Also, I assume there is less probability of errors since when you reserve on a travel agent website, your reservation goes through an additional system before it gets to the hotel.
Specifically with airfare, a 3rd party is not allowed to sell for less than the airline directly, so it's always better options since it is much easier to reschedule/cancel/refund directly with the airline. Plus, if you travel a lot, it is better to find a favorite airline and stick to them. Any bonus "features" offered by a 3rd party I can assure you are either not in your interest or actually a scam.
I don't know if the pricing rules applies to hotels, but I'd rather pay extra then get to the hotel and be screwed over last minute because some 3rd party is trying something "clever" behind the scenes and it turns out it ruins your travel plans.
The last couple of flights I booked with Star Alliance were the same price on Lufthansa.com etc., but I got free checked luggage on booking.com/expedia and just hand luggage on lh.com.
I suspect this is partly predatory pricing on behalf of Expedia (charge the hotel 30%, discount the price 20%, get all the bookings and take the difference.) Yet I really can't justify spending the extra $400 to stand the moral high ground. Seems like something the hotels need to work out.
They used to at least offer the same price and add in little things like "free wifi" and breakfast. I haven't seen that offer since the pre-covid years.
I've assumed they do this as a combination of lazy tax plus they don't want to undercut aggregators as these might stop showing them if they know people will go direct to the hotel after searching.
On the other hand, that always includes free wifi and breakfast.
As a side note, I wonder if many people pay attention to reviews outside of extremely low rated places.
My intuition says the opposite. More moving pieces in the system, more fragility in integration of different systems.
The problem is that the phrase “I assume there is less probability of errors” is not attached to a condition.
It’s a bit like that revolving ballerina dancer illusion
Nevertheless, there is clearly a more clear way I could have wrote that comment.
I have never found this to be true unfortunately. I have some conference related travel coming up, and the conference made some deal with Hilton for a special rate. Hilton's link wouldn't work, and I made 5 calls trying to get them to offer a discounted rate to no avail. Eventually had to book at a discounted rate on hotwire (same as the conference's rate), which presumably made Hilton 20-30% less. At scale, hotels are just operated like commodities. Unless you are really special (loyal and big spender), you won't get any special treatment.
Lifetime Platinum Marriott member here.
The special treatment is OK. It is nice to get room upgrades and freebies, but that's little stuff. It doesn't get you a room magically when they are sold out, and you don't magically get a better rate when prices are high.
The biggest benefit if you're traveling a lot is your points accrual rate is higher with status, which lets you more rapidly exchange points for things. The only sane way to spend points of course, is more hotel stays. Nothing else comes close value-wise. I recall running the numbers on that (points/dollar ratio), and you'd be a brazen fool to spend points on merchandise - when you compare the ratio of hotel stays to merchandise point cost, you realize that they have a 3-4x markup on the merchandise.
That's when you spend your points. Though it depends severely on the brand. Marriott and Hilton are no longer great. But Wyndham and Hyatt are pretty amazing. Starwood, used to be good until Marriott bought them out.
(It's going to be the Booking.com ones.)
I became a "rewards member" with a major hotel chain once. Never again. The deluge of spam I got was intolerable.
The hotel has a room they want to sell for $100 a night. They can list it on their website for $100 a night, and after paying credit card processing fees, they get to keep the remainder.
The hotel now lists the same room on one of the booking sites that charges a x% fee for facilitating the transaction and providing discovery for the hotel (getting the room in front of interested customers). The hotel can either take a x% haircut, or charge x% more. So that same room might be $110 per night now instead of $100.
It's a business decision, and not all operators will make the same one, naturally.
You see similar things on online marketplaces, such as Amazon. Amazon's commission fee can be anywhere from 15%-30%, depending on the category. Unless there's huge margin baked into the product price, you may very well be paying 15-30% more for the product on Amazon. Not always, of course, as it does come down the the business and the strategy they've chosen.