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Booking.com agrees to EU demands to change travel offers

227 points by deng 7y ago

buboard 7y ago
Hurry up! only 3 upvotes left for this comment
tuwtuwtuwtuw 7y ago
So essentially booking.com agrees to follow the law? That's good, I guess.
- notkaiho 7y ago
  Yes, unlike, say Uber etc
scurvy 7y ago
Unrelated, booking released a nice turnkey utility for tying bird announcements to health checks: https://github.com/unixsurfer/anycast_healthchecker https://github.com/unixsurfer/anycast_healthchecker
- hk__2 7y ago
  This repository is under a username that, according to their profile page, belongs to someone at Elastic. How does it have anything to do with Booking?
  - smueller1234 7y ago
    Pavlos worked for Booking.com in the past.
  - devdas 7y ago
    It's someone who used to be at Booking when the software was written.
- scurvy 7y ago
  Not sure why people are hating on good freeware.
bmarquez 7y ago
Glad to hear the EU is cracking down on Booking.com's sales tactics. Unfortunately, those manipulative tactics actually work. I frequently have to remind my mother (in her 70s, and tends to believe everything on the internet) not to rush through a Booking.com transaction because "rooms are selling out fast." Or not to favor Booking.com because she was given some "insider discount" (forgot the exact phrase) for repeat business. As the article states, plenty of rooms are still available for a given hotel no matter what Booking.com claims. And that "insider discount"? I got the same price as her while logged in on a brand new account.
- PMan74 7y ago
  "Hate selling" as it was dubbed by one of the trade magazines (over 4 years ago) https://skift.com/2015/08/10/travel-brands-stop-hate-selling-to-your-customers/ https://skift.com/2015/08/10/travel-brands-stop-hate-selling...
- StavrosK 7y ago
  Hell, when one half of my brain has to remind the other half not to be rushed by all the "only one room available!", what hope is there for your mother? The most blatant piece of evidence for what they do is how they say "ONLY ONE ROOM LEFT AT THIS HOTEL" but when you go back and request two rooms, this changes to "ONLY TWO ROOMS LEFT AT THIS HOTEL" immediately.
  - smueller1234 7y ago
    I used to work there until end of 2017 in a senior role, running the infrastructure development department. During my time there, the company would never actually do something that was technically wrong (or lying), with a couple of exceptions where some individual went too far and wasn't caught in any review. There were certainly UI elements that were misleading or suggesting (never claiming) of something being a freebie when it was included in the chosen rate. These sort of changes consistently received internal criticism, but ultimately due to the outstanding A/B testing tooling, were shown to be worth too much money for the detractors to succeed. There were maybe a handful that were rolled back due to internal criticism. In any case, it seems unlikely that booking would implement the change you describe. NB: the actual availability was always controlled by the hotels, as were the prices - booking does not own inventory, unlike some of its competitors! Edit: removed surplus punctuation.
Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
I use Booking.com because it actually has worked very well for me for many years (including things like getting me a refund for a non-cancellable booking, which I wasn't really entitled to and I didn't expected to get... saved me a good chunk of money). But indeed, in the last few years the sales techniques are scummy as hell. Go look at a hotel in the middle of nothing in the most off-peak season, and it will still tell you that several rooms have been booked in the last few days and there are like 4 people looking at that hotel right now so you should book NOW! And of course everything is a one-time bargain. It's so blatant I don't even know how anyone can believe all that. What annoys me is that as I mentioned, when it comes to the actual product (hotel bookings, their management, and customer service), it works great (at least in my experience). It's far from being a scam. So why they have to resort to that cheap, misleading sales tactics, probably hindering their image, is beyond me.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  booking.com is like shopping in Times Square, and gives me a headache. But just like Times Square, many people seem to enjoy it. Edit: in the spirit of Hacker News, what I always think about is how financially successful booking.com is, given what I think is the worst experience in the world for reserving a hotel room. I use it to remind myself that very few people think like me, and making things to my liking (straight and to the point) will get me nowhere. Still boggles my mind that people prefer to patronize businesses that show a high price with a nebulous x% off, rather than just a simple price.
  - gerhardi 7y ago
    I've made around 50 reservations in last couple of years through them and I really like it for the uniform experience across chains, cities and countries. They've been helpful and I've never run and into actual problems. I also probably ignore their dark patterns subconsciously.. I dont have proper incentives to try other platforms, agoda, trivago etc. seem worse (without trying).
  - thinkingemote 7y ago
    I use Expedia, it's the same. But it's always cheaper than contacting the hotel directly either via website or phone. Always.
underpand 7y ago
Where's their $100+ million fine though? Why aren't they getting fined like the US-based tech companies?
- h0h0h0h0111 7y ago
  I'm guessing their tactics aren't _technically_ illegal, hence their quote: >'ultimately Booking believes in clear legislation and standards that apply to everyone in the industry'
  - LaGrange 7y ago
    ...which is pretty big. Back when I was with them (long time ago), a big thing internally was enforcing hotel prices (i.e. the hotel couldn't offer a room for cheaper). Basically there was the feeling that it got us a lot of bad blood (and yeah, was ethically questionable, though TBH at least with the folks I talked with — mostly IT, though in Booking you _could_ talk with some C-levels as a grunt dev — that was a distant 2nd concern), _but_ if we didn't do that then price comparison sites would eat us in no time in favour of someone who did.
