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Comment by rjh29 | Hacker News Reader

If your hotel double books you, they're out of rooms and can't help. If Booking.com double books you, they can pull strings to give you a different room in any hotel on their site (and they do). I don't doubt you had that experience personally, but it doesn't match my experience at all, and I spend 1/3 of my life in hotels.

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If a hotel double booked you and you showed up, the hotel would walk you to a nearby similar hotel all paid for by the hotel. The “walk” process is a standard industry practice.

This whole reply thread looks astroturfed.

I notice it every time when the benefit of booking 3rd party is questioned.

Having to walk a guest when the hotel cannot meet the terms of the reservation is part of the contract between the big hotel brands and franchisors. If the hotel operators do not fulfill the walk policy, then you should contact the 800 number for Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Choice/Wyndham/etc and they will mail you a check for your expenses and bill the hotel owner.

This thread started about “boutique hotels” and now we’re talking about franchisees of major national chains. They’re not the same. Plenty of tiny unfranchised operations can you leave you hanging with little to no recourse.

I've heard "boutique hotel" applied to places like Aloft that are owned by big chains.

This threads discussing small hotels ("boutique"), not the large chains.

Most of the larger chains even have benefits if you go direct though.

I worked a few years as a night manager in a hotel in Norway - we always had to figure out a solution when overbooked - at "our" expense (customer pays/pre-paid agreed upon price, we cover room and transport at alternative accommodation - usually more expensive).

As a bonus re: booking.com - they integrated with our booking system and always overbooked, unless our system lied about available rooms (would happily sell rooms when none were available - especially annoying at night, when a booked room typically means an occupied room).

Or maybe booking.com is actually a better experience for most people than the legacy hotel sites. It's more streamlined, it's cheaper, you don't have to sign up etc.

If you think I'm an astroturfer look at my comment history, I've never mentioned hotels before.

By which party?

I've never heard of this and never had a hotel do it when they've fucked a booking.

When was the last time you booked direct with a hotel where they were overbooked and they refused to walk you to another hotel when you showed up? Which hotel is it? We can call them up to ask them to clarify their policy.

Edit: Here's more information since you're not familiar with the walk policy.

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/getting-walked-from-a-hotel-c...

https://www.lawinsider.com/clause/walk-policy

https://www.costar.com/article/1992652780/how-to-walk-guests...

https://www.godsavethepoints.com/hotel-overbooking-walk-guid...

https://www.cvent.com/en/blog/events/hotel-walk-policy-defin...

https://www.uponarriving.com/hotel-walk-policies/

Those are all about big corporate chains, which have many of the same advantages as something like booking.com. We were talking about boutique hotels. If you really want I can tell you the place in Aachen where it last happened to me and you can call them up, but I guarantee they don't have "policies", and probably not anyone who speaks English.

I showed up at a (cheap) hotel booked on Booking.com earlier this year. They had no record of my booking. They couldn't help me.

I spent the next hour on the phone or on hold with a booking.com rep. They claimed the hotel had made a mistake and should be the one to fix it. They attempted to contact the appropriate person at the hotel but were unable to.

About four hours later somebody appropriate from the hotel responded to the booking.com rep and "found" the "lost" booking.

I brought up the policy you mentioned, and the booking.com rep told me that they hotel gets a chance to fix it first. They seemed quite surprised the hotel ghosted them for four hours, and told me that eventually at some point at night they would book me some other room.

So I'd say the booking.com policy you mentioned isn't quite as valuable as you might think at first.

If you’re booked 3rd party you’re much more likely to be the one bumped I. The first place. You’re also likely to get the least desireable rooms on the least desireable floors.

People say that but it doesn't ring true in my experience. Let's face it, you're just paying more for the same service if you book directly.

Strangely, at least in Australia, you often pay more for booking directly. On multiple occasions I've checked a hotel's website and found aggregators with cheaper rates, then literally walked in the front door and asked what's the best they can do. It's worse and I end up getting my wife to book on her mobile phone from the parking lot and let her complete the check-in.

Don't get me wrong, generally not a fan of middlemen. But the experience when booking a hotel directly comes down to the owners/management, and it's going to vary wildly compared to one of these big aggregators.

