21 ms·

For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

67 points by antr 9y ago

dazc 9y ago
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/28/for-hotels-theres-no-room-left-for-online-travel-agencies.html http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/28/for-hotels-th...
- posguy 9y ago
  Any chance we could get the link changed to this non-paywall one? Same content it appears...
jkoll 9y ago
https://outline.com/9tNWkz https://outline.com/9tNWkz
flexie 9y ago
It has become ridiculous with these booking sites. When you google a small hotel, often the first many results are hotels.com, bookings.com, tripadvisor.com etc. and the hotel itself is down to spot 3, 4, 5 or even lower. There is a place for the booking sites, especially for exploring several hotels at a time. And they do offer some reviews and comparisons that can be useful. Sometimes, they also offer the cheapest price but usually it is just as cheap to call the hotel itself or book through its website. And it really feels good to pay the hotel that offers the services, instead of some tech company in the US.
- roel_v 9y ago
  "instead of some tech company in the US." Booking.com is Dutch.
- kbart 9y ago
  And it really feels good to pay the hotel that offers the services, instead of some tech company in the US." Most of the times I booked through booking.com it was "cash on arrival", so these sites are nothing more than ads. I think the problem is travel agencies, that book bulk of rooms to rent them later (just a guess, can't read the article itself due to paywall).
  - babuskov 9y ago
    > Most of the times I booked through booking.com it was "cash on arrival", so these sites are nothing more than ads. I can confirm this. I believe the hotels only pay a monthly fee for listing and that's all.
    - briandear 9y ago
      Not true. We pay a percentage of the reservation cost to Booking.com each month. TripAdvisor on the other hand, charges a yearly fee for an enhanced listing, no fee for the standard listing. So those pay on arrival bookings -- we get an invoice from Booking.com each month for those. Nothing on booking.com to my knowledge is pre-pay -- Booking never actually charges the guest's card. But we still get the invoice.
      - babuskov 9y ago
        Thanks for clearing that up.
  - usrusr 9y ago
    > Most of the times I booked through booking.com it was "cash on arrival", so these sites are nothing more than ads. Expensive ads. Cash on arrival does not mean that the hotel does not pay a sizable commission. Roughly in the range as the cut iTunes, Play, Steam take for transactions that, unlike hotel service, create zero cost beyond the initial investment. Occasionally, hotels might even offer you a cheaper room if you cancel your reservation, to get out of that obligation. Maybe some sites are much cheaper, but the big ones like booking.com take everything they can, and they can take a lot.
    - falsedan 9y ago
      > but the big ones like booking.com take everything they can, and they can take a lot. You mean, take as much as is offered? The hotels are free to let the rooms sit idle & refuse the bookings; they wouldn't pay these commissions if they didn't make business sense. A $100/night room that's empty generates $0 and costs $10-20 (amortised staffing and maintenance costs, insurance, permits, etc.) A $100/night room filled with a 30% commission generates $70 & nets ~$50. I think that most hotel managers would not list their preferences as: direct booking & ~$80 > empty & $0 > booking site & ~$50.
- what_ever 9y ago
  I'd argue that tripadvsor.com would be more useful to me than the direct hotel website as I'd see more neutral outlook of the hotel compared to the hotels website itself. I know, the reviews are not 100% neutral given neutral experiences usually don't end up in reviews - only really positive or negative do but it's still useful than not having any opinions which would be the case on hotels website. Also, the travel websites give the important details, amenities, nearby attractions, restaurants, public transit in the same format across all the hotels so I don't have to fiddle with each and every travel's website in a different way based on what their UX designer decided to do. Also, wayyy more photos on travel websites. Disclosure - I used to work at TripAdvisor.
  - mbaha 9y ago
    Yeah, it seems like nobody has ever tried booking a hotel from a direct channel before. Customers don't want to go through the hassle of "discovering" a half-baked website filled w/ pretty little quirks. This worsens the user experience by a ton, I find.
- a_humean 9y ago
  I used to work a part time job doing hotel reservations for a small hotel a few years ago. Back then about 35-40% of their bookings were made through booking.com, and although I didn't know the actual cut booking.com took, I know it wasn't small. The hotel was always keen on trying to convert their booking.com or other third party customers into direct customers. We were always instructed, depending upon predicted or actual demand of course (we had someone dedicated to trying to predict demand by populating a spreadsheet with prices), to be willing to haggle with someone that is dealing directly with the hotel if we felt it necessary to sell. I would always recommend that you deal directly with the hotel, especially if you think demand is low. Also, showing up just before the hotel reception closes and swaps to the night shift porters is a great time (10-11pm) as hotel staff are particularly vulnerable to haggling. At that time of night we just want to sell for covering staff wages/fixed costs. Downside of showing up at the last minute is you can easily be ignorant of local market conditions and show up at 10pm when every bed in the area is occupied due to some local event that you were ignorant of.
  - Sacho 9y ago
    > I would always recommend that you deal directly with the hotel, especially if you think demand is low. Also, showing up just before the hotel reception closes and swaps to the night shift porters is a great time (10-11pm) as hotel staff are particularly vulnerable to haggling. At that time of night we just want to sell for covering staff wages/fixed costs. This sounds great for someone interested in haggling, but if I don't want to bother with it(actually, if I'm specifically averse to it as I want to plan my vacation costs in advance), why should I go to the hotel directly instead of using booking.com?
    - a_humean 9y ago
      Even on the phone and sometimes months in advance you can easily haggle a 10-35% discount if demand is low. Especially if you agree to pay in advance on a non-refundable basis. We had price lists updated daily looking ahead 1-2 years.
  - tallanvor 9y ago
    Honestly, that's great if you're in the US and trying to book within the country, but once you start thinking internationally, calling becomes a headache, especially if you're traveling to countries where not everyone speaks English very well. And when I'm on a trip, the last thing I want to do is hope for the best at finding a hotel the day I arrive!
- donquichotte 9y ago