    - krick 7y ago
      I don't get it. How does that work? Why would a hotel offering a lower price (on your platform, I assume) than you want give you a lower rating on a price comparison site?
      - LaGrange 7y ago
        Other way around: if the hotel gives lower prices _elsewhere_ we'd lose out on price comparison sites.
- simpss 7y ago
  because this is a different law and the penalties are (much much) lower. They could just pay the fine daily, it's better to sort out the actual issue. us-based tech companies have been getting fines for GDPR(data privacy) violations, not false advertising.
pkaye 7y ago
> The company would also stop presenting offers as having a time limit if the same price applied after the time limit expired. Now I expect them to change the price slightly in order to continue with the time limits.
- teekert 7y ago
  It changed! By 0.49 cents, we rounded it down to a whole euro!
- krick 7y ago
  Yep, the first thought of mine. I mean, it's not like something else is intended, but I'm feeling uneasy once more because of all these EU interventions. Don't get me wrong, I felt genuine joy and something akin to being proud to be an EU citizen when I read the article: the intention is to condemn something that very much should be condemned despite of us being used to that being a norm. But all that "we use cookies" notifications also were somewhat a noble cause, and it all made the web much less usable as a result. Which, I guess, was obvious from the start, but it isn't obvious to me they cannot fuck up whatever legal decision they are having with booking.com out there. And it would be more than a simple inconvenience to me if it turns out like that again. It would be kinda shameful.
Tharkun 7y ago
Not lying about what you're selling seems like it ought to the norm without requiring legal intervention?
- pjc50 7y ago
  On the contrary, without legal intervention the market collapses into everyone lying all of the time. The famous economics paper on this is Akerloff's "Market For Lemons".
  - pas 7y ago
    Free market advocates usually point out that reputation markets could arise in these situations. Of course the question is, would they, and would they provide a better force to raise quality of traded goods than regulation?
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Well, we can see how that worked with the big tech companies; it mostly works for Uber and AirBnB but problems still get through, and is turning into a serious reputational problem for Amazon.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      You can have private organizations certifying things, but then how do you decide which certification to trust? And what's the point, since the certification is going to be tied to the product, not independent?
- justinclift 7y ago
  Unfortunately, sleazebags with no ethics (eg "whatever parts suckers from $$$") outperform ethical people when viewed through the (say) MBA lens. Thus the proliferation of places lying about everything they can get away with, until they're caught / stamped on.
Tempest1981 7y ago
Interesting, either there are 2 camps on HN, or a nuance I don't understand. In one discussion, HN readers are upset if Facebook is made to filter misleading ads. "Let the market be free". And the slippery-slope argument is often used. In others, HN readers want government to crack down on false/shady advertising. Or the negative externalities caused by the gig economy (Uber/Airbnb). Can someone explain the difference. I don't think it's solely based on govt vs private industry doing the control.
- grzm 7y ago
  > Either there are 2 camps on HN HN commenters come from all over the world and have various backgrounds and viewpoints. Do you find that commenters always echo your viewpoints? Likely not, which should be proof right there that there are at least two camps. Trying to categorize such a large and varied group of people into a small number groups is likely going to be problematic, as is trying to simplify the positions of the commenters you read.
  - Tempest1981 7y ago
    I guess it's that some discussions lean strongly one way, while others lean strongly the opposite way. Sometimes there is a debate. Here, so far, nobody seems to be siding with Booking.com. Small sample size perhaps. Unlikely to be herd-mentality.
- jdietrich 7y ago
  >Can someone explain the difference. I don't think it's solely based on govt vs private industry doing the control. It's pretty much just that, particularly when it comes to political advertising. Regulatory bodies operate with the full oversight of government and the courts; if they make poor decisions, they can be held accountable. Facebook are already frighteningly powerful and deputising them to be arbiters of truth only makes them more powerful. Facebook should absolutely have mechanisms in place to facilitate swift and effective intervention by regulatory agencies, but they shouldn't be acting as a regulatory agency themselves.
- m11a 7y ago
nodemaker 7y ago
One thing that I dont think people are aware is that Booking.com uses extensive A/B Testing in the development of the website. This gives us the website that is extremely efficient in getting bookings but full of dark patterns.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 7y ago
  Why don't you think people are aware of this? Seems obvious that they do this because they know it increase sales. Not like it was made up as a nice consumer-friendly feature by one of their UX engineers.
  - nodemaker 7y ago
    I think the keyword there was "Extensive". Literally nothing can be pushed to production without being A/B tested.
therockspush 7y ago
This is the scarcity tactic straight out of Influence by Robert Cialdini. Its a hardwired response that works on a lot of people. Good book to raise your awareness about how you're being manipulated by sales and marketing. https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/ https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/
annadane 7y ago
