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Comment by Osmium | Hacker News Reader

To anyone from Booking.com reading this: I'll go elsewhere next time I need to book a room.

Dark patterns may help profits in the short-term, but they're terrible for your brand. Just ask TicketMaster.

It isn't just tech-savvy users that will catch on to this either. If an everyday user uses Booking.com, reads reviews and thinks their room will be great, but then has a bad experience, they're going to stop trusting Booking.com's reviews, and stop trusting their brand. It will only take a few bad experiences to go elsewhere.

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> To anyone from Booking.com reading this: I'll go elsewhere next time I need to book a room

I like to think that I'm take-savvy (I've been on this forum for quite a while) but I'll happily continue to use booking.com the same as I've done for the past 10 years, give or take. I don't care at all about their brand, I'm aware of their "dark patterns" and as such it's very easy to avoid them, what it matters for me it's that in the last 10 years they've always been reliable (as in 100% reliable) and on point with their descriptions and ratings, no matter the destination (from a 2-star hotel in the middle of the Carpathian mountains to a 5-star hotel in Istanbul). In other words they really do provide value, the same way as Ryanair provides value (it doesn't matter that everybody likes to hate on Ryanair, everybody is still flying with them).

I also spend more than 5 minutes reading through the actual reviews before making a reservation, unlike the writer of the article which is unhappy that not everything is mentioned front and center on the first page. As such, I've never ever had to deal with dirty sheets or a dirty bathroom when it came to locations reserved through booking.com.

It's tech-savvy, like technology. Not "take-savvy".

>"what it matters for me it's that in the last 10 years they've always been reliable (as in 100% reliable) and on point with their descriptions and ratings, no matter the destination (from a 2-star hotel in the middle of the Carpathian mountains to a 5-star hotel in Istanbul).

I would say you have been unusually lucky then. The practice of fake reviews from booking.com are pretty well documented[1][2]. And 5 star hotels are generally a pretty safe bet just about anywhere in the world, you pretty much know exactly what the experience will be. Accuracy of a 5 star hotel says very little about booking.com.

>"In other words they really do provide value, the same way as Ryanair provides value (it doesn't matter that everybody likes to hate on Ryanair, everybody is still flying with them)."

You mean like suddenly grounding 50 flights a day for the next six weeks and giving customers no shortage of grief:

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ryanair-...

>"I also spend more than 5 minutes reading through the actual reviews before making a reservation ..."

That doesn't really mean much when the reviews are gamed does it?

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/06/bookingcom-invest...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonha-revesencio/the-truth-abo...

> Dark patterns may help profits in the short-term, but they're terrible for your brand. Just ask TicketMaster.

TicketMaster's customers are people selling tickets, not those buying them.

Their entire business model is based around burning their own reputation, not the reputation of whoever's selling through TicketMaster. That's why they can get away with using dark patterns to make more money for their customers and themselves - consumers don't have a choice.

> Just ask TicketMaster.

TM has been doing pretty well in terms of stock price (not the user happiness) -- probably the metric that they care about. So, I am not sure if that's the best example.

Source: https://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chd...

Don't they practically have a monopoly on ticket sales, though?

They have a monopoly just like Comcast.

I don't know if they will keep doing well in terms of stock price If/When Amazon release their ticket master competitor[1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-ticketing/excl...

Wait, because Amazon is known to do better than others on UX and lack of dark patterns?

I recently used booking.com for the first time, as I was in a rush and needed somewhere to stay that night. The hotel I booked through booking.com was a Best Western. After the booking went through, I received a flurry of emails from both booking.com and Best Western.

One of the Best Western emails encouraged me to sign up for their rewards scheme. Having liked Best Western hotels previously, I signed up, and downloaded the app onto my phone. To get rewards for the booking I just needed the Best Western booking ref. number.

There wasn't one. Just the booking.com ref. number on their Emails, and no ref. number on the Best Western ones.

Once at the hotel I asked for the Best Western booking ref. number and was told "As you've booked through booking.com you don't qualify for rewards on this stay, sorry."

So that will be my first AND last use of booking.com. Fool me once and all that.

That's not exactly the fault of booking.com though. Hotels have learned that if they want people to book directly with them (which gets them more money), they need to make it attractive to customers. They can't really offer a lower price than booking.com and hotels.com due to contracts they have with those companies so instead they offer a reward scheme and exclude bookings not made directly with them.

They also sometimes offer lower "member only" price for members of their reward scheme as a way to get around their contract (in that case the lower price they provide than booking.com is not public but only restricted to members so it's not a breach of contract).

That said, I don't use booking.com, I find their dark patterns too deceptive for me.

> That's not exactly the fault of booking.com though.

