> Perhaps perspectives are based on whether you're booking domestically or not.

I've had the best success when traveling abroad booking directly. Anyone in the hospitality industry is going to have someone on staff with enough English to assist you, and most of the nicest places are smaller hotels that often don't work well with big booking companies.

> If I buy from Booking UK I get UK consumer protections

I worked in a travel startup (not Booking), there's a lot of fine print to all those "protections" that will leave you high and dry in most cases.

Only use 3rd party apps for search, never book directly through them especially, in my experience, for International travel.