I really don't understand why companies insist on doing the scummiest thing. I know, I know. Profit, but they must surely think before doing this stuff right?
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Because their huckster marketeers will point out that if they aren't the scummiest someone else will be who will then make more profits. There isn't anybody that is simply satisfied with what they make.
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  Because the people at the top don't just want a profitable business, they want ALL the possible profit and push the notion of legality to its limits. It's up to the legislator to crack down on that, but since the fines are ridiculously small and it costs more to fine these people than doing nothing, they do nothing. It's funny how sometimes I wish legal institutions worked more like businesses, with processing fees on fines /s But most generally a lot legal systems didn't catch up with globalization and tech gigantism and are still stuck in the 20th century, which leaves a lot of room for "legal arbitrage", the whole "disruption" business is built on that premise. There is the law, and actual law enforcement...
serguzest 7y ago
Booking.com is a parasite of the industry. It was widely used in Turkey as well. Once, I booked a room through them but there was a problem with the reservation (hotel's fault) when I called their call-center for help they didn't even have a turkish speaking staff. I had to speak in English in the middle of Turkey to solve the problem. After awhile government banned them to operate in Turkey. That was a good decision.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  I was looking at an otherwise nice flat to rent in Amsterdam on Reguliersdwarsstraat, but the balcony had a scenic view into the vast expanse of Booking.com headquarters open office space cubicle wasteland, which was waaaay too depressing to look at every day, so I decided could not possibly bear living there.
- jiofih 7y ago
  Sure you didn’t call the hotel directly? Booking has customer service in every major language (70+).
  - serguzest 7y ago
    I arrived at the hotel. They overbooked the rooms. It was late at night. I called the booking.com call center. They didn't have a Turkish speaking staff.
dazhbog 7y ago
Next up, all those airline ticket websites like gotogate.
novaRom 7y ago
I was long time booking.com user until they declined to resolve an issue of dishonest property description. Their response was: Resolving complaints after check-out is challenging and less likely to result in compensation. In the future, communicate any complaints to the property during your stay, so the staff can ensure the rest of your stay is comfortable. My reply was: ok, there are choices. I switched to Google Maps, check reviews there, and prefer booking directly on the hotel/owner sites.
- lipstone 7y ago
  That's a perfectly valid response from them. You also don't send food back after you've finished your plate.
- kioleanu 7y ago
  I have an anecdote about that: I had a brief stint working for a hotel booking competitor and, sometimes, a transaction would go through 3-4 hands, each taking commission, before reaching the hotel and I just hated that. This spring we wound up stranded in Amsterdam for an evening and I needed to book a hotel fast. I checked booking.com and saw what was still available at the moment and I found a hotel - a double room on booking.com was 230EUR. I call the hotel, I tell them I want to book a room for tonight, total number of people etc. The receptionist comes back and tells me a double room is 285EUR. Do I want it? I do not. I went back to booking.com and reserved the room there. I can also say that I had a problem with a dishonest property description (regarding parking) and complaining to Booking made them produce an underground parking space in 5 minutes - albeit this was before checking in.
  - jorblumesea 7y ago
    Why this works: Bcom and other OTAs negotiate discounted rates on your behalf, because they bring in so much volume they can pressure the suppliers. Similar to how Walmart gets rock bottom prices on goods. Sometimes it's cheaper to directly contact, but often it is not.
jacquesm 7y ago
In six months... Why they can't do this tomorrow is a mystery to me, it is not like they have to do something extra, they just have to stop being dishonest.
- krick 7y ago
  Oh, come on now, this is just stupid. Do you think their website code writes itself? 6 month is very much a reasonable deadline. In fact, it's the tightest I can realistically imagine for a platform with a considerable history and god knows how many lines of code to change its core functionality all their marketing strategy revolves around.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    I can never tell with HN what is meant as sarcasm and what isn't, but somewhere in their code there is a bunch of stuff that reads 'do tricks' and you can just comment that bit out and everything else should continue to work. That they can sell ignorant politicians on that is one thing but here we really should know better. Put another way: if they were given an opportunity to do the opposite it would be done in a day or two.
    - krick 7y ago
      This is nonsense. It sounds like you never really worked on any large scale project with at least some amount of legacy code. I have experience with travel industry, and I can tell with absolute certainty that there exist many projects (much younger than booking.com, by the way), where disabling something like that "in a day or two" is downright physically impossible. Marketing and strategical issues aside, there wouldn't be a single person who could apply necessary changes in a day or two for any amount of money. It might sound crazy for an outsider, but that's just the way it is.