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Comment by Gustomaximus | Hacker News Reader

Another similar one I've founds is to find a good price and then run the same request in several different country domains. The differences can be quite large e.g.

travelcompany.com

travelcompany.co.uk

travelcompany.com.au

Also I've learnt never to book an extra night at the hotel reception when plans change. It's invariably cheaper to go online and book through an aggregator.

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> It's invariably cheaper to go online and book through an aggregator.

Depends on the country. In less-developed places, proprietors of smaller hotels pay relatively large fees (think 25%) to online booking services. If you are already staying there, they will probably give you more days at whatever rate you're already paying, or even less (because it's less work for them to manage longer-term stays, and/or they may not be fully booked).

This happens when you deal with people who charge you based on their margins rather than your consumer surplus.

There's also the risk that aggregators will screw up something. On two separate occasions I saw someone arguing with hotel reception about a booking they made with an aggregator that the hotel never received. Customer says, "But I have the printout right here that says I paid in full!" Hotel says, "Sorry sir, you'll have to take that up with the company you paid. You didn't pay us."

The whole concept of geographical segmentation is built right into the GDS systems (Global Distribution System). Agents are all designated by an identifier that ties them to a particular geographical point of sale. That's why the above works, many TLDs of a company are actually tied to an agent point of sale in that country.

Works on all GDS content - car rentals, hotels and so forth.

Yes, I do that. Sometimes at the airport after arriving. Make sure there is no big event going on during that time in the town.

Priceline.com is always ridiculously cheaper.

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