  > Sometimes, they also offer the cheapest price but usually it is just as cheap to call the hotel itself Apparently, hotels that use booking.com as a sales channel sign a contract that prevents them from charging less for the same rooms on other sales channels. In Germany and France this practice has been banned. (In Germany by a judgement of the Bundeskartellamt and the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf)
- joshvm 9y ago
  Booking.com is an absolutely atrocious website. It's full of very pushy marketing that tries to convince you that every hotel is almost fully booked and the entire world is about to place a reservation. Not to mention the weird push-style notifications. That said, the 24 hour cancellation policy is really useful since some of the listed hotels wouldn't otherwise offer it.
  - babuskov 9y ago
    I had a very interesting experience with booking.com. I found a hotel room, it said something like "Only one left". So, I quickly booked and by the time I entered the payment details the room was taken. Ok, so I went back to search for alternative, and it showed the same room again. I tried to book it again, and it simply went through. I actually stayed at that hotel in the end. It looks like some really weird algorithms are at work.
    - joshvm 9y ago
      It's possible they use a queue system similar to the one used for concerts. Once you select a room/ticket, it gets held for a few minutes while you check out (and taken off the public market). So you can have a situation where there's no room, but someone else fails to complete the reservation and it becomes available again.
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      There can be an interesting interaction between booking.com and the hotel's own booking - I mean, booking.com doesn't know how many such rooms the hotel has available, it only knows how many such rooms the hotel has reserved for booking.com that may be booked at any time without a feedback from the hotel. The hotel wouldn't put all their rooms there because they also have other channels (that also need to promise the customer that they'll get the room, inform the hotel afterwards, and the room must be available), and they don't want to risk overbooking. On the other hand, if they get a booking and see that all their booking.com rooms are taken, they'll likely assign another room or two to booking.com if they have them available.
- babuskov 9y ago
  > it is just as cheap to call the hotel itself Only if it's in the same country. > book through its website For some hotels, booking via website is often half-baked web app that's full of bugs, doesn't accept certain inputs, etc. Simply because webdev isn't the hotel's main activity. Reviews on the hotel's website are usually non-existent or only positive. I mean, I hate the booking sites as well, but they are often "less bad" solution than booking directly.
  - collyw 9y ago
    International calls (to fixed lines) are not expensive these days.
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      For people who have had their contract for a while, they still are. You can't get a new phone contract that gouges you on international calls, but you can keep your old one.
    - babuskov 9y ago
      It really depends on the country from which you are calling and country to which the call connects.
  - douche 9y ago
    I'm considerably more sketched out at the thought of entering my credit card information on a half-baked local hotel website than going through Priceline or Booking.com. Even some of the bigger hotel chains have a terrifying booking experience - it wasn't all that long ago that I last nooped out of a plain HTTP booking process...
- mattmanser 9y ago
  Why is that their fault, but not Google's? Blame the search engine for bad results, not the sites.
alexphilips 9y ago
Thanks for the heads up. I have been trawling the web trying to find ways in online. Does anyone know of a way to automate this, but still retain that personal feel. Thanks for sharing this informatics content and keep updating us. Best Wishes . https://essaysthatwins.com/ https://essaysthatwins.com/
- tmnvix 9y ago
  How do I flag this comment?
  - anc84 9y ago
    Click on the timestamp, then, if you are eligible to flagging, a link is available.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- lukeholder 9y ago
  mods, please delete this spam
horsecaptin 9y ago
Perhaps AirBnB should open up to Hotels and that way all Hotels and BnBs can live in one place for a far better customer experience.
- therealmarv 9y ago
  yes, let's put everything in one bucket like with Facebook, Amazon, Google, PayPal... you see, that does not solve all problems ;)
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  There are already search sites that will check both hotels and AirBnBs.
downandout 9y ago
Paywall bypass link: https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Ffor-hotels-theres-no-room-left-for-online-travel-agencies-1495974698 https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...
- downandout 9y ago
  Curious how this got a downvote. Apparently WSJ employees read HN lol.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    Perhaps because the link got changed to a non-paywall version hosted by Fox Business...
    - downandout 9y ago
      I posted this long before they did that.
stupidcar 9y ago
If hotel chains were managed by sensible, tech-aware people, they wouldn't bother with these expensive, rearguard marketing campaigns. Instead, they'd get together and form an industry working group, and design simple, standard data formats and querying/booking APIs, and then make all their data available through them. This would make it far easier to build a hotel search engine, which would cause an explosion of competition and innovation in this area. This in turn would undercut the power of the leading agencies, and drive down referral pricing. But they won't do this. You see the same problem in so many industries. Vendors act like data about their offering is more precious than the offering itself. They make it as hard as possible to build an aggregator, so the aggregation market gets tied up by a tiny handful of players who are willing to invest enough to build a scraping infrastructure. Then they panic that these aggregators have too much gatekeeping power, but rather than encouraging greater competition amongst aggregators, they respond by trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  I think that's completely wrong. Very few vendors want their product to be commoditized. From the perspective of a hotelier, reducing their property to a few lines of JSON data is a losing proposition. The result will be the same thing we've seen in the airline industry: a race to the bottom, competing only on price, with ever-crappier service and more nickle-and-dime addons.
  - mindcrime 9y ago
    Very few vendors want their product to be commoditized. From the perspective of a hotelier, reducing their property to a few lines of JSON data is a losing proposition. Meh. For that to be true, it would have to be the case that all consumers care only about price. I'm pretty sure that's not actually the case. As long as there are consumers who will pay more for $WHATEVER, there will be a market for $WHATEVER. The point is, you can still price discriminate, even if you make your data available as a simple JSON (preferably JSON-LD) file.
    - smacktoward 9y ago
gt2 9y ago