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        > This is nonsense. It sounds like you never really worked on any large scale project with at least some amount of legacy code. Well, what you read into my writing is entirely your problem, but let's just say that you are far off the mark and it is precisely because I have couple of decades in IT behind me that I know that six months to stop doing something at this level is ridiculous. > I have experience with travel industry, and I can tell with absolute certainty that there exist many projects (much younger than booking.com, by the way), where disabling something like that "in a day or two" is downright physically impossible. I would hope that the level of competence at booking.com would be a little higher than that. > Marketing and strategical issues aside, there wouldn't be a single person who could apply necessary changes in a day or two for any amount of money. I'd be happy to give it a shot. > It might sound crazy for an outsider, but that's just the way it is. Or so you say. But the fact is that all software ever written did stuff because we tell it to and that disabling some bit of code is mostly matter of locating it. Writing new functionality can be very hard and might take a long time. But disabling something as simple as 'output ridiculous sentences that pressure our users into buying' should not be harder than to locate it and disabling it. If that has unintended side effects at the level that you are suggesting then booking.com has other problems. Finally, I'm sure that if they wanted to make quick work of it they could disable that bit in the CSS for their website and make it pretty behind the scenes at their leisure. Anything that can be displayed can be hidden.
taurath 7y ago
Every time I look at what the EU is doing for their citizens and then turn around and see the US has... removed all regulations on coal... I can’t help but think US thought leadership is dying
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jogundas 7y ago
Not directly related, but still a nudge thing: it is impossible to sort the offerings by price (eg ascending) on booking.com . Am I the only user finding this extremely uncomfortable?
- smueller1234 7y ago
  No it is not. How on Earth did you get the impression that you can't sort by price? Mobile website and app, from just now: https://imgur.com/a/9422eyt https://imgur.com/a/9422eyt
  - jogundas 7y ago
    Have never used the listing view, thanks for the heads up. On the map sorting by price is not possible, right? Or does my map view look different from yours? https://imgur.com/avyt3nr https://imgur.com/avyt3nr
    - smueller1234 7y ago
      I suspect you can only filter there, but haven't tried just now.
      - jogundas 7y ago
        Yeah, that's exactly the case. And filtering is quite useless in London for example, where all the reasonable options are in a single bracket.
atmosx 7y ago
An interesting question would be "are there any decent alternatives to bookings.com" ? Someone mentioned hotels.com which I'm going to try but there must be other players on this space.
benjaminwootton 7y ago
I had over 1000 nights booked through booking.com. Once I turned up at an apartment which didn’t exist (it was a scam listing) and they were absolutely useless in helping us or issuing a refund. I moved exclusively to Hotels.com since then who offer a free night for every 10 nights you book. In this case allowing people to list their own properties on their website without checks was really bad for their brand.
- krick 7y ago
  That always sound like a damn impressive story to be read by some booking.com executive. Sure, you are just a single customer, but 1000 nights is quite impressive. To lose such a loyal customer over something that shouldn't have happened in the first place is a bummer. I guess I should try hotels.com someday as well.
  - benjaminwootton 7y ago
    I only managed to get it resolved by emailing most of the leadership and creating noise on social media. I hate these web companies who want the profits of a marketplace but none of the obligations.
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    > I guess I should try hotels.com someday as well. Just so folks are aware, there are essentially only 3 major OTA (online travel agency) brands: Booking Holdings: Booking.com, Kayak, Priceline, Agoda (and also OpenTable) Expedia Group: Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, VRBO (aka HomeAway), Trivago, Hotwire, Cheap Tickets, Wotif AirBnB: AirBnB and Hotel Tonight TripAdvisor is also standalone (they previously spun out of Expedia) but their business, based on recommendations, is a bit different than the others.
- MarkSweep 7y ago
  The Hotels.com free night is not as good as it sounds. It’s valued at the average price of the 10 stays. It will only cover one nights worth of stay and does not cover the taxes and fees. So it not the 9% off it sounds like. Also the fact that they charge you $5 to redeem rewards on the website but not their app suggestions there are some shenanigans going on.
aembleton 7y ago
Add the following to your uBlock filters: booking.com##.soldout_property booking.com##.sr_rooms_left_wrap.only_x_left booking.com##.lastbooking booking.com##.sr--x-times-booked booking.com##.in-high-demand-not-scarce booking.com##.top_scarcity booking.com##.hp-rt-just-booked booking.com##.cheapest_banner_content > * booking.com##.hp-social_proof booking.com##.fe_banner__red.fe_banner__w-icon.fe_banner__scale_small.fe_banner booking.com##.urgency_message_x_people.urgency_message_red booking.com##.rackrate booking.com##.urgency_message_red.altHotels_most_recent_booking booking.com##.fe_banner__w-icon-large.fe_banner__w-icon.fe_banner booking.com##.smaller-low-av-msg_wrapper booking.com##.small_warning.wxp-sr-banner.js-wxp-sr-banner
- apexalpha 7y ago
  Surely people who would add these rules are already aware of the tactics Booking employs
  - aembleton 7y ago
    I'm aware of them, but half of my brain is still reacting to them and making me try and make decisions quicker. Maybe others are capable of blocking them; but I know that I'm not, even though I'm aware that it is happening. That is why I have put together these filters. The social proof really works on me.
nojvek 7y ago
I absolutely love how EU sets corporations straight and advocates for the customers. Meanwhile US govt, “we’ll give you bigger tax breaks, just keep on growing that GDP number, do whatever you want, walk over, track everything and manipulate visitors if you want, just give us your corporate billions when we run for elections”

