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Comment by nocoiner | Hacker News Reader

99% of the time, you’ll get the same or better deal by booking online with the hotel directly. (Airfares, I’m less sure - the proliferation of hyper segmented economy and fees make me dubious about what the actual all-in cost of any given flight is.) And the other 1% of the time, calling the hotel will get you the same (or better) outcome or you’ll find out straight from the horse’s mouth they don’t actually have any availability for the room you want, and you’ll save yourself a lot of grief upon arrival.

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> 99% of the time, you’ll get the same or better deal by booking online with the hotel directly.

This is often repeated but I almost never find it to be true in reality. Particularly for non chain hotels, best case scenario is their prices are the same as booking.com but if I go through booking I'll get points and future discounts. This tier is never cheaper booking directly. Chain hotels where I have a non base tier status will sometimes be cheaper but even then usually not.

For reasons, chains have to give the aggregators their best publicly available price. However, there is a loophole that loyalty users can be offered a lower price.

The chain still makes more money as they can avoid paying the aggregator a commission.

> This tier is never cheaper booking directly

Even if so, the issue I’ve encountered with booking services is a complete lack of options when things go wrong.

I had a situation where the hotel was actively trying to help me, but they had few options because the booking agent (Hotels.com) made it almost impossible to get support. The hotel person patiently stayed on the line with them for almost an hour going through escalation after escalation (I was deeply grateful).

Would have been a 5 minute fix if I’d booked with the hotel, and not every place would be willing to go to these lengths.

I hear you on the points thing. But I’ve started weighing the cost of those points against the likelihood of needing to make changes once I arrive somewhere. If it’s a reputable place that I stay regularly, I’m less worried.

I can get a lot more value out of hotel points between the points that the hotel gives you and what you can get from a cobranded credit card.

In the case of Hilton it’s 34x per dollar (worth around 20%) and Hyatt 9.5x per dollar also worth around 20% back.

That’s totally fair if you’re booking at well known and reputable places.

My point is that not every location fits this criteria, and the cost can be very real.

I fully shared your mindset until I had several major issues with smaller places that easily cost more than whatever value the points had.

I’m now more careful about who I use based on where I’m going. There’s still value in the points, no doubt, but risk as well.

Fair enough. Most of my experience tends to be with chains. But my impression is that the non-chain hotels I book don’t typically appear on aggregators so I’m usually booking with them directly in any event.

> calling the hotel will get you the same (or better) outcome

Not my experience. In Europe, in low-end hotels / B&B's they will get annoyed.

Wouldn't it be possible to build a decentralized booking.com/expedia alternative based on activity pub?

My experience in Europe is that some low-end places (especially apartments) gave me a phone number or even a card with contact details, and told me to call them directly next time so I could save the Booking fee. Makes sense: remove the middleman!

Yes, that is after they have had you as a guest. That is different from strangers calling them demanding a lower price.

No, they say call direct so you can pay higher prices and not those online promo deals.

We had a nice chat a couple of days with a lady from a chain of appartments and resorts in the Auszrian alps. And while she said, that next time we can easily book directly with them, she was also quite happy with booking.com. First, booking as a search engine brings them customers. Second, booking helps in getting short term stays reducing the risk and impact of last minute cancellations.

One thing so, sometimes booking.com is aponsoring fares. Obviously, the hotel cannot match that.

Regarding air travel, the last couple of flights I checked, the was no difference between skyscanner and the airlines directly. With the exception of skyscanner showing you the bare-bone fares where you bring your own seat belt...

>With the exception of skyscanner showing you the bare-bone fares where you bring your own seat belt...

I loled but ryanair was considering a "standing only" tier: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/28/ryanair-sta...

Frankly maybe I'd prefer that to cramped seats.

That was a marketing stunt. There's no way it would have been allowed and they had to have known it.

You don't want to take turbulence standing up. The London Underground doesn't take negative g-s, there's no equivalent to brace position should there be an emergency landing, and there are strict certification requirements for how quickly everyone should be able to evacuate.

The same is true about the other stunt fees listed - charge for the toilets and you'll have people peeing in bottles or on the floor.

Moving to one pilot instead of two doesn't yet seem like a cost effective solution as it requires a level of automation that isn't here yet, and definitely not something Ryan can pull off on its own. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/single-pilot-planes/i...

I learned from calling that hotels have a set of rooms that are reserved exclusively for Booking. So they might tell you no availability at this time, but Booking showing that they have "only 2 rooms left in this place".

I think I just ran into that. A hiking tour operator recently told me they couldn't book a night before room at a hotel but that there were still a couple rooms on Booking.com if I went directly.

I’ve stayed in hotels where I wanted to pay them directly for the room so they keep more of the profit, but they had to give the lowest price on Expedia and could not match it. They told me to just book on Expedia.

Probably not. There aren't deals you need had with air fares. But there are deals to be had with hotels. Hotels have decent margins and they are motivated to sell out every night. Yes, you may get a discount when you call them directly. But generally the discount comes from the person selling you the package, not from the hotel itself.

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