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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

I've been making reservations recently and I think there is a huge imbalance in power.

All bookings in popular places or on popular dates are NON REFUNDABLE. As in "click and you will never see any of this money again" non-refundable. Very non-refundable. If I have to cancel, I lose all my money.

At the same time, hotels can cancel for little or no cost. They do not lose money.

I don't know what the right solution is, but I have a feeling this should be regulated at least a little bit (EU, take notice): I'd say totally non-refundable bookings should not exist. You should always be able to get at least some of your money back before the date the service starts. And if the other side cancels, they should pay a penalty, at least the same as the penalty I have to incur, possibly more to prevent schemes like the one described above.

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You're not wrong, but if it was a common issue then hotels would start offering those things to differentiate themselves. I know a few currently do that as a way to get you into their loyalty program.

As a rule, I always check the hotel's price directly on their site. Often there's quite a difference both in prices and in terms. And you can also call the hotel for some goodies. Sometimes, of course, but totally worth trying. Yes, I have no remorse short-circuiting Booking when they overdo it.

> this should be regulated at least a little bit

Don’t you think hotels aren’t already regulated? Just try opening a new one in a popular place and let us know how open the market is.

Repeat after me: regulations (no matter how good or well intended) favor the incumbents and hinder startups. Fewer startups means less competition. Less competition means fewer, crappier and more expensive products and services.

Trying to use more regulation to fix a market f’ed up by regulation will only deepen this spiral of doom.

Since this is a story from Canada, it might be worth learning from the consumer protection laws from Canada and the U.S. in the context of the comments in this thread.

> All bookings in popular places or on popular dates are NON REFUNDABLE. As in "click and you will never see any of this money again" non-refundable. Very non-refundable. If I have to cancel, I lose all my money.

The Atlantic recently wrote on how hotel policies have changed, with many no longer allowing free cancellations.

Why Hotel-Room Cancellations Disappeared

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/11/hotel-room-ca...

TL;DR: Hotel aggregators (e.g. Booking.com, Expedia) adopted a "cancel-rebook" strategy, where the aggregators would monitor hotel prices & rebook if the price dropped.

I think the "cancel-rebook" explanation is a red herring. Yes, it might have been a factor, but that's easily fixed by having a cancellation fee. Reservations being totally non-refundable at any date or time are an entirely different matter and it's a power grab.

Also, I tried booking directly with the hotel networks several times recently, in most cases non-refundable was all they offered, or the option of refundable was so much more expensive that it bordered on ridiculous.

> All bookings in popular places or on popular dates are NON REFUNDABLE.

I'll be sure to let the places I booked in popular places (Nice, Paris, London and just recently Times Square) that had refundable rooms they should be not offering those rooms. After I refund my booking for Times Square, that is.

We had the beginnings of a solution: The [Edit]CFPB. Oh well. If it makes you feel better we're building the libertarian paradise.

think you mean the FTC.

I meant CFPB. Thank you for alerting me to the error.

It does make you wonder, given how much investment fraud targets regular people, whether there is considerable overlap between the target surface area of the FTC and what was the CFPB.

CFPB was created in part because of the failure of the FTC during the financial crisis. I’d suspect this specific issue would still be more under the remit of FTC, but no need for pedantry on the overall point. Sad to see enforcement agencies decimated — expect more of this.

Ah yes, the libertarian paradise where the hotel industry curb-stomps competition through government sponsored regulatory capture by pretending to be "concerned long-term renters and locals" and lobbies for all sorts of licensing and regulation of airbnb and homeowner rentals. They don't want anyone stomping on their fiefdom and forcing them to offer competitive benefits like cancellation.

You described the later-day libertarian paradise quite well. The core libertarian believes lead exactly there.

CFTC is something else. But leaving that aside, Bookings is a European company and does lots of business outside of America. So it would take regulations across many countries to stop abuse.

This is simply not true. Most hotels have refundable rates if you pay a bit more.

Show me 3 hotels that have non refundable dates.

This is true in general. That said, in some cities at least, the difference in rate is more than a little material.

False.

Show me 3 hotels that ONLY have non refundable rooms.

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