I've heard booking.com forbids them to charge first-party customers less than the booking.com price, and the hotel is beholden to the site for income so they play along. The only people booking directly are basically idiots, so for those people they charge as much as they can.

In the UK there are large chains such as Travelodge who have pulled out from booking.com entirely and made people go to their site.

And yes downvote me but maybe think about whether spending more money going to first-party sites is actually serving you?

While I didn't downvote you, I'm one of those "idiots" who tends to book directly on hotel web sites because I'm a member of several free-to-join hotel loyalty programs. The aggregators generally do not beat prices available for members (which, again, I can be for free). It's not uncommon for me to find specials, room types, or even availability, period, available on the direct sites that the aggregators don't have. And I have never once been told "sorry, we can't find your reservation" if I book on the direct website, whereas I absolutely have run into that issue -- albeit generally with independent hotels and B&Bs -- when booking through aggregators.

But, sure, I'm obviously an idiot! I'm just over here drooling stupidly while I get better and/or cheaper hotel rooms.

Thanks for your response. I apologise, the term "idiots" was definitely over-the-top - while there are people who are paying more than they should, I didn't know about the loyalty programs (which makes me the idiot). Maybe it's a US-centric thing. In any case I understand that your experience with booking direct has been better than using third party.

The annoying thing is that should so obviously be the case! Booking direct should always be cheaper and better, right? But I've found that even if booking.com is cheaper the hotel refuses to match the price when booking directly. And they never told me about any loyalty scheme :/

I didn't downvote you, but I did notice that you are making repeated assertions about price disparity between direct and third party; multiple people are posting actual links and experiments showing you wrong; to which you more vehemently ("idiots") repeat the assertions (without evidence).

I apologised in another comment and admit it is not universally true, as many people have pointed out. However I have repeatedly tried to get hotels to price match; they don't, and they never mentioned a loyalty scheme. That is my personal experience. Of course it may differ based on the type of hotel (I don't use very expensive chain hotels), the country, etc.

Numerous times I’ve booked direct with the hotels and it’s cheaper than or same as 3rd party.

Booking.com requires the cheapest price, unless you are talking about the price from the hotel’s rewards program, which they will push very hard. It’s a contract loophole that works out for everyone except the non-savvy (or privacy-conscious) consumer.

Similar dynamic with credit cards, where retailers are forbidden from offering a cash discount. Though some skirt this using rewards programs— in Canada for example, Canadian Tire gives you more Canadian Tire "money" if you pay with debit or cash.

Best price requirements should be straight up illegal IMO.

In fairness, if credit card processors hadn't been permitted to require that and customers had had to pay the fee, credit cards would never have achieved liftoff.

Which is maybe as much of an argument as any, if it had put pressure on the processors to minimize or eliminate the fee and find alternative revenue streams to sustain themselves and build out the network. Instead we got a world where the fee has been static forever and the gains from automation have gone to cashback and rewards programs for customers, ultimately making it more expensive to pay with cash.

That's simply not true. I just did search to see if anything has changed. I searched for hotels in the Seattle area for a 5/18 reservation. The 3rd item in a hotel's result [1] is the direct hotel's price. It matches the same reservation on the hotel's website [2]. Another hotel's result [3] has the lowest price as direct booking.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/XtDkLZj.png

[2] https://i.imgur.com/gHJgB3I.png

[3] https://i.imgur.com/MVVqmFG.png

For reference: to be part of a hotels “rewards program” just requires you to create a free account.

What privacy concerns are you alleviating by not signing up for the hotels loyalty program? They are going to ask for ID when you get there and many require a credit card hold.

You can read the terms of service and privacy agreement for that "free account" to find out.

In general, the Hotel would not be offering a rewards program if it did not benefit them more than it cost. At the very least they are going to use your "free account" to try to get you to use that Hotel (chain) more.

They will be getting that information from you anyway when you check in.

Who do you think is more likely to sell your information to third parties - a hotel brand that has every incentive to keep your information to themselves or an aggregator?

> cost. At the very least they are going to use your "free account" to try to get you to use that Hotel (chain) more.

And a third party aggregator won’t try to get you to use their site more?

