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Comment by 88840-8855 | Hacker News Reader

I'm using booking as it has a great UI and genius + Amazon Prime give me by far the best prices.

I haven't found any alternative yet.

Booking at the venue itself will almost always be cheaper and provide more luxuries like a free drink in the bar or free breakfast.

The third party takes a cut of the cost. The hotel wants that cut badly, so just call them up, say you found a cheaper price at the third party and see what they do. They will likely give you a better offer and they themselves will have a better profit as well in the proces.

How much are you really saving? I value my time much more than I do saving $20. Booking.com does provide a really nice UI for finding great places as well.

Some of those hotel third party sites demands that the hotel don't give any other price than what they have on the third party site. So you really have to call to have a chance at a better price.

That's ok if you book a single hotel from time to time. But if you book several hotels for a road trip (our last Scotland road trip would have been 12 different hotels/BnBs, and because it was during a holiday season and we intended to visit islands just doing the classical "BnB" strategy of driving into town in the afternoon and look for a BnB was not feasible) having everything on a single site is hard to beat.

And with Covid hitting in early 2020 it was even easier to cancel everything on one site with just a few clicks.

I just use Google maps. That way I see where the hotel is too, which is one of the most important factors.

there is a 'show on a map' button at booking.com search results page

Hotels.com price matches and has a pretty great loyalty program. It's like a punchcard where after 10 punches you get a free night's credit (avg. rate of your punches).

Hotels.com. You get no dark patterns and shady practices as bonus.

False, we used it, you can't cancel your order unless you talk to some shady agent and then you have to pay some amount of money, also, it's very expensive, booking.com you could cancel your order for free

I've used Hotels.com dozens of times and have never had to speak to anyone, shady agent or otherwise, to cancel. And I've also cancelled for free where "Free Cancellation" was mentioned as part of the fare rules.

You probably booked a VRBO accommodation; you have to be careful not to do that. Those really suck service wise. They might be nice and cheap but if something goes wrong, hotels.com isn't going to help you, while with the non-vrbo places they do. Places that are VRBO have a large VRBO logo next to them; they are not hotels.com bookings, just affiliates. Shitty, but I guess they found a way of making some more money.

Hotels.com as screwed up my booking twice (showed up and the hotel had no record of me booking a room) and had terrible customer service both times. Never again.

Same here but that was just the same with booking.com. Turns out it was the hotel that screwed up, not the booking site.

I have used them for 10 years now for close to a 1000 bookings and the times it went wrong I can count on one hand; they also always help fixing the issue. Sure you get some bad VOIP connection (why is that still a thing...) but if you just immediately push for the rebooking agent (which is separate from the normal support), you will be fine quickly in no time and at no cost. Unlike some experiences I had with booking...

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