What is the best priced 3rd party service currently? I use hotels.com because I find it has the lowest price usually, plus you effectively get 10% off since every 10 bookings you receive a credit worth the average of your previous 10 night stays. But I wonder if theres a better booking service out there than this for someone who books a lot of hotels.
- tallanvor 9y ago
  I pretty much just use them as well now, and for the same reason as you.
- chrisp_dc 9y ago
  In the last month I've used hotels.com twice because it was lower than booking directly. In SF: Hotels.come was $180/night, hotel's website was over $300/night. In Copenhagen: Hotels.com was $120/night, the hotel's website was over $180/night. I'm not sure why these places are running sales on hotels.com, and not on their direct website. I try not to book on hotels.com because hotels have a reputation for giving those travelers the worst rooms (double beds vs. king bed, next to elevator, unrenovated rooms). However, it's hard to say "no" to 30%+ off.
- what_ever 9y ago
  TripAdvisor/Trivago - compare the rates there. Mentally apply the loyalty discounts and pick whichever is the cheapest. Also, I may be biased here as I used to work at TripAdvisor but I personally prefer their UI to booking/priceline. Expedia is okay too and I have heard good things about Trivago.
chx 9y ago
I have, more than once, booked an apartment through booking.com which were not available by any other easy to find means. It is quite curious but it is what it is.
git-pull 9y ago
These types of news articles about prospects often are driven by an ulterior motive. When the job market is saturated: There's a desperate shortage / skill gap of programmers, truckers and pharmacists. Go join this trade school for 16k! The economy is going to hell in a hand basket if we don't churn out 1000 new Javascript programmers every 12 weeks! When travel agencies want cement their dominance and pour cold water on new competition: Things are full, really! Don't bother applying Y Combinator as an online travel agency. You're just wasting your time and won't be able to generate any VC or get a single hit to your website! It's futile for... reasons!
- falsedan 9y ago
  > Lol Who is this comment addressed to? The article doesn't make these claims, and you didn't reply to another comment.
metaphor 9y ago
Anyone have insight on where GSA's published per diem rates[1] fair in the gamut of hotel pricing? Seems to be the pre-tax lower bound of decent 2/3 star hotels. [1] https://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/100120 https://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/100120
- Fomite 9y ago
  Note that many hotels, including rather nice chains, have much reduced government rates (so do airlines). Additionally, while I don't know for the GSA, for my state there's a waiver if there's a defensible reason you need to stay at a nicer hotel.
- wl 9y ago
  My experience has been that you can almost always find decent three star hotels at normal rates for under 125-150% of the GSA published rate. The exceptions tend to be when there's a major event that causes exceptional demand.
  - metaphor 9y ago
    I agree, and that has been my experience as well. I tend to use GSA's published rates as a benchmark to vet reasonable cost when shopping around. It's typically the case that I can find lodging accommodations that are appreciable less expensive, but they're almost always at establishments of questionable quality.
tallanvor 9y ago
“There had been this perception that to get the best price, you book through a different channel than going direct,” he said. “That’s never actually been the case.” Yeah, that's a load of crap. I always start with an aggregator, and if I find a place that I like, I check their website as well. Unless they're cheaper or offer some major perks, I book through the 3rd party site. Of the last 5 hotels I've booked, going through a 3rd party site has been a better deal 4 of those times.
- tinus_hn 9y ago
  It's because a hotel will charge you as much as they think you'll want to pay. So the price changes if you look twice or through a different channel. Try checking from your phone while it is disconnected from your personal network.
- caw 9y ago
  A few months ago I booked a hotel for a trip. I checked the 3rd parties, found a hotel and then tried to go direct. HHonors claims the best prices online if you're logged in--it was the same as the booking third party (Groupon Getaways via Expedia), except Groupon gave 10% back in Groupon Bucks. I arrived at the hotel, they noted my HHonors basic membership and mentioned I wasn't receiving points due to booking with third party. I said I got the room for 10% less than their best online rate and their response was that I should have called bookings to talk to them. So now there's even more hoops to jump through to book direct? No thanks.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    I called a Hilton once after seeing the same place cheaper on HotelTonight, the woman said she couldn't match the rate... So I got it for the "impossible" to match rate (and the hotel paid a commission for the privilege!). Price matching is great when it works, but infuriating when you can't actually back it up. It should all be automated, I can't imagine someone at Hilton is manually setting HotelTonight prices and not telling anyone.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
briandear 9y ago
I feel compelled to respond since I am on both sides of the hotel business.. I own a tiny hotel in the Luberon and I also fly about 50k miles per year (staying in hotels along the way.) Booking.com has been amazing for us. They take 15% but it is completely worth it. We don't have "a name" nor do I have time to invest in the relentless SEO content marketing necessary to differentiate us when people search "hotels in the Luberon" or "Provence hotels." Since we are a very small place (just 3 suites,) it's an unprofitable use of my time to be generating blog content and engage in full-court-press inbound techniques -- so unless you are a chain or happen to be featured by travel writers, good luck being discovered via inbound searches. We do have a website and a good direct booking system, but we probably get 3 bookings per year directly from our website yet between Booking.com and cross-listing on AirBnB, we are completely booked through most of the season. Our booking software is integrated with Booking.com and AirBnB so we are able to have all of our channels coordinated with a minimum of work. If one considers Booking.com as a lead-generation system, 15% is a huge value. I would easily spend far more if I were marketing directly through ads. Our TripAdvisor page is free -- we haven't paid the yearly €799 fee for an enhanced listing but TripAdvisor still is great for us since we have 4.5 stars. Guests from Booking.com are far less work than from AirBnB or direct. AirBnB customers seem to still not understand what Instant Booking means -- we get almost daily inquiries of "do you have availability for some date" -- yes, obviously that's why you are able to instant book! AirBnB guests tend to want to have long conversations while Booking.com people just book and show up with a minimum of fuss. We also have a very liberal cancellation policy, unlike many places