation as well.)
| saagarjha wrote:
| Because it's not taxes. If everyone were to charge you
| progressive rates for things you wouldn't be rich, you'd just
| be the same as everyone else.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I would venture a theory that at least _some_ smart people at 3rd
| party booking websites (expedia /booking.com type things) are
| making use of RFC8805 geolocation data published by peoples' last
| mile ISPs, for the netblock they're coming from, in addition to
| whatever 3rd party geolocation data feeds they're buying from
| services such as maxmind.
|
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8805
| sleepybrett wrote:
| parasitic middlemen
| seydor wrote:
| If we were back in the time of travel agents, would it be OK for
| them to charge more because they are in the area?
| nemomarx wrote:
| I mean they do have more money in the bay area generally
|
| you can charge what the market afforfd
| janalsncm wrote:
| Dynamic pricing is the future of everything. If consumers are
| willing to pay 1.5x, you are leaving money on the table by only
| charging x. In fact in a fully optimized system, once consumers
| have all of their wants and needs met, they will have zero
| dollars left over. (Expensive end of life care tends to have
| similar results today.)
|
| NPR did a piece on it last year which to me came off a bit too
| cheerful.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1197958433/dynamic-pricing-gr...
|
| Using only time of day is fairly primitive, though. We can do
| better. With facial recognition, we can probably personalize
| prices to the penny.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Since human wants are unlimited, isn't it by definition that
| they will have zero dollars left over if they actually tried to
| satisfy as much as they feasibly could?
| bluGill wrote:
| Not really - I want security which is why I always keep a
| reasonable amount of emergency savings. Not to mention my
| retirement funds that provide security for the future when I
| can't work. Ideally I'll die just as I spend my last dollar,
| but it is highly likely that I will have money left over.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have a child that is severely disabled, and will probably
| never be able to support herself.
|
| SSI is a joke, and the incoming Cruelty Administration is
| likely to make it worse.
|
| I'd like to think that I can leave something to her, so she
| won't wind up spending the remainder of her life on the
| streets. I've seen that happen, frequently.
| junipertea wrote:
| This bug can be mitigated via inflation.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > if consumers are willing to pay 1.5x, you are leaving money
| on the table by charging x
|
| That's the same argument for charging thousands of dollars for
| insulin. It's also the same argument landlords are using to
| charge more to victims of the LA fires.
| tmnvix wrote:
| It's essentially predatory behaviour, exploiting those in
| need. I think anyone arguing in favour of 'pure' market
| outcomes is essentially arguing in favour of unethical
| behaviour.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Either all selling is predatory or none of it is.
|
| I'm in the former camp- it's predatory and our prosperity
| is built on it.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Supply demand dynamics only work for optional spending
| and in market segments that have real competition.
| brookst wrote:
| "Either all or none" is a very questionable heuristic for
| anything.
|
| It is possible that price gouging after a natural
| disaster is predatory, while action pricing for one-of-a-
| kind memorabilia is not.
| jahewson wrote:
| Is the pure market outcome not that someone creates a
| competing insulin company? Patents and the buying practices
| of Medicare (both government interventions in the market)
| would seem to be the two biggest blockers.
| polski-g wrote:
| Yes. The pure market solution to "overcharging" people
| seeking housing is that people with available housing
| (near Palisades) go stay in Nebraska for six months, and
| sublet their existing available residence for $10k/mo.
|
| But politicians in California have forbidden the market
| from functioning in such a way -- so those with housing
| (possibly) available chose not to offer it because the
| price isn't worth it.
| jahewson wrote:
| [delayed]
| RobRivera wrote:
| I dont like the idea that person A and person B will be given 2
| different prices for the same commodity. It is discrimination.
| shric wrote:
| In theory this discrimination will be discovered (as in, see
| article) and if people don't like it they will select for
| companies that do not have (or have less) such
| discrimination.
|
| If all businesses discriminate then there is an opportunity
| to compete using no discrimination as an edge.
|
| Just as, for example, if a business decided (if it was legal)
| to only allow people of a certain race to enter, I would like
| to think that most members of that race would be disgusted
| enough to boycott that business and the business will rightly
| fail.
|
| Finally, people already effectively pay different amounts for
| all sorts of things due to varying amounts of tax paid.
