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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

I wonder whether this is really just a problem of bad software. The hotel booking for example: yes, the software was probably bad, but, a well designed process where both parties need to confirm the reservation (eg per email) could have made that experience better.

Interestingly, there’s curently another article trending describing the concept of Poka-yoke [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18050168

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In the hotel example, it's the lack of a modern, open, integrated reservation system. It's all 20+ year old systems patched together to try and work with one another, that don't necessarily have any idea what inventory at the hotel actually is unless it's part of a big organization like Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Wyndham/Choice/etc.

When a hotel doesn't have a 24/7 online system like the above companies, booking.com simply relies on the hotel to update their inventory on booking.com's system manually, and then faxes the hotel everytime a reservation comes through. The fax can fail, and so can the minimum wage employees who may or may not be tasked with updating booking.com's systems.

Bottom line is always confirm, and re-confirm when the consequences are great enough to warrant spending time re-confirming. And especially try to deal with the vendor directly, onsite especially. If you make a reservation at a hotel that doesn't have an app that shows your reservation in real time, then call and get the email address of someone who actually works on site, and then email them to confirm your reservation, and so you have something in writing from someone at the hotel.

I always wondered how booking.com knows how many rooms are left. Thanks for the info.

The "only x rooms left" notices are also BS, even if they're dealing with the big hotel chains. And even when dealing with those, there are frequent inventory discrepancies due to how long it takes for the systems to communicate with each other, so best option in my opinion is to always use the official hotel channels. It's also cheaper if you're a member of their frequent guest programs, which is free.

I don't know this for a fact, but I always assumed that it was just to create a false sense of urgency around your booking.

You as a hotel operator can use booking.com's software to manage your entire inventory. Thus they know how many rooms are available. This is common in small guesthouses and hotels - but obviously not in larger hotel chains.

I've learnt it the hard way) People, this is the useful tip of the day ^^

Related, I've learned over the years to not trust documents (including websites) where it matters. That means yes, I'm going to read what you wrote on your website or in the documents you sent me, and then I'm going to mail you asking about it directly. Because I don't trust documents to be correct, up to date, or even relevant (in spaces I have little experience in). But if I can get a person on your end to write me back with an explicit answer, I can be reasonably sure it's correct in context, and - most importantly - I have someone to blame if it turns out to be wrong.

Yup; it's fine to use booking.com to search and compare hotels, but it's often better to deal with the hotel you picked directly.

Some of them will refer you right back to booking.com though if you want to book online, in which case it's probably fine and the hotel uses booking.com directly. Or booking.com sends them a fax or email.

Yes, I agree. That’s why a fail-safe procedure (like the one you’ve outlined) would have helped in this case.

> a well designed process where both parties need to confirm the reservation (eg per email) could have made that experience better.

I just confirmed the booking by paying. I shouldn't have my booking cancelled because I didn't respond to an email. We can do better than that.

Totally. But wouldn’t you say that an email is better than standing empty handed in the hotel lobby?

Fun story: there's actually an overbooking margin most hotels have for their inventory, especially for third-party providers, probably because there's usually at least some no-shows, and maximizing occupancy for each night is the highest priority.

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