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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 mo

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.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Not booking.com, but travel sites definitely have gotten caught using Math.random() to generate the "x people are looking!" alerts. https://twitter.com/OphirHarpaz/status/1184486445039411201 https://twitter.com/OphirHarpaz/status/1184486445039411201
  - smueller1234 7y ago
    Oh yeah. Booking doesn't do it because it's big enough that it would get called out - externally and internally. Also, is actually much less snake oily a company than its reputation here or else I wouldn't have worked there for as many years.

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.

ceejayoz 7y ago
Not booking.com, but travel sites definitely have gotten caught using Math.random() to generate the "x people are looking!" alerts. https://twitter.com/OphirHarpaz/status/1184486445039411201 https://twitter.com/OphirHarpaz/status/1184486445039411201
- smueller1234 7y ago
  Oh yeah. Booking doesn't do it because it's big enough that it would get called out - externally and internally. Also, is actually much less snake oily a company than its reputation here or else I wouldn't have worked there for as many years.