|
| The private sector can't detect or profit from your tax paid
| so they use where you live and other signals like whether
| you're using an iPhone etc. as a proxy for your
| income/wealth.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| >Just as, for example, if a business decided (if it was
| legal) to only allow people of a certain race to enter, I
| would like to think that most members of that race would be
| disgusted enough to boycott that business and the business
| will rightly fail.
|
| We literally have federal laws outlawing this because it
| was, in fact, a selling point to exclude other races. Are
| you unaware of the history, or just hoping that racism has
| successfully been ended in the United States?
| tmnvix wrote:
| The prices might seem fair to each, until they learn what the
| other was charged. At that point the sellers likely pays a
| price in terms of reputation.
| coldbrewed wrote:
| > In fact in a fully optimized system, once consumers have all
| of their wants and needs met, they will have zero dollars left
| over.
|
| What are your parameters for optimization here? If the point is
| to maximize extracted revenue then this is a reasonable outcome
| but we could optimize for any number of targets. We could
| optimize to make the best use of resources, we could optimize
| for best consumer reviews, we could optimize for the ideal
| buyer/seller price that makes both entities in the transaction
| walk away with the best deal for each of them.
|
| But there's this persistent notion in the current business
| zeitgeist that the only metric worth optimizing is profit
| maximization and it's one that we should reject. Companies need
| to make a profit and workers need to take home a salary and
| that's fine, but we get to build the world that we live in.
| Living in a world where we care about quality of life and
| equity in transactions is much more interesting to me than
| living in one where all we care about is the velocity of
| extraction from anything that isn't nailed down.
| surfingdino wrote:
| There's an argument that it is unwise to fleece your customer
| so hard they don't come back again.
| roboror wrote:
| You can just buy or kill your competition via subsidizing
| your pricing. There's no appetite to legislate this
| anticompetitive behavior.
| gretch wrote:
| >If consumers are willing to pay 1.5x, you are leaving money on
| the table by only charging x.
|
| What about other businesses that are willing to charge x-1?
| tshaddox wrote:
| Indeed. Price discrimination is a market failure. It's only
| possible when a seller has market power.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That assumes a perfect market. No information asymmetry
| between buyers and seller. No collusion. All buyers and
| sellers on equal ground.
| gretch wrote:
| What? Really? Please read my comment, you will see that I
| have not assumed a perfect market.
|
| If I sell bagels for $2 each, and then I go down the street
| and see another bagel shop selling for $1.90 each, I might
| try to offer mine for $1.80 (if I have margin to spare).
|
| It's really that simple and something that demonstrably
| happens in the real world every day.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I would guess that most dynamic pricing won't work in a
| competitive market. By "competitive" I mean that there are a
| large number of buyers and sellers and something close to
| perfect information (namely that buyers know the prices goods
| are being sold at).
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Likely true, but the point made in the article (near the ned)
| is that consumers generally don't have that information and
| vendors go to considerable lengths to obscure it.
| ssalka wrote:
| This is a rather capitalistic and self-centered way to think
| about pricing. Under our current paradigms, a "fully optimized
| system" would behave in the way you described, but I would
| argue that it is optimizing for the wrong things (same as the
| larger system). To me, a "fully optimized system" would be one
| that is capable of providing products & services at an equal
| price to all people. It wouldn't care about who can afford to
| pay more because it doesn't require the additional profit.
| Instead, it is efficient at a predictable and stable price
| point.
|
| Those who politically advocate for "equality of opportunity"
| should favor a future where this is how things work, not one
| where everyone ends up with $0 spending money. In fact, the
| latter is exactly the opposite - equality of outcome.
| jessepasley wrote:
| What's the difference between this and remote work pay being
| based on local cost of living?
| iforgot22 wrote:
| I've heard this before but haven't seen it myself. Seems very
| easy to test.
|
| Edit: "I compared hotel room rates for five different sites:
| Kayak, Booking.com, Trivago, Expedia and Hotels.com. The tests
| were all performed on Dec. 11, 2024, within a two-hour span, and
| involved searching for a hotel room in Manhattan For Valentine's
| Day weekend, Feb. 14 to 16, 2025."
|
| Haven't used those before, so that could be it. Also suspect that
| it's very specific to the hotel and won't show up for mine.
| Anyway I'll try it.
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