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Comment by impendia | Hacker News Reader

I am a typical travel customer. I often go to conferences and book hotels in unfamiliar cities. I am very sympathetic to this story. And yet -- at the end --

>either use the internet to do the research or go to a reputable travel agent.

Let's look at these alternatives. Use the internet to do the research? Expedia makes it very easy, that's the point. Are its competitors better? Maybe. How am I supposed to be able to tell? Is Hipmunk also evil? Orbitz? Some other random website I find which compares hotels? If I use these websites to do my research and then book directly, I'm avoid some of the problems -- but probably not all?

Go to a reputable travel agent? No, sorry. That's a pain in the ass.

I'm disappointed in this article. It makes a very convincing case that we should avoid huge internet travel monopolies, but yet doesn't compellingly suggest what I should do instead.

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www.roomkey.com is the hotel franchises attempt to get control back of online reservations.

Also, the best method is simply finding out the hotel's phone number via Google or TripAdvisor, and speaking with someone at the hotel. This way, you can guarantee yourself a certain room at a certain location in the hotel, away from traffic noise, on the 2nd floor, etc. I recommend TripAdvisor for reviews, they have an option where hotel managers can sign up and respond to guest complaints.

You get to see only a limited selection of the chain hotels that participate with RoomKey which doesn't replace the primary function of the OTAs which is to compare many different options at once (vs looking them up, checking each website, etc.)

No hotel will guarantee a specific room but with any booking engine you're able to put in specific requests in the comments area that the hotel will try and honor. To have the best chance of getting those rooms, you actually have to talk to the hotel around the time of room assignment (24-48 hours prior to arrival) so that they can actually do something about your request. Check out the floor plans and virtual views we've compiled at room77.com for ~3,000 hotels to get some specific room numbers to ask for.

Having floor plans available is a great idea! Unfortunately, I searched a few hotels, but was unable to find any. Do you have any example hotels, or am I not looking at the right place on the website?

Sure, here's the Omni California Hotel (https://www.room77.com/hotel-los-angeles-omni-los-angeles-ho...). We rank the rooms based on preferences that you set with the radio buttons at the top and we generate the views automatically using Google Earth technology. We recently added in the ability to look multiple directions from a room and see a stitched 180-degree version.

We have about 3,000 hotels for which we have floor plans and views for mostly in the US and over 16,000 that have unique "Insider Tips" about what rooms are best in a hotel. We search 200,000+ hotels so that content is a bit hard to find right now and we're working on exposing it more. We continue to add more content daily.

Would love any feedback you have.

I love it! One thing I would like to see before booking a room are dated panoramic images of a typical room, so you have some idea of what to expect. It's not an easy problem though, since each room is different, and someone has to update all the info and verify. The layout and "Our Take" sections are awesome though.

We tried to do that early on and the problem we ran into was that as a metasearch, we're sourcing in rooms from many different sellers and each one likes to name their room selection something different. You add to this that some rates are "flexible" and you could actually get one of several types of rooms and we run into a matching problem.

Today, travelers can pick their seats on a flight or pick their cabin on a cruise but yet you're still not able to pick a hotel room for various reasons. If the industry moves to support this model, we'll be there with our room data ready and willing to integrate.

I think a lot of the evils in the world continue because of your sort of attitude. Merry Christmas!

It's very easy to say "X is bad, you shouldn't do X." It's a lot more difficult (and a lot more valuable) to be able to say "You should do Y instead of X, and here is a convincing argument why."

The article wasn't a convincing argument enough?

The article didn't include a Y.

It did, but not a very convincing one.

Pointing out that a problem exists is still valuable.

Yes and no. It can be counterproductive if it causes people to abandon what's actually the best solution, just because it's less than perfect.

Okay, please tell me what I should do instead, if you grant me:

(1) I cannot easily garner which big corporations are "evil" and which are good. I do not have any practical way of finding out about hotels elsewhere without going through some large corporation. Whether it be Expedia, Hotels.com, Hipmunk (okay, Hipmunk is probably smaller), Google, Yelp... I have heard complaints about all of them. If I switch from Expedia to something else, am I doing better?

(2) My time is valuable. If two minutes of effort on my part would divert $20 from Expedia to an independent hotelier, and everything would otherwise be the same for me, then I would happily do this.

Sometimes, surely it would. But it is my experience that this often takes more effort than it should, the first phone number I call often turns out not to be the right number, or the price will be higher, or I get put on hold, etc., etc.

And for that matter, don't travel agents charge commissions too? They have to eat, so someone has to pay them. I don't want to pay extra, and if the hoteliers pay the commissions, then is this better than Expedia?

Grant me at least that the solution is not obvious.

The solution isn't obvious, but you can't blame a small hotel in Mexico for not providing the answer.

I think he is right that even small hotel in Mexico should provide easy to find information online. This kind of incompetence from small biz owners is simply not excusable today.

On everything else related to their treatment by Expedia I am all with them.

What? They make it very clear. They ask you to book directly with these hotels. What more were you looking for?

The main problem is that Expedia is really great for customers like us since they really help us in making better and (cheaper) decision when booking a flight.

I think this should be fixed with either suing the company and the people involved (granted everything they wrote is true) or talking to a high level manager who could look into the case and make the right decision (ie. Fire the people who were involved).

Use Expedia to find the names of the hotels in the area. Then pick up the phone.

Tried that before. Oftentimes they end up having rates that are 2x what the websites offer.

Yup, even when the front page for the hotel (or airline) claims to "always have the lowest rate". Sometimes you can call and negotiate a price match, but it's easier to just book through the online agent. Since online prices are occasionally unavailable, it's most reliable to actually buy online, then negotiate a better price directly, then cancel the online booking, but this is borderline abuse of the online agent and you have to be careful with the cancellation policy.

Sounds like a problem calling out for a solution.

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