> except the non-savvy (or privacy-conscious) consumer.

Every single hotel I have been to already requires your ID and records your information at check in. In fact, it is required by pretty much all city laws in the US.

I also would not want to stay in a hotel that does not require it.

Even in countries where recording guest ID is a legal requirement, it can often be circumvented.

The rewards programs use your information to market to you, and sometimes third parties. Terms and conditions vary. As always, consult a lawyer before clicking accept on any EULA.

Of course they do. Grocery stores, airlines, car rentals, hotel brands, retail stores, everyone has a rewards program for a discount and they all have my info.

So far I do not receive any junk mail other than credit card offers, which I take advantage of for the bonus.

I'll tell you a story about Booking.com. I booked an ostensibly available hotel in Ouray, CO in fairly peak season. I got there and they of course, had already sold the booking beforehand and because the systems didn't link up correctly Booking's availability was not updated. It was the hotel's fault, but it didn't matter. Not a single other hotel in Ouray had availability, and, if you happen to know the area, anything that resembles a hotel outside of Ouray is going to be a significantly long drive.

Booking.com was zero help at all when I called them. None. They couldn't find or book me another hotel, and basically just told me that there was nothing they could do besides refund my money.

There are many, many stories like this.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like Booking. I think it's a great way for smaller properties to get visibility without having to build and maintain that web presence themselves. But when it goes wrong, don't expect them to go to bat for you. They are incentivized to keep making money, and threatening to delist hotels for fucking over customers when the hotel clearly messed up is clearly not a game they have decided to play.

I always book directly with the hotel if I can, because, if you do that, the shit that I mentioned just doesn't happen. Sure, if it's double the price, I'll roll the dice with Booking. But it basically never is. If it's something like 5-10% of the nightly price extra, I'll pay that premium to not have to deal with any BS. Usually it's the exact same price anyway, if it's an available option (there are some hotels that literally only survive via Booking these days).

> Not a single other hotel in Ouray had availability, and, if you happen to know the area, anything that resembles a hotel outside of Ouray is going to be a significantly long drive.

> Booking.com was zero help at all when I called them. None. They couldn't find or book me another hotel, and basically just told me that there was nothing they could do besides refund my money.

I get that you were in a very difficult position, but if there weren’t any hotel rooms, what were you expecting Booking.com to do? And what did the hotel do to help you?

> I always book directly with the hotel if I can, because, if you do that, the shit that I mentioned just doesn't happen.

Of course it does. Booking.com didn't invent double bookings.

My point is that they aren’t on the side of the booker. They are on the side that makes them the most money. Incentives are not aligned to provide the best possible experience for consumers. I would have expected them to at least say “this is not ok, we are looking into this relationship with this hotel. We own responsibility for this hotel that we ostensibly vetted to be adequately integrated with our systems to not fuck you, and they did. After all, we advertised them as a booking on our site”.

But they didn’t do any of that. They just said, sorry, can’t help you. Which is fine, but be aware of that and don’t sing their praises from the rooftops and advocate for them by saying “why would you not use them over booking first party?”

Yes, but you are blaming them for being unable to resolve what appears to be an unresolvable problem that a hotel you booked directly wouldn’t be able to help with either. Incentives don’t matter there if nobody is in a position to do anything.

I think Booking.com is by far more reliant upon repeat customers than hotels. If a hotel screws up a booking, sure the customer isn’t going to come back but they probably weren’t even if they had a good experience – people travel to lots of different places. If Booking.com screws up a booking, they very probably lost a repeat customer – Booking.com gets used again and again even when people travel to many different places. Booking.com’s incentives are more closely aligned with the traveller than the hotel’s are.

Perhaps you misinterpreted my above comment. I don’t blame booking for my poor experience with that hotel, merely their response to the situation.

If what you say is true, I would think that there would be evidence of some sort of punitive action from booking.com for poor behavior like this. As far as I know, such evidence does not exist.

Well, they could offer pay x times the booking price, instead of only refunding the money.

A reasonable approach would seem to be to confirm the booking with the property within, say, 24 or 48 hours so if it’s overbooked you’ve at least got a chance of getting something else.

