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Comment by mewciv | Hacker News Reader

Is there any other company not using these dark patterns? I tried to use many others (big enough to have choices) and it's all the same.

Sometimes you're even wondering if it's not just the same website with another branding.

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Booking.com is the white label hotel provider for many websites. Kayak, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, etc.

Per excellent report by Ben Edelman, which I strongly recommend reading for anyone interested in the booking platforms http://www.benedelman.org/publications/ota-bias-12jul2017.pd...

Priceline Group: priceline.com, agoda.com, booking.com, cheapflights.com, ctrip.com, KAYAK, Momondo.com, Opentable.com, rentalcars.com, Rocketmiles

Expedia, Inc.: Expedia.com, Carrentals.com, Classic Vacations, eLong.com, HomeAway, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Orbitz Worldwide, Travelocity, Traveldoo, Trivago, Venere, Wotif Group

I wonder where switchfly factors in to all that, it was my impression they did white label stuff for a number of the above -- apparently not?

Does that mean that the different sites within each group have the same listings and deals as the other sites in the same group?

For Hotel bookings, many (all?) Expedia subsidiaries seems to be just a different UI for the same offer with slightly different prices since they target different users (premium vs budget etc). All bookings are made under the name Expedia.

In case of Priceline Group, it depends on the market. E.g. in China Agoda seems to be just another front-end for booking.com. All bookings are actually made through booking.com. But e.g. in Malaysia Agoda lists some Hotels which I could not find on Booking.com.

The Flight search engines seem to have major differences, e.g. in Southeast Asia Momondo lists a lot more local agents and more airline websites directly than Kayak.

Neither Ctrip nor eLong are owned by Priceline / Expedia. They invested in the respective companies and own a stake, but Chinese law prevents that any foreign company owns the majority of any Chinese company. (Yes, even the Chinese McD, Apple, Starbucks etc are majority Chinese owned)

I am a bit shocked though, that Momondo is owned by Kayak. For me, Momondo has so far been the best alternative. And Skyscanner is owned by Ctrip, which has a strategic partnership with the priceline group...

Then I doubt Apple China makes much profit - almost all profit will be booked to a company wholly owned by Apple US.

I just go to the hotel website directly.

Booking.com sometimes has more info (e.g. hotel website doesn't mention arrival times but booking.com does), in which case I use it for information purposes only and cringe at the dark patterns every time.

Google Hotel search. Hipmunk.

Hipmunk now owned by Concur.

And Concur is owned by SAP.

That's what we're hoping to solve. The state of affairs with online booking is disgusting and the customer is too far removed from the process, while hotels are being strong-armed into price fixing.

Who's we?

The startup I work for. Can't talk too much about it right now.

London and a Belgian team?

Good luck.

Thank you. Interestingly, my post, which was completely neutral in tone, has negative votes. Certainly makes you wonder if our competition, Expedia and Priceline, maintain a presence on HN.

On a marginally related note, what made you decide to create an account just to engage in discussion in this thread?

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