> They can't really offer a lower price than booking.com and hotels.com due to contracts

See, it is the fault of booking.com. I'm not saying I'd have done it differently in their position, but their demand that hotels charge the same via booking.com as directly (even while booking.com gets a cut) is the direct cause of complicated reward schemes like this.

I’ve also learned through multiple bad experiences to use booking.com only to find hotels but to book directly with the hotel.

I use booking.com occasionally because I can actually get to the information I need and want without difficulty.

The things described here are not exactly dark patterns - you can bypass them and get to the truth. (This is unlike TicketMaster.) Perhaps I would call them grey patterns.

The impact is worse than just hurting brands.

After hotels.com boned me, I've soured on the very notion of online bookings, price comparison sites for travel stuff, trusting ratings.

Caveat emptor (aka Freedom Markets™) is bad for business because it increases transaction costs (friction).

Reforms like consumer protection regulations are championed by businesses trying to make an honest buck once they get tired of the cheaters ruining the market for all the players.

Can you describe what happened with hotels.com? I've been using them exclusively because my travel is so random and it's just easier to have all the hotel bookings in one place. But it does make me uncomfortable that I'm getting taken advantage of in one way or another. Thx in advance.

I use them almost exclusively as well, but with a caveat: before booking, I always check the hotel's site for better pricing or bonuses you get for booking directly.

Yes, some of the practices are a bit annoying - I get multiple emails a week with their "10% off codes" that aren't valid for the majority of hotels on the site. But since I'm not worried about staying with any specific hotel chain, their stay 10 nights get one free (really it's often more 'get a steep discount on a night') ends up being worth it for me.

And the one time I wanted to cancel a reservation - I was told by someone staying at the hotel at the last minute that it was a dump - Hotels.com got it canceled for me and got the cancellation fee waived, which I wasn't expecting, but definitely appreciated. Of course, then I went ahead and booked a different hotel through them, so they got my business regardless.

First incident: Reservation at great place in Key West. Flew into Miami, drove to Key West, arrive late at night, no reservation. Never heard of us. Scramble find a room. Later, struggle to get our refund.

Resolve to never again use hotels.com

Second incident: Find Kalaloch Lodge resort online. Call them directly. Nice chit chat about peninsula, rain forests, etc. Drove to resort. Arrive, no reservation.

Turns out hotels.com and their affiliates buy up domain names, do SEO, and pretend to be the owner / operator of independent resorts.

aka cybersquatting. I call it fraud, theft, malfeasance.

The owners we spoke to said it happens all the time, they're super frustrated, don't know how to fight back.

Best as I can tell, Freedom Markets™ (caveat emptor) has become increasingly the norm. For everything. It's exhausting.

Thanks for the detail. For either of those incidents, did they seem to have a low number of reviews? I can't think of what else might telegraph that kind of problem, which surely is a hassle, especially if it's precious vacation time.

When I've traveled with my family, I'll sometimes call or email the hotel directly to confirm. As a group we are not as resilient as I am solo. We've not had a reservation go missing, but we have had rooms with no extra bed, which is almost as bad.

Where we have had those kinds of problems more often is using airline miles for rooms. The only solution there is to book a suite or something else special, then they are more likely to make sure it happens.

Last time I booked a room, I had leaking water everywhere in the room. Since I was alone and it was only for 1 night, I didn't bother to complain.

With that said, I will still book my rooms through Booking.com. But at least this article gave me some nice pointers to keep in mind in the future, like the "fine print".

Even worse. I went to a horrible, horrible hotel in Prague (which at the time was the #1 result, don't know if still is). My (obviously) bad review, while polite and with pictures attached, was ignored after 3 weeks in limbo. Not explicitly refused, no explanation. Just poof, never happened. And support is also ignoring my questions. All that being a "Genius" user. Unfortunately I don't have Twitter so no public-shaming-user-support.

Be careful with reviews. They might not be fake but certainly arbitrarily filtered.

I usually check reviews on Google maps and tripadvisor before making a decision on a multi-night stay, but for the 1 nights I can usually get by well enough with photos and the sites own reviews. Though for what it's worth, the hotels that offer the 10% discount for genius members on booking are usually real discounts, but it's about the only "real" thing I look at on booking.

Concur. I always cross-check on TripAdvisor. It sometimes feels obsessive, but on an expensive trip, a bad night can mess up several subsequent days. Hotels/Booking.com are selling, and many of the customers are not frequent travelers -- turkeys ripe for the plucking.

Put the same review on TripAdvisor. In my experience, they are not afraid to host bad reviews and I've always found the reviews there to be informative and indicative of quality.

Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for TicketMaster), there usually is no alternative to them. That doesn't hold true for Booking.com

Do people not Google for alternatives? I can think of at least 5 competitors to Ticket Master. There's even one that only charges 5% seller fee and no buyer fee.