227 points by deng 7y ago

buboard 7y ago

Hurry up! only 3 upvotes left for this comment

tuwtuwtuwtuw 7y ago

So essentially booking.com agrees to follow the law? That's good, I guess.

notkaiho 7y ago
Yes, unlike, say Uber etc

scurvy 7y ago

Unrelated, booking released a nice turnkey utility for tying bird announcements to health checks: https://github.com/unixsurfer/anycast_healthchecker https://github.com/unixsurfer/anycast_healthchecker

hk__2 7y ago
This repository is under a username that, according to their profile page, belongs to someone at Elastic. How does it have anything to do with Booking?
- smueller1234 7y ago
  Pavlos worked for Booking.com in the past.
- devdas 7y ago
  It's someone who used to be at Booking when the software was written.
scurvy 7y ago
Not sure why people are hating on good freeware.

bmarquez 7y ago

Glad to hear the EU is cracking down on Booking.com's sales tactics. Unfortunately, those manipulative tactics actually work. I frequently have to remind my mother (in her 70s, and tends to believe everything on the internet) not to rush through a Booking.com transaction because "rooms are selling out fast." Or not to favor Booking.com because she was given some "insider discount" (forgot the exact phrase) for repeat business. As the article states, plenty of rooms are still available for a given hotel no matter what Booking.com claims. And that "insider discount"? I got the same price as her while logged in on a brand new account.

PMan74 7y ago
"Hate selling" as it was dubbed by one of the trade magazines (over 4 years ago) https://skift.com/2015/08/10/travel-brands-stop-hate-selling-to-your-customers/ https://skift.com/2015/08/10/travel-brands-stop-hate-selling...
StavrosK 7y ago
Hell, when one half of my brain has to remind the other half not to be rushed by all the "only one room available!", what hope is there for your mother? The most blatant piece of evidence for what they do is how they say "ONLY ONE ROOM LEFT AT THIS HOTEL" but when you go back and request two rooms, this changes to "ONLY TWO ROOMS LEFT AT THIS HOTEL" immediately.
- smueller1234 7y ago
  I used to work there until end of 2017 in a senior role, running the infrastructure development department. During my time there, the company would never actually do something that was technically wrong (or lying), with a couple of exceptions where some individual went too far and wasn't caught in any review. There were certainly UI elements that were misleading or suggesting (never claiming) of something being a freebie when it was included in the chosen rate. These sort of changes consistently received internal criticism, but ultimately due to the outstanding A/B testing tooling, were shown to be worth too much money for the detractors to succeed. There were maybe a handful that were rolled back due to internal criticism. In any case, it seems unlikely that booking would implement the change you describe. NB: the actual availability was always controlled by the hotels, as were the prices - booking does not own inventory, unlike some of its competitors! Edit: removed surplus punctuation.

Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago

I use Booking.com because it actually has worked very well for me for many years (including things like getting me a refund for a non-cancellable booking, which I wasn't really entitled to and I didn't expected to get... saved me a good chunk of money). But indeed, in the last few years the sales techniques are scummy as hell. Go look at a hotel in the middle of nothing in the most off-peak season, and it will still tell you that several rooms have been booked in the last few days and there are like 4 people looking at that hotel right now so you should book NOW! And of course everything is a one-time bargain. It's so blatant I don't even know how anyone can believe all that. What annoys me is that as I mentioned, when it comes to the actual product (hotel bookings, their management, and customer service), it works great (at least in my experience). It's far from being a scam. So why they have to resort to that cheap, misleading sales tactics, probably hindering their image, is beyond me.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
booking.com is like shopping in Times Square, and gives me a headache. But just like Times Square, many people seem to enjoy it. Edit: in the spirit of Hacker News, what I always think about is how financially successful booking.com is, given what I think is the worst experience in the world for reserving a hotel room. I use it to remind myself that very few people think like me, and making things to my liking (straight and to the point) will get me nowhere. Still boggles my mind that people prefer to patronize businesses that show a high price with a nebulous x% off, rather than just a simple price.
- gerhardi 7y ago
  I've made around 50 reservations in last couple of years through them and I really like it for the uniform experience across chains, cities and countries. They've been helpful and I've never run and into actual problems. I also probably ignore their dark patterns subconsciously.. I dont have proper incentives to try other platforms, agoda, trivago etc. seem worse (without trying).
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  I use Expedia, it's the same. But it's always cheaper than contacting the hotel directly either via website or phone. Always.

underpand 7y ago

Where's their $100+ million fine though? Why aren't they getting fined like the US-based tech companies?