in the region -- we found that just letting people cancel whenever they want works out fine in the long term because are area is high demand so cancellations don't really cost us anything because we quickly get rebooked during peak season. So everyone is happy. In terms of taxes -- our prices have all of that included. My point is that sites like Booking.com and AirBnB have made our business -- we essentially incur no marketing costs. So we love Booking.com! It honestly doesn't matter one bit of you book directly with us or via Booking/AirBnB -- our prices take our costs into account so you aren't "hurting" us if you book through a third party. We are just glad to welcome any guests however they find us. The big chains probably get hurt the most by third party booking sites because they are already spending money on marketing and have name recognition, where for ultra-small-timers like us, you probably would never have heard of us without those third party sites. The short version: third party sites add huge value to our business -- they get to do the hard work of marketing us while we can focus on the guest experience.
jaclaz 9y ago
The base issue is that the fees that agencies/aggregators like booking.com are (IMHO outrageously) high, in the 15% (a minimum that I believe very few hotels pay) up to 25%-30%. On average, it is something like 18%-20%. To have a term of comparison, in the old times when travel agencies existed, the fee was more in the 5%-10% range. Small hotels must submit to them to have any visibility on the net, and (I believe it depends on countries, in some the clause has been deemed as invalid) the contract states that the hotel must not expose to the net (on its own site) a price that is lower than the one on the aggregator. Hotel chains might have the visibility and resources to bypass this perverse mechanism, and even if they pay the lowest fee of 15%, in times of low margins every fraction is important.
- Grue3 9y ago
  But consider that there's basically zero chance that I (as a typical user) will book a hotel if it's not listed at booking.com. Just because I must read real guests' impressions of the hotel to avoid the ones with bad Wi-fi. That's much more valuable service than what travel agencies provide, so it makes sense it costs more.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    Maybe we are talking of two different kinds of travel/hotel agencies. Once upon a time there were travel agents that put their name (and face) upfront to the customer, guaranteeing when they recommended (and booked in behalf of) a given hotel (or vector/transport), they usually knew (from direct experience or from "verified" reports) the qualities of the suggested hotel or travel arrangement. And - just for your interest - the "real" adjective when talking of guests impressions reported on booking.com (and much, much worse than that on tripadvisor) is something that needs to be attributed with more than a pinch of salt.
    - Grue3 9y ago
      >the "real" adjective when talking of guests impressions reported on booking.com (and much, much worse than that on tripadvisor) is something that needs to be attributed with more than a pinch of salt. I have personally reviewed every single hotel I stayed in, and none of my comments were removed or altered in any way. Which I sadly cannot say about HN. (I have a suspicion that the overall hotel rating might be fake, and I rarely pay attention to it, but in my experience the reviews are spot on)
TekMol 9y ago
Is it really all just about price? I am rather price insensitive. Usually stay for about $150/night but I don't mind paying up to $300. But I could never book via anything then booking.com Without it, how do I know the pros and cons of a hotel? Every hotel site will tell you they are great. But not if they are next to a noisy street, that the staff is unfriendly and that the rooms are much smaller then one would expect from the images.
- chipotle_coyote 9y ago
  It's not unreasonable to use a site like Booking.com or Hotels.com to get an overview of hotels in an area, then once you've narrowed it down to two or three choices, to go directly to those hotel sites and check prices. Yes, it's going to take you a little more time, but you'll sometimes find better deals, particularly if you're willing to take a few minutes to sign up for a loyalty program or two. Arguably, if you sign up with one of the companies that own a dozen brands or so, like IHG, Hilton or Marriott, you're likely to have a choice of a half-dozen hotels or more that accept that single reward program. And I've noticed friendlier, more responsive customer service as "Watts, [Loyalty Program Name] Member" than as "Watts, Guy who Prepaid on Hotels.com" often enough that I don't think it's my imagination. (And as another commenter mentioned below, sometimes you get kinda suboptimal rooms if you're booking through an aggregator. They're making less money off you and they know it.)
  - TekMol 9y ago
    sometimes you get kinda suboptimal rooms if you're booking through an aggregator. They're making less money off you and they know it I would expect the opposite. When you book via an aggregator and they provide bad service you can fight back via a bad review. When you book directly you are completely at their mercy. Example: I just checked the Ritz-Carlton in Berlin. And on booking.com it's clearly stated that Wifi is free. So I would expect I can rely on that. On the Marriot website the hotel, it's written in the small print that you have to pay extra for wifi. So I would expect them to fuck me over and bill some outrageous €25 per day or something for wifi.
draw_down 9y ago
I had a really bad experience recently with Travelocity. I needed to change dates for a stay in SF, which ended up being very costly in addition to being a hassle. I was forced to cancel the stay as well as pay the entire cost for the stay, and there was no way to do it online. I had to sit on the phone with a Travelocity agent who called the hotel to "negotiate" (which did nothing but waste time), then they started telling me about some Travelocity deal involving coupons, etc. It was confusing in addition to being a waste of time and money. I would probably just book directly these days. Hotels seem to have had it with dealing with the aggregators.
andrewf 9y ago
When the "Hilton" hotel is actually a franchisee, aren't the aggregators and the "hotel chain" basically in the same business? It's structured differently, but you still have a company with a (multi-)national brand presence funneling customers to independently owned hotels in exchange for a cut. In a future where everyone books through hiltonhonors.com and spgdirect.com instead of booking.com, will the actual hotels make more money, or will the chains just start capturing more of that value for themselves?
losteverything 9y ago
It seems like since aggregators prices have gone up across the board. There used to be the $19.99 best western in Mississippi but now you cant touch anything for under 50. Flipping through the BW directory was very enjoyable. It was quite fun to grab that $14.99 holiday inn room " great rate" because i was an 800 number expert. We still go to a dinky place in Maine off the grid ($39 off season with dogs/$89 in).. I hope they never sell.

