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Comment by 3into10power5 | Hacker News Reader

Not true. I recently tried booking a flight on Cathay Pacific. Their price was $50 more than Kayak/Orbitz. I asked how come? They said, Kayak/Orbitz buy in bulk from Cathay Pacific so, they offer some discounts sometimes. For cathay pacific, they guaranteed income, whether or not tickets are sold.

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chrisseaton specifically mentioned "every major hotel chain", which is true. See my other comment listing all the websites for all the big (American) brands showing they promise the cheapest prices on their own websites.

Edit: I'm going to have to retract my comments about cheapest price being on official hotel brand websites. I did a cursory search and find many cheaper options on Hotel Tonight (and expedia) for same day reservations than the brands, and while I haven't looked at all the brand's best price guarantees, at least IHG's exempts them from having to provide the lowest price within 24 hours of checkin, so it seems like a loophole to let them dump rooms for cheaper on third party websites day of arrival.

But the hotel websites aren't the cheapest prices. They get around it by selling the discount rooms through sites like hotwire or Priceline. So you can't actually see the name of the hotel until checkout. I frequently get cheaper prices than the hotel site by going through hotwire.

That's called opaque pricing, and that's different since you are getting a discount in exchange for not knowing which specific hotel you are getting to stay at so it's not exactly comparable to going to your preferred hotel's website and choosing the room you want. However, as I have edited into my prior comments, I am finding that the best price guarantees may not apply on the day of arrival, and third party websites are evidently cheaper than hotel websites. Seems like a shortsighted move since now I don't trust the hotel website to have the cheapest price, so I'll go via third party websites and hotels have to pay commission.

You can save even more if you use a cashback site when booking through Priceline, Orbitz, etc.

The Best Price Guarantee is largely a lie. It's a Best Price Guarantee on a rack-rate rooms. The problem is most OTAs will offer a significant discount (sometimes more than 50%) for a non-refundable room. The rooms are exactly the same, they just classify them differently, so they don't have to actually have the best price.

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