h0h0h0h0111 7y ago
I'm guessing their tactics aren't _technically_ illegal, hence their quote: >'ultimately Booking believes in clear legislation and standards that apply to everyone in the industry'
- LaGrange 7y ago
  ...which is pretty big. Back when I was with them (long time ago), a big thing internally was enforcing hotel prices (i.e. the hotel couldn't offer a room for cheaper). Basically there was the feeling that it got us a lot of bad blood (and yeah, was ethically questionable, though TBH at least with the folks I talked with — mostly IT, though in Booking you _could_ talk with some C-levels as a grunt dev — that was a distant 2nd concern), _but_ if we didn't do that then price comparison sites would eat us in no time in favour of someone who did.
  - krick 7y ago
    I don't get it. How does that work? Why would a hotel offering a lower price (on your platform, I assume) than you want give you a lower rating on a price comparison site?
    - LaGrange 7y ago
      Other way around: if the hotel gives lower prices _elsewhere_ we'd lose out on price comparison sites.
simpss 7y ago
because this is a different law and the penalties are (much much) lower. They could just pay the fine daily, it's better to sort out the actual issue. us-based tech companies have been getting fines for GDPR(data privacy) violations, not false advertising.

pkaye 7y ago

> The company would also stop presenting offers as having a time limit if the same price applied after the time limit expired. Now I expect them to change the price slightly in order to continue with the time limits.

teekert 7y ago
It changed! By 0.49 cents, we rounded it down to a whole euro!
krick 7y ago
Yep, the first thought of mine. I mean, it's not like something else is intended, but I'm feeling uneasy once more because of all these EU interventions. Don't get me wrong, I felt genuine joy and something akin to being proud to be an EU citizen when I read the article: the intention is to condemn something that very much should be condemned despite of us being used to that being a norm. But all that "we use cookies" notifications also were somewhat a noble cause, and it all made the web much less usable as a result. Which, I guess, was obvious from the start, but it isn't obvious to me they cannot fuck up whatever legal decision they are having with booking.com out there. And it would be more than a simple inconvenience to me if it turns out like that again. It would be kinda shameful.

Tharkun 7y ago

Not lying about what you're selling seems like it ought to the norm without requiring legal intervention?

pjc50 7y ago
On the contrary, without legal intervention the market collapses into everyone lying all of the time. The famous economics paper on this is Akerloff's "Market For Lemons".
- pas 7y ago
  Free market advocates usually point out that reputation markets could arise in these situations. Of course the question is, would they, and would they provide a better force to raise quality of traded goods than regulation?
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Well, we can see how that worked with the big tech companies; it mostly works for Uber and AirBnB but problems still get through, and is turning into a serious reputational problem for Amazon.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    You can have private organizations certifying things, but then how do you decide which certification to trust? And what's the point, since the certification is going to be tied to the product, not independent?
justinclift 7y ago
Unfortunately, sleazebags with no ethics (eg "whatever parts suckers from $$$") outperform ethical people when viewed through the (say) MBA lens. Thus the proliferation of places lying about everything they can get away with, until they're caught / stamped on.

Tempest1981 7y ago

Interesting, either there are 2 camps on HN, or a nuance I don't understand. In one discussion, HN readers are upset if Facebook is made to filter misleading ads. "Let the market be free". And the slippery-slope argument is often used. In others, HN readers want government to crack down on false/shady advertising. Or the negative externalities caused by the gig economy (Uber/Airbnb). Can someone explain the difference. I don't think it's solely based on govt vs private industry doing the control.

grzm 7y ago
> Either there are 2 camps on HN HN commenters come from all over the world and have various backgrounds and viewpoints. Do you find that commenters always echo your viewpoints? Likely not, which should be proof right there that there are at least two camps. Trying to categorize such a large and varied group of people into a small number groups is likely going to be problematic, as is trying to simplify the positions of the commenters you read.
- Tempest1981 7y ago
  I guess it's that some discussions lean strongly one way, while others lean strongly the opposite way. Sometimes there is a debate. Here, so far, nobody seems to be siding with Booking.com. Small sample size perhaps. Unlikely to be herd-mentality.
jdietrich 7y ago
>Can someone explain the difference. I don't think it's solely based on govt vs private industry doing the control. It's pretty much just that, particularly when it comes to political advertising. Regulatory bodies operate with the full oversight of government and the courts; if they make poor decisions, they can be held accountable. Facebook are already frighteningly powerful and deputising them to be arbiters of truth only makes them more powerful. Facebook should absolutely have mechanisms in place to facilitate swift and effective intervention by regulatory agencies, but they shouldn't be acting as a regulatory agency themselves.
m11a 7y ago

nodemaker 7y ago

One thing that I dont think people are aware is that Booking.com uses extensive A/B Testing in the development of the website. This gives us the website that is extremely efficient in getting bookings but full of dark patterns.

tuwtuwtuwtuw 7y ago
Why don't you think people are aware of this? Seems obvious that they do this because they know it increase sales. Not like it was made up as a nice consumer-friendly feature by one of their UX engineers.
- nodemaker 7y ago
  I think the keyword there was "Extensive". Literally nothing can be pushed to production without being A/B tested.

therockspush 7y ago

This is the scarcity tactic straight out of Influence by Robert Cialdini. Its a hardwired response that works on a lot of people. Good book to raise your awareness about how you're being manipulated by sales and marketing. https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/ https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/

annadane 7y ago

I really don't understand why companies insist on doing the scummiest thing. I know, I know. Profit, but they must surely think before doing this stuff right?