67 points by antr 9y ago

dazc 9y ago

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/28/for-hotels-theres-no-room-left-for-online-travel-agencies.html http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/28/for-hotels-th...

posguy 9y ago
Any chance we could get the link changed to this non-paywall one? Same content it appears...

jkoll 9y ago

https://outline.com/9tNWkz https://outline.com/9tNWkz

flexie 9y ago

It has become ridiculous with these booking sites. When you google a small hotel, often the first many results are hotels.com, bookings.com, tripadvisor.com etc. and the hotel itself is down to spot 3, 4, 5 or even lower. There is a place for the booking sites, especially for exploring several hotels at a time. And they do offer some reviews and comparisons that can be useful. Sometimes, they also offer the cheapest price but usually it is just as cheap to call the hotel itself or book through its website. And it really feels good to pay the hotel that offers the services, instead of some tech company in the US.

roel_v 9y ago
"instead of some tech company in the US." Booking.com is Dutch.
kbart 9y ago
And it really feels good to pay the hotel that offers the services, instead of some tech company in the US." Most of the times I booked through booking.com it was "cash on arrival", so these sites are nothing more than ads. I think the problem is travel agencies, that book bulk of rooms to rent them later (just a guess, can't read the article itself due to paywall).
- babuskov 9y ago
  > Most of the times I booked through booking.com it was "cash on arrival", so these sites are nothing more than ads. I can confirm this. I believe the hotels only pay a monthly fee for listing and that's all.
  - briandear 9y ago
    Not true. We pay a percentage of the reservation cost to Booking.com each month. TripAdvisor on the other hand, charges a yearly fee for an enhanced listing, no fee for the standard listing. So those pay on arrival bookings -- we get an invoice from Booking.com each month for those. Nothing on booking.com to my knowledge is pre-pay -- Booking never actually charges the guest's card. But we still get the invoice.
    - babuskov 9y ago
      Thanks for clearing that up.
- usrusr 9y ago
  > Most of the times I booked through booking.com it was "cash on arrival", so these sites are nothing more than ads. Expensive ads. Cash on arrival does not mean that the hotel does not pay a sizable commission. Roughly in the range as the cut iTunes, Play, Steam take for transactions that, unlike hotel service, create zero cost beyond the initial investment. Occasionally, hotels might even offer you a cheaper room if you cancel your reservation, to get out of that obligation. Maybe some sites are much cheaper, but the big ones like booking.com take everything they can, and they can take a lot.
  - falsedan 9y ago
    > but the big ones like booking.com take everything they can, and they can take a lot. You mean, take as much as is offered? The hotels are free to let the rooms sit idle & refuse the bookings; they wouldn't pay these commissions if they didn't make business sense. A $100/night room that's empty generates $0 and costs $10-20 (amortised staffing and maintenance costs, insurance, permits, etc.) A $100/night room filled with a 30% commission generates $70 & nets ~$50. I think that most hotel managers would not list their preferences as: direct booking & ~$80 > empty & $0 > booking site & ~$50.
what_ever 9y ago
I'd argue that tripadvsor.com would be more useful to me than the direct hotel website as I'd see more neutral outlook of the hotel compared to the hotels website itself. I know, the reviews are not 100% neutral given neutral experiences usually don't end up in reviews - only really positive or negative do but it's still useful than not having any opinions which would be the case on hotels website. Also, the travel websites give the important details, amenities, nearby attractions, restaurants, public transit in the same format across all the hotels so I don't have to fiddle with each and every travel's website in a different way based on what their UX designer decided to do. Also, wayyy more photos on travel websites. Disclosure - I used to work at TripAdvisor.
- mbaha 9y ago
  Yeah, it seems like nobody has ever tried booking a hotel from a direct channel before. Customers don't want to go through the hassle of "discovering" a half-baked website filled w/ pretty little quirks. This worsens the user experience by a ton, I find.
a_humean 9y ago
I used to work a part time job doing hotel reservations for a small hotel a few years ago. Back then about 35-40% of their bookings were made through booking.com, and although I didn't know the actual cut booking.com took, I know it wasn't small. The hotel was always keen on trying to convert their booking.com or other third party customers into direct customers. We were always instructed, depending upon predicted or actual demand of course (we had someone dedicated to trying to predict demand by populating a spreadsheet with prices), to be willing to haggle with someone that is dealing directly with the hotel if we felt it necessary to sell. I would always recommend that you deal directly with the hotel, especially if you think demand is low. Also, showing up just before the hotel reception closes and swaps to the night shift porters is a great time (10-11pm) as hotel staff are particularly vulnerable to haggling. At that time of night we just want to sell for covering staff wages/fixed costs. Downside of showing up at the last minute is you can easily be ignorant of local market conditions and show up at 10pm when every bed in the area is occupied due to some local event that you were ignorant of.
- Sacho 9y ago
  > I would always recommend that you deal directly with the hotel, especially if you think demand is low. Also, showing up just before the hotel reception closes and swaps to the night shift porters is a great time (10-11pm) as hotel staff are particularly vulnerable to haggling. At that time of night we just want to sell for covering staff wages/fixed costs. This sounds great for someone interested in haggling, but if I don't want to bother with it(actually, if I'm specifically averse to it as I want to plan my vacation costs in advance), why should I go to the hotel directly instead of using booking.com?
  - a_humean 9y ago
    Even on the phone and sometimes months in advance you can easily haggle a 10-35% discount if demand is low. Especially if you agree to pay in advance on a non-refundable basis. We had price lists updated daily looking ahead 1-2 years.
- tallanvor 9y ago
  Honestly, that's great if you're in the US and trying to book within the country, but once you start thinking internationally, calling becomes a headache, especially if you're traveling to countries where not everyone speaks English very well. And when I'm on a trip, the last thing I want to do is hope for the best at finding a hotel the day I arrive!
donquichotte 9y ago
> Sometimes, they also offer the cheapest price but usually it is just as cheap to call the hotel itself Apparently, hotels that use booking.com as a sales channel sign a contract that prevents them from charging less for the same rooms on other sales channels. In Germany and France this practice has been banned. (In Germany by a judgement of the Bundeskartellamt and the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf)
joshvm 9y ago
Booking.com is an absolutely atrocious website. It's full of very pushy marketing that tries to convince you that every hotel is almost fully booked and the entire world is about to place a reservation. Not to mention the weird push-style notifications. That said, the 24 hour cancellation policy is really useful since some of the listed hotels wouldn't otherwise offer it.
- babuskov 9y ago
  I had a very interesting experience with booking.com. I found a hotel room, it said something like "Only one left". So, I quickly booked and by the time I entered the payment details the room was taken. Ok, so I went back to search for alternative, and it showed the same room again. I tried to book it again, and it simply went through. I actually stayed at that hotel in the end. It looks like some really weird algorithms are at work.
  - joshvm 9y ago
    It's possible they use a queue system similar to the one used for concerts. Once you select a room/ticket, it gets held for a few minutes while you check out (and taken off the public market). So you can have a situation where there's no room, but someone else fails to complete the reservation and it becomes available again.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    There can be an interesting interaction between booking.com and the hotel's own booking - I mean, booking.com doesn't know how many such rooms the hotel has available, it only knows how many such rooms the hotel has reserved for booking.com that may be booked at any time without a feedback from the hotel. The hotel wouldn't put all their rooms there because they also have other channels (that also need to promise the customer that they'll get the room, inform the hotel afterwards, and the room must be available), and they don't want to risk overbooking. On the other hand, if they get a booking and see that all their booking.com rooms are taken, they'll likely assign another room or two to booking.com if they have them available.
babuskov 9y ago
> it is just as cheap to call the hotel itself Only if it's in the same country. > book through its website For some hotels, booking via website is often half-baked web app that's full of bugs, doesn't accept certain inputs, etc. Simply because webdev isn't the hotel's main activity. Reviews on the hotel's website are usually non-existent or only positive. I mean, I hate the booking sites as well, but they are often "less bad" solution than booking directly.
- collyw 9y ago
  International calls (to fixed lines) are not expensive these days.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    For people who have had their contract for a while, they still are. You can't get a new phone contract that gouges you on international calls, but you can keep your old one.
  - babuskov 9y ago
    It really depends on the country from which you are calling and country to which the call connects.
- douche 9y ago
  I'm considerably more sketched out at the thought of entering my credit card information on a half-baked local hotel website than going through Priceline or Booking.com. Even some of the bigger hotel chains have a terrifying booking experience - it wasn't all that long ago that I last nooped out of a plain HTTP booking process...
mattmanser 9y ago
Why is that their fault, but not Google's? Blame the search engine for bad results, not the sites.