For most events (at least in the US), you can only get tickets via TicketMaster. Venues sign an agreement with TM that forbids them selling tickets elsewhere. TM controls venue's entire ticket sale workflow, including inventory, printing and sending tickets, etc.

Going with another vendor is a gigantic undertaking, you would need to overhaul most of your processes. Most venues don't have the resources/bandwidth to pull that off.

And that's how TM stays a monopoly.

Source: used to work for a large venue.

Sure and it's the same on the artist side. If you want to tour you can not avoid Ticketmaster. Remember Perl Jam at the height of their popularity and powers tried to take them on and lost:

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/pearl-jam-sues-ticketmaster/

Ticketmaster pay a substantial share of their "service fee" to venues and promoters. By signing an exclusivity deal with TM, venues can guarantee themselves a greater share of the effective ticket price. Artists are powerless to negotiate because of TM's dominant position in the ticketing market. It's a grubby little money-go-round scheme that exploits artists and fans alike.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/business/12tickets.html

>"I can think of at least 5 competitors to Ticket Master"

Not in the US you can't. And certainly not for venues large than a club.

I think that it would only take a startup selling a few really big names before the monopoly breaks.

Sell Taylor Swift on a different booking system that isn't pathological to users. A few other top shelf performers. Venues will be switching like there's no tomorrow to keep the top performers.

The tricky part of this is getting an audience with people like Taylor Swift. On the other hand, with people like Trent Reznor working for Apple, if you had an alternative that worked well and didn't suck, you could probably get some attention pretty quickly.

It's almost as though there is a market that needs to be disrupted. And all the elements are there.

I find the current "market equilibrium" for both hotel booking and event ticket sales quite weird. I mean, both of them charge ridiculously high fares for a service that costs a fraction of that to produce. I mean, take hotel booking. Hotels could (technically) easily set up a booking co-operative (or two to get some competition), and refuse to sell anywhere else online. The fees to be able to run the co-operative would be sub 1%. It needs no marketing budget because that is the only site that comes up when googling hotels (others are dead).

Or then I am missing something in the market dynamics of hotel booking.

For tickets, some of that booking fee is actually going to the venue.

My 30s search gave no answer. If my total cost of a ticket is 100, how much of that ends up typically to ticketmaster's pocket and how much to the venue?

Ticket Master is part of Live Nation Entertainment and Live Nation is the Ticket Master of the promoter and venue side. They are the largest promoter in the US. If an artist tries to circumvent the TicketMaster/Live Nation monopoly they will find that they aren't able to book any of the venues in the market they need. This a near monopoly, they are the mob. No startup is going to "fix" this.

Live Nations was spun out of Clear Channel which controls the majority of the important radio stations in the US. Needless to say the relationship between Clear Channel and Live Nation is a very "special" one. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Nation_(events_promoter)

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/business/25ticket.html?mcu...

Do you know any alternatives? Because last time I looked, every booking site I could find was also owned by the same company that owns Booking.com, other than Expedia, which is also a terrible site that uses dark patterns and other scamminess.

I use booking sites to find, look at and compare hotels. But I try to book by phone or E-mail. Often the hotel asks what rate are you seeing online and negotiations start from there. Except for the dark patterns I believe these companies are also known for channeling their profits to tax evasion paradises. Yeah, it might cost me a few minutes, but I don't book tens of hotels a year.

Lastminute.com and TripAdvisor.

I never make any hotel decision based on booking.com information, other than their price. To be fair, the clue is in the name, make your decision elsewhere and then come back and use them to make the actual booking (assuming it was cheapest). I appreciate this keeps them and their dodgey tactics going but I'll pay that price.

I've used Expedia a bunch of times, and I've never been burned.

Though I do only use it for flight tickets, not for hotels. And I always go there in an incognito tab, to make sure I avoid any cookies etc.

This is exact my situation. No more bookings on booking.com after a bad experience.

Where's elsewhere then? AirBnB doesn't count, just in case.

Kayak, Expedia, booking directly with a hotel...

Agoda.

TripAdvisor

Honestly, mostly have 4 choices:

1. Priceline (this includes Booking.com, Kayak, Agoda, and others).

2. Expedia (includes Hotels.com, trivago, and others).

3. Smaller aggregators (such as lastminute.com).

4. Booking directly.

The dark patterns described in the blog post are used by everyone, including many hotels themselves, so you're never going to avoid them.

agoda.com is very good IMO at least around southeast asia. haven't yet used it in the West.

from what i heard agoda is the same company as booking.com

Just because they have the same parent company doesn't make them the same company imho. Pretty much like how the Ritz Carlton is not the Four Points, although they are both Marriott companies.

I use booking for searching

Than check on goggle and call them directly

If they say we're full, I tell them there are still free rooms on booking, if they want I can book there or they can give me the room and avoid paying booking

They don't care, I bet like 90% of their traffic is from pop-unders from better travel sites.

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