I mostly deal with Hilton brand hotels for both work and our newish “hybrid digital nomad” lifestyle where we hop across cities in the US for 7 months a year.

We stayed in Hilton brand hotels for around 160 days over the last year.

You don’t get loyalty points and days don’t count toward status when booking through a third party. With Hilton, those loyalties points can account for 20%-35% toward future stays. Meaning if I spend $100, I will get points worth $20-$35 toward future stays. Based on rooms I’ve already booked this year with just points, we are staying free for 25 days in 5 cities this year. Of course point accumulation is a lot slower for most people. But there are a lot of people who stay in hotels using other folks money when traveling for business.

Most hotels chains also have a “lowest price guarantee” where they will match a price found on a third party site.

This isn’t even mentioning all of the hassle you can avoid dealing with hotels directly if things go wrong or if you just don’t like the service.

Last year, I booked a 7 day half work half personal stay in San Francisco at the Hilton Financial district. It was a run down dump. I went to the front desk, told them I would be cancelling the rest of my stay and booked another hotel - the Hilton Parc 55 - for the rest of the week.

The first hotel charged me for one night. That would have been much more of a hassle going through a third party site. First you would have to hope that Hilton gave the money back to booking.com and then go through the hassle of getting your money back from them.

On that same note, I booked a regular room at Parc 55, messaged the hotel on the app before I got there and asked did they have any free Diamond upgrades available. They upgraded me to the fitness room - with a gym inside the room - for free. You don’t get those benefits when booking through a third party.

It seems to make sense if you're going to use the same brand for a long time, yeah. I tend to stay wherever is cheapest so I haven't exploited loyalty schemes yet, but reading the comments I might be missing out.

That does not match my experience. IME the bumping is first and foremost dependent on the time of arrival. While the hotel has rooms, they will give them out to those who booked and show up. Should the hotel run out due to overbooking, how the next guest booked a room is not going to matter. My 2c.

Big sophisticated hotels have blocks of rooms at different price points. So, even if there are rooms currently empty but have been reserved for customers who have paid higher price, they won't give them to you.

In recent years, I have not had any booking problems whatsoever. Only problem I had more than 10 years ago was about arriving very late and finding that my room reservation had been released and they were full. Luckily it was a big chain hotel which had another property nearby and was able to get me a room there for the night and then resume my original room for the rest of the week long stay. This was very busy conference week and all 3+ star hotels were full in the area.

> even if there are rooms currently empty but have been reserved for customers who have paid higher price, they won't give them to you.

In my experience (not very big hotel) - the emphasis was on full occupancy - rooms would only be held (with other guest with booking at the counter) in rare circumstances (eg we knew an incoming flight was delayed and we were certain the other guest would arrive. Even then we might bump the other guest if it meant we had more time to scramble to find an alternative room for the guest that hadn't shown up yet).

So funny how this thread got nerd-sniped from Brave search to hotel booking.

I love the word nerd-sniped and indeed it applies to HN comments very often. We just want to bicker.

As the guy who started the thread, I'm just glad to have provided an (accidental) portal into a whole new subdomain of HN community expertise.

We've ended up with the perfect mix of helpful insights, provocative theories, well-documented personal experiences (sample of one) -- and brief snark that gets reined in before it gets ugly.

Later on this year, I'll offer some thoughts about hotel bookings that can be nerd-sniped the other way -- into a discussion of Brave search

Well a hotel has never double booked me. A hotel in India however of Taj group (business class) took me to a much better class which was not from their group/chain in a Mercedes and put me up there for the same duration and added full meal plan from their side because my room had some problems and they were fully booked.

And booking.com? Heaven’s sake! Where do you even want me to start! First of all I can’t contact them right then. Nope I can’t! And if I do they fucking stonewall me and more than once just waved the T&C in my face. Once they fucking refused to refund because they said “I should take it with the hotel”

I mean the experience has been so shitty with TPAs that I don’t even want to look for deals now. I just call the hotel and book. They confirm and they double confirm and if anything goes wrong there’s literally a desk with more than one people 24x7. It’s just so much worth it.

If you're using hotels with Mercedes then you're booking an entire different class to the hotels I book and that may explain our difference in experiences :)

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