alexphilips 9y ago

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tmnvix 9y ago
How do I flag this comment?
- anc84 9y ago
  Click on the timestamp, then, if you are eligible to flagging, a link is available.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
lukeholder 9y ago
mods, please delete this spam

horsecaptin 9y ago

Perhaps AirBnB should open up to Hotels and that way all Hotels and BnBs can live in one place for a far better customer experience.

therealmarv 9y ago
yes, let's put everything in one bucket like with Facebook, Amazon, Google, PayPal... you see, that does not solve all problems ;)
JoshTriplett 9y ago
There are already search sites that will check both hotels and AirBnBs.

downandout 9y ago

Paywall bypass link: https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Ffor-hotels-theres-no-room-left-for-online-travel-agencies-1495974698 https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...

downandout 9y ago
Curious how this got a downvote. Apparently WSJ employees read HN lol.
- jonknee 9y ago
  Perhaps because the link got changed to a non-paywall version hosted by Fox Business...
  - downandout 9y ago
    I posted this long before they did that.

stupidcar 9y ago

If hotel chains were managed by sensible, tech-aware people, they wouldn't bother with these expensive, rearguard marketing campaigns. Instead, they'd get together and form an industry working group, and design simple, standard data formats and querying/booking APIs, and then make all their data available through them. This would make it far easier to build a hotel search engine, which would cause an explosion of competition and innovation in this area. This in turn would undercut the power of the leading agencies, and drive down referral pricing. But they won't do this. You see the same problem in so many industries. Vendors act like data about their offering is more precious than the offering itself. They make it as hard as possible to build an aggregator, so the aggregation market gets tied up by a tiny handful of players who are willing to invest enough to build a scraping infrastructure. Then they panic that these aggregators have too much gatekeeping power, but rather than encouraging greater competition amongst aggregators, they respond by trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

ForHackernews 9y ago
I think that's completely wrong. Very few vendors want their product to be commoditized. From the perspective of a hotelier, reducing their property to a few lines of JSON data is a losing proposition. The result will be the same thing we've seen in the airline industry: a race to the bottom, competing only on price, with ever-crappier service and more nickle-and-dime addons.
- mindcrime 9y ago
  Very few vendors want their product to be commoditized. From the perspective of a hotelier, reducing their property to a few lines of JSON data is a losing proposition. Meh. For that to be true, it would have to be the case that all consumers care only about price. I'm pretty sure that's not actually the case. As long as there are consumers who will pay more for $WHATEVER, there will be a market for $WHATEVER. The point is, you can still price discriminate, even if you make your data available as a simple JSON (preferably JSON-LD) file.
  - smacktoward 9y ago

gt2 9y ago

What is the best priced 3rd party service currently? I use hotels.com because I find it has the lowest price usually, plus you effectively get 10% off since every 10 bookings you receive a credit worth the average of your previous 10 night stays. But I wonder if theres a better booking service out there than this for someone who books a lot of hotels.