jacquesm 7y ago
Because their huckster marketeers will point out that if they aren't the scummiest someone else will be who will then make more profits. There isn't anybody that is simply satisfied with what they make.
throw_m239339 7y ago
Because the people at the top don't just want a profitable business, they want ALL the possible profit and push the notion of legality to its limits. It's up to the legislator to crack down on that, but since the fines are ridiculously small and it costs more to fine these people than doing nothing, they do nothing. It's funny how sometimes I wish legal institutions worked more like businesses, with processing fees on fines /s But most generally a lot legal systems didn't catch up with globalization and tech gigantism and are still stuck in the 20th century, which leaves a lot of room for "legal arbitrage", the whole "disruption" business is built on that premise. There is the law, and actual law enforcement...

serguzest 7y ago

Booking.com is a parasite of the industry. It was widely used in Turkey as well. Once, I booked a room through them but there was a problem with the reservation (hotel's fault) when I called their call-center for help they didn't even have a turkish speaking staff. I had to speak in English in the middle of Turkey to solve the problem. After awhile government banned them to operate in Turkey. That was a good decision.

DonHopkins 7y ago
I was looking at an otherwise nice flat to rent in Amsterdam on Reguliersdwarsstraat, but the balcony had a scenic view into the vast expanse of Booking.com headquarters open office space cubicle wasteland, which was waaaay too depressing to look at every day, so I decided could not possibly bear living there.
jiofih 7y ago
Sure you didn’t call the hotel directly? Booking has customer service in every major language (70+).
- serguzest 7y ago
  I arrived at the hotel. They overbooked the rooms. It was late at night. I called the booking.com call center. They didn't have a Turkish speaking staff.

dazhbog 7y ago

Next up, all those airline ticket websites like gotogate.

novaRom 7y ago

I was long time booking.com user until they declined to resolve an issue of dishonest property description. Their response was: Resolving complaints after check-out is challenging and less likely to result in compensation. In the future, communicate any complaints to the property during your stay, so the staff can ensure the rest of your stay is comfortable. My reply was: ok, there are choices. I switched to Google Maps, check reviews there, and prefer booking directly on the hotel/owner sites.

lipstone 7y ago
That's a perfectly valid response from them. You also don't send food back after you've finished your plate.
kioleanu 7y ago
I have an anecdote about that: I had a brief stint working for a hotel booking competitor and, sometimes, a transaction would go through 3-4 hands, each taking commission, before reaching the hotel and I just hated that. This spring we wound up stranded in Amsterdam for an evening and I needed to book a hotel fast. I checked booking.com and saw what was still available at the moment and I found a hotel - a double room on booking.com was 230EUR. I call the hotel, I tell them I want to book a room for tonight, total number of people etc. The receptionist comes back and tells me a double room is 285EUR. Do I want it? I do not. I went back to booking.com and reserved the room there. I can also say that I had a problem with a dishonest property description (regarding parking) and complaining to Booking made them produce an underground parking space in 5 minutes - albeit this was before checking in.
- jorblumesea 7y ago
  Why this works: Bcom and other OTAs negotiate discounted rates on your behalf, because they bring in so much volume they can pressure the suppliers. Similar to how Walmart gets rock bottom prices on goods. Sometimes it's cheaper to directly contact, but often it is not.

jacquesm 7y ago

In six months... Why they can't do this tomorrow is a mystery to me, it is not like they have to do something extra, they just have to stop being dishonest.

krick 7y ago
Oh, come on now, this is just stupid. Do you think their website code writes itself? 6 month is very much a reasonable deadline. In fact, it's the tightest I can realistically imagine for a platform with a considerable history and god knows how many lines of code to change its core functionality all their marketing strategy revolves around.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I can never tell with HN what is meant as sarcasm and what isn't, but somewhere in their code there is a bunch of stuff that reads 'do tricks' and you can just comment that bit out and everything else should continue to work. That they can sell ignorant politicians on that is one thing but here we really should know better. Put another way: if they were given an opportunity to do the opposite it would be done in a day or two.
  - krick 7y ago
    This is nonsense. It sounds like you never really worked on any large scale project with at least some amount of legacy code. I have experience with travel industry, and I can tell with absolute certainty that there exist many projects (much younger than booking.com, by the way), where disabling something like that "in a day or two" is downright physically impossible. Marketing and strategical issues aside, there wouldn't be a single person who could apply necessary changes in a day or two for any amount of money. It might sound crazy for an outsider, but that's just the way it is.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      > This is nonsense. It sounds like you never really worked on any large scale project with at least some amount of legacy code. Well, what you read into my writing is entirely your problem, but let's just say that you are far off the mark and it is precisely because I have couple of decades in IT behind me that I know that six months to stop doing something at this level is ridiculous. > I have experience with travel industry, and I can tell with absolute certainty that there exist many projects (much younger than booking.com, by the way), where disabling something like that "in a day or two" is downright physically impossible. I would hope that the level of competence at booking.com would be a little higher than that. > Marketing and strategical issues aside, there wouldn't be a single person who could apply necessary changes in a day or two for any amount of money. I'd be happy to give it a shot. > It might sound crazy for an outsider, but that's just the way it is. Or so you say. But the fact is that all software ever written did stuff because we tell it to and that disabling some bit of code is mostly matter of locating it. Writing new functionality can be very hard and might take a long time. But disabling something as simple as 'output ridiculous sentences that pressure our users into buying' should not be harder than to locate it and disabling it. If that has unintended side effects at the level that you are suggesting then booking.com has other problems. Finally, I'm sure that if they wanted to make quick work of it they could disable that bit in the CSS for their website and make it pretty behind the scenes at their leisure. Anything that can be displayed can be hidden.

