But then to book directly and get the "guaranteed cheapest!" price, I have to sort through even more options than on an aggregator, I have to create an account, and now I'm getting spammed from ANOTHER entity I never plan to do business with again. At least with the aggregators I have one company whose privacy settings I've already dealt with.
What's your secret? Even the hotel in privacy-conscious Austria I stayed with once four years ago spams me.
> booking with the hotel lets me select options not available on booking sites like king vs 2 queen bed options, ADA compliant rooms and even floor options
If their booking system works. Usually faster and more reliable to send a message on booking.com.
> if you have AAA or some other memberships, those codes can easily beat discount sites like Booking.com
Maybe if your time is worthless.
Very noticeable when using custom domain and emails where I might sign up to the same service several times.
I usually do that and it works for a lot of things, but small hotels are one of the things that seems to slip through. And even when it works, I still resent having to do it at all, and would rather book via a big aggregator where I've already done the unsubscribe years ago.
In these cases they get a dedicated email rule and anything they send goes straight to the bin.