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.

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."

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.