taurath 7y ago

Every time I look at what the EU is doing for their citizens and then turn around and see the US has... removed all regulations on coal... I can’t help but think US thought leadership is dying

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jogundas 7y ago

Not directly related, but still a nudge thing: it is impossible to sort the offerings by price (eg ascending) on booking.com . Am I the only user finding this extremely uncomfortable?

smueller1234 7y ago
No it is not. How on Earth did you get the impression that you can't sort by price? Mobile website and app, from just now: https://imgur.com/a/9422eyt https://imgur.com/a/9422eyt
- jogundas 7y ago
  Have never used the listing view, thanks for the heads up. On the map sorting by price is not possible, right? Or does my map view look different from yours? https://imgur.com/avyt3nr https://imgur.com/avyt3nr
  - smueller1234 7y ago
    I suspect you can only filter there, but haven't tried just now.
    - jogundas 7y ago
      Yeah, that's exactly the case. And filtering is quite useless in London for example, where all the reasonable options are in a single bracket.

atmosx 7y ago

An interesting question would be "are there any decent alternatives to bookings.com" ? Someone mentioned hotels.com which I'm going to try but there must be other players on this space.

benjaminwootton 7y ago

I had over 1000 nights booked through booking.com. Once I turned up at an apartment which didn’t exist (it was a scam listing) and they were absolutely useless in helping us or issuing a refund. I moved exclusively to Hotels.com since then who offer a free night for every 10 nights you book. In this case allowing people to list their own properties on their website without checks was really bad for their brand.

krick 7y ago
That always sound like a damn impressive story to be read by some booking.com executive. Sure, you are just a single customer, but 1000 nights is quite impressive. To lose such a loyal customer over something that shouldn't have happened in the first place is a bummer. I guess I should try hotels.com someday as well.
- benjaminwootton 7y ago
  I only managed to get it resolved by emailing most of the leadership and creating noise on social media. I hate these web companies who want the profits of a marketplace but none of the obligations.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  > I guess I should try hotels.com someday as well. Just so folks are aware, there are essentially only 3 major OTA (online travel agency) brands: Booking Holdings: Booking.com, Kayak, Priceline, Agoda (and also OpenTable) Expedia Group: Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, VRBO (aka HomeAway), Trivago, Hotwire, Cheap Tickets, Wotif AirBnB: AirBnB and Hotel Tonight TripAdvisor is also standalone (they previously spun out of Expedia) but their business, based on recommendations, is a bit different than the others.
MarkSweep 7y ago
The Hotels.com free night is not as good as it sounds. It’s valued at the average price of the 10 stays. It will only cover one nights worth of stay and does not cover the taxes and fees. So it not the 9% off it sounds like. Also the fact that they charge you $5 to redeem rewards on the website but not their app suggestions there are some shenanigans going on.

aembleton 7y ago

Add the following to your uBlock filters: booking.com##.soldout_property booking.com##.sr_rooms_left_wrap.only_x_left booking.com##.lastbooking booking.com##.sr--x-times-booked booking.com##.in-high-demand-not-scarce booking.com##.top_scarcity booking.com##.hp-rt-just-booked booking.com##.cheapest_banner_content > * booking.com##.hp-social_proof booking.com##.fe_banner__red.fe_banner__w-icon.fe_banner__scale_small.fe_banner booking.com##.urgency_message_x_people.urgency_message_red booking.com##.rackrate booking.com##.urgency_message_red.altHotels_most_recent_booking booking.com##.fe_banner__w-icon-large.fe_banner__w-icon.fe_banner booking.com##.smaller-low-av-msg_wrapper booking.com##.small_warning.wxp-sr-banner.js-wxp-sr-banner

apexalpha 7y ago
Surely people who would add these rules are already aware of the tactics Booking employs
- aembleton 7y ago
  I'm aware of them, but half of my brain is still reacting to them and making me try and make decisions quicker. Maybe others are capable of blocking them; but I know that I'm not, even though I'm aware that it is happening. That is why I have put together these filters. The social proof really works on me.

nojvek 7y ago

I absolutely love how EU sets corporations straight and advocates for the customers. Meanwhile US govt, “we’ll give you bigger tax breaks, just keep on growing that GDP number, do whatever you want, walk over, track everything and manipulate visitors if you want, just give us your corporate billions when we run for elections”