tallanvor 9y ago
I pretty much just use them as well now, and for the same reason as you.
chrisp_dc 9y ago
In the last month I've used hotels.com twice because it was lower than booking directly. In SF: Hotels.come was $180/night, hotel's website was over $300/night. In Copenhagen: Hotels.com was $120/night, the hotel's website was over $180/night. I'm not sure why these places are running sales on hotels.com, and not on their direct website. I try not to book on hotels.com because hotels have a reputation for giving those travelers the worst rooms (double beds vs. king bed, next to elevator, unrenovated rooms). However, it's hard to say "no" to 30%+ off.
what_ever 9y ago
TripAdvisor/Trivago - compare the rates there. Mentally apply the loyalty discounts and pick whichever is the cheapest. Also, I may be biased here as I used to work at TripAdvisor but I personally prefer their UI to booking/priceline. Expedia is okay too and I have heard good things about Trivago.

chx 9y ago

I have, more than once, booked an apartment through booking.com which were not available by any other easy to find means. It is quite curious but it is what it is.

git-pull 9y ago

These types of news articles about prospects often are driven by an ulterior motive. When the job market is saturated: There's a desperate shortage / skill gap of programmers, truckers and pharmacists. Go join this trade school for 16k! The economy is going to hell in a hand basket if we don't churn out 1000 new Javascript programmers every 12 weeks! When travel agencies want cement their dominance and pour cold water on new competition: Things are full, really! Don't bother applying Y Combinator as an online travel agency. You're just wasting your time and won't be able to generate any VC or get a single hit to your website! It's futile for... reasons!

falsedan 9y ago
> Lol Who is this comment addressed to? The article doesn't make these claims, and you didn't reply to another comment.

metaphor 9y ago

Anyone have insight on where GSA's published per diem rates[1] fair in the gamut of hotel pricing? Seems to be the pre-tax lower bound of decent 2/3 star hotels. [1] https://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/100120 https://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/100120

Fomite 9y ago
Note that many hotels, including rather nice chains, have much reduced government rates (so do airlines). Additionally, while I don't know for the GSA, for my state there's a waiver if there's a defensible reason you need to stay at a nicer hotel.
wl 9y ago
My experience has been that you can almost always find decent three star hotels at normal rates for under 125-150% of the GSA published rate. The exceptions tend to be when there's a major event that causes exceptional demand.
- metaphor 9y ago
  I agree, and that has been my experience as well. I tend to use GSA's published rates as a benchmark to vet reasonable cost when shopping around. It's typically the case that I can find lodging accommodations that are appreciable less expensive, but they're almost always at establishments of questionable quality.

tallanvor 9y ago

“There had been this perception that to get the best price, you book through a different channel than going direct,” he said. “That’s never actually been the case.” Yeah, that's a load of crap. I always start with an aggregator, and if I find a place that I like, I check their website as well. Unless they're cheaper or offer some major perks, I book through the 3rd party site. Of the last 5 hotels I've booked, going through a 3rd party site has been a better deal 4 of those times.

tinus_hn 9y ago
It's because a hotel will charge you as much as they think you'll want to pay. So the price changes if you look twice or through a different channel. Try checking from your phone while it is disconnected from your personal network.
caw 9y ago
A few months ago I booked a hotel for a trip. I checked the 3rd parties, found a hotel and then tried to go direct. HHonors claims the best prices online if you're logged in--it was the same as the booking third party (Groupon Getaways via Expedia), except Groupon gave 10% back in Groupon Bucks. I arrived at the hotel, they noted my HHonors basic membership and mentioned I wasn't receiving points due to booking with third party. I said I got the room for 10% less than their best online rate and their response was that I should have called bookings to talk to them. So now there's even more hoops to jump through to book direct? No thanks.
- jonknee 9y ago
  I called a Hilton once after seeing the same place cheaper on HotelTonight, the woman said she couldn't match the rate... So I got it for the "impossible" to match rate (and the hotel paid a commission for the privilege!). Price matching is great when it works, but infuriating when you can't actually back it up. It should all be automated, I can't imagine someone at Hilton is manually setting HotelTonight prices and not telling anyone.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago

briandear 9y ago

I feel compelled to respond since I am on both sides of the hotel business.. I own a tiny hotel in the Luberon and I also fly about 50k miles per year (staying in hotels along the way.) Booking.com has been amazing for us. They take 15% but it is completely worth it. We don't have "a name" nor do I have time to invest in the relentless SEO content marketing necessary to differentiate us when people search "hotels in the Luberon" or "Provence hotels." Since we are a very small place (just 3 suites,) it's an unprofitable use of my time to be generating blog content and engage in full-court-press inbound techniques -- so unless you are a chain or happen to be featured by travel writers, good luck being discovered via inbound searches. We do have a website and a good direct booking system, but we probably get 3 bookings per year directly from our website yet between Booking.com and cross-listing on AirBnB, we are completely booked through most of the season. Our booking software is integrated with Booking.com and AirBnB so we are able to have all of our channels coordinated with a minimum of work. If one considers Booking.com as a lead-generation system, 15% is a huge value. I would easily spend far more if I were marketing directly through ads. Our TripAdvisor page is free -- we haven't paid the yearly €799 fee for an enhanced listing but TripAdvisor still is great for us since we have 4.5 stars. Guests from Booking.com are far less work than from AirBnB or direct. AirBnB customers seem to still not understand what Instant Booking means -- we get almost daily inquiries of "do you have availability for some date" -- yes, obviously that's why you are able to instant book! AirBnB guests tend to want to have long conversations while Booking.com people just book and show up with a minimum of fuss. We also have a very liberal cancellation policy, unlike many places in the region -- we found that just letting people cancel whenever they want works out fine in the long term because are area is high demand so cancellations don't really cost us anything because we quickly get rebooked during peak season. So everyone is happy. In terms of taxes -- our prices have all of that included. My point is that sites like Booking.com and AirBnB have made our business -- we essentially incur no marketing costs. So we love Booking.com! It honestly doesn't matter one bit of you book directly with us or via Booking/AirBnB -- our prices take our costs into account so you aren't "hurting" us if you book through a third party. We are just glad to welcome any guests however they find us. The big chains probably get hurt the most by third party booking sites because they are already spending money on marketing and have name recognition, where for ultra-small-timers like us, you probably would never have heard of us without those third party sites. The short version: third party sites add huge value to our business -- they get to do the hard work of marketing us while we can focus on the guest experience.

jaclaz 9y ago

The base issue is that the fees that agencies/aggregators like booking.com are (IMHO outrageously) high, in the 15% (a minimum that I believe very few hotels pay) up to 25%-30%. On average, it is something like 18%-20%. To have a term of comparison, in the old times when travel agencies existed, the fee was more in the 5%-10% range. Small hotels must submit to them to have any visibility on the net, and (I believe it depends on countries, in some the clause has been deemed as invalid) the contract states that the hotel must not expose to the net (on its own site) a price that is lower than the one on the aggregator. Hotel chains might have the visibility and resources to bypass this perverse mechanism, and even if they pay the lowest fee of 15%, in times of low margins every fraction is important.

Grue3 9y ago
But consider that there's basically zero chance that I (as a typical user) will book a hotel if it's not listed at booking.com. Just because I must read real guests' impressions of the hotel to avoid the ones with bad Wi-fi. That's much more valuable service than what travel agencies provide, so it makes sense it costs more.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  Maybe we are talking of two different kinds of travel/hotel agencies. Once upon a time there were travel agents that put their name (and face) upfront to the customer, guaranteeing when they recommended (and booked in behalf of) a given hotel (or vector/transport), they usually knew (from direct experience or from "verified" reports) the qualities of the suggested hotel or travel arrangement. And - just for your interest - the "real" adjective when talking of guests impressions reported on booking.com (and much, much worse than that on tripadvisor) is something that needs to be attributed with more than a pinch of salt.
  - Grue3 9y ago
    >the "real" adjective when talking of guests impressions reported on booking.com (and much, much worse than that on tripadvisor) is something that needs to be attributed with more than a pinch of salt. I have personally reviewed every single hotel I stayed in, and none of my comments were removed or altered in any way. Which I sadly cannot say about HN. (I have a suspicion that the overall hotel rating might be fake, and I rarely pay attention to it, but in my experience the reviews are spot on)

TekMol 9y ago

Is it really all just about price? I am rather price insensitive. Usually stay for about $150/night but I don't mind paying up to $300. But I could never book via anything then booking.com Without it, how do I know the pros and cons of a hotel? Every hotel site will tell you they are great. But not if they are next to a noisy street, that the staff is unfriendly and that the rooms are much smaller then one would expect from the images.

chipotle_coyote 9y ago
It's not unreasonable to use a site like Booking.com or Hotels.com to get an overview of hotels in an area, then once you've narrowed it down to two or three choices, to go directly to those hotel sites and check prices. Yes, it's going to take you a little more time, but you'll sometimes find better deals, particularly if you're willing to take a few minutes to sign up for a loyalty program or two. Arguably, if you sign up with one of the companies that own a dozen brands or so, like IHG, Hilton or Marriott, you're likely to have a choice of a half-dozen hotels or more that accept that single reward program. And I've noticed friendlier, more responsive customer service as "Watts, [Loyalty Program Name] Member" than as "Watts, Guy who Prepaid on Hotels.com" often enough that I don't think it's my imagination. (And as another commenter mentioned below, sometimes you get kinda suboptimal rooms if you're booking through an aggregator. They're making less money off you and they know it.)
- TekMol 9y ago
  sometimes you get kinda suboptimal rooms if you're booking through an aggregator. They're making less money off you and they know it I would expect the opposite. When you book via an aggregator and they provide bad service you can fight back via a bad review. When you book directly you are completely at their mercy. Example: I just checked the Ritz-Carlton in Berlin. And on booking.com it's clearly stated that Wifi is free. So I would expect I can rely on that. On the Marriot website the hotel, it's written in the small print that you have to pay extra for wifi. So I would expect them to fuck me over and bill some outrageous €25 per day or something for wifi.

draw_down 9y ago

I had a really bad experience recently with Travelocity. I needed to change dates for a stay in SF, which ended up being very costly in addition to being a hassle. I was forced to cancel the stay as well as pay the entire cost for the stay, and there was no way to do it online. I had to sit on the phone with a Travelocity agent who called the hotel to "negotiate" (which did nothing but waste time), then they started telling me about some Travelocity deal involving coupons, etc. It was confusing in addition to being a waste of time and money. I would probably just book directly these days. Hotels seem to have had it with dealing with the aggregators.

andrewf 9y ago

When the "Hilton" hotel is actually a franchisee, aren't the aggregators and the "hotel chain" basically in the same business? It's structured differently, but you still have a company with a (multi-)national brand presence funneling customers to independently owned hotels in exchange for a cut. In a future where everyone books through hiltonhonors.com and spgdirect.com instead of booking.com, will the actual hotels make more money, or will the chains just start capturing more of that value for themselves?

losteverything 9y ago

It seems like since aggregators prices have gone up across the board. There used to be the $19.99 best western in Mississippi but now you cant touch anything for under 50. Flipping through the BW directory was very enjoyable. It was quite fun to grab that $14.99 holiday inn room " great rate" because i was an 800 number expert. We still go to a dinky place in Maine off the grid ($39 off season with dogs/$89 in).. I hope they never sell.