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I use booking.com both as a customer and hotelier. Usually I’ll search booking.com to find a hotel to stay and if the hotel belongs to a brand let’s say Hilton

I use booking.com both as a customer and hotelier. Usually I’ll search booking.com to find a hotel to stay and if the hotel belongs to a brand let’s say Hilton or Marriott I’ll email them directly to get a better price. For smaller hotels or apartments I use booking.com for the security it provides me with. By security I mean that in the unfortunate case that the hotel of apartment I booked is overbooked or something similar, I trust booking.com and on its ability to force the hotelier to reaccomodate me somewhere else. I’ve had this happened to me previously as a client and booking.com managed to straight it out. Now if you book directly through a small hotel or apartment or even use the likes of Airbnb or something at points you risk being out of accommodation and just getting your money back which in a busy season that there is no availability left in the area and the closest room is 2 times more expensive than you booked. I know that people think that’s an extreme scenario but let me tell you that I run my hotel like airlines do. It’s cheaper to overbook and relocate someone to a near hotel having 105% capacity than having running lower than 100% on high season. And of course I had that happen to me as a client previously and just getting money back wasn’t nice at all. But overall look at hotels and email them, most hotels will knock off the 15-20% commission booking.com is charging.

pbourke 7y ago
> if the hotel belongs to a brand let’s say Hilton or Marriott I’ll email them directly to get a better price. Does this work differently than calling the front desk? I tried that a few times over the years and never got a price improvement over the online brokers or the hotel website itself.
- ant6n 7y ago
  After long at booking.com, I once went directly to a hotel website to book, but still ended up with a booking.com reservation...
- jaclaz 7y ago
  >Does this work differently than calling the front desk? I tried that a few times over the years and never got a price improvement over the online brokers or the hotel website itself. That depends (now) from a lot of factors and until not so long ago the contract with booking.com didn't allow to publicize lower prices than what was on the booking.com site. But it depends also on the hotel (how it is organized, if it is a chain, etc.). Think at the front desk employee as an unsupervised/lazy employee of a largish organization. You book through booking.com, it means less work for him/her and no change in his/her pay (but less revenue for the hotel). I have had more than once conversations on the telephone with the front desk of an hotel, where they just told me to "go book online". If I have no time I simply choose another hotel, if I have some spare time I call again and talk to the director about the matter. Now think at the front desk employee as someone that has an interest in the income of the hotel (directly or indirectly) , the amount of work is the same (as there is not any "web reservation center" or the like) whether your booking is made by means of booking.com or directly (at the telephone and possibly with a confirmation e-mail) and he/she has the possibility to increase - even if slightly - the income of the company.
- muse900 7y ago
  Bigger hotels tend to have a reservations team. Not every hotel will give you a better offer than whats on booking but depending on how you'll put it on your email etc yes you do get some discount against booking.com. Don't forget that a hotel has to pay 15-20% fee on the booking at booking.com and also has to deal with booking.com's rating system afterwards. For me so far its worked everytime I am emailing the reservations team at a hotel. (I am in their trade though and tend to use my business email when booking) I reckon phoning a hotel might be harder to get you a discount because most of the times the frontdesk staff won't put you through to the reservations rep because he might be unavailable or whatever so they'll just give you whatever price the system tells them which is what you'll get on their website if you go to book directly. Its important to be able to contact the person that can amend the booking prices and frontdesk staff usually can't do that.
jaclaz 7y ago
>It’s cheaper to overbook and relocate someone to a near hotel having 105% capacity than having running lower than 100% on high season. And your relocated customers are surely happy about that. I (used to) travel a lot for work and the one thing I am pretty sure is that I never returned to a hotel that overbooked and had me relocate, additionally I told everyone I knew about the shitty behaviour and made sure that noone in the company I worked for ever booked there again. Now, I make some consulting work for a small, independent, hotel, and - luckily enough - even if it is "cheaper" to overbook, the management holds the care and respect for the customer well above that.
- mantap 7y ago
  Thankfully we have websites such as booking.com to sniff out fraudulent operations like GP's. Reviews where guests have been turned away with a valid reservation are the reddest of red flags for me. Dirty rooms can be cleaned, cockroaches can be eradicated, but intentional overselling indicates an incurable dishonesty at the heart of management.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Accor/Choice/Wyndham/Hyatt, everyone overcooks. The systems are set to allow a certain number of rooms to be overbooked every night, since there is a high probability of a certain percentage of people not showing up or wanting to cancel every night. The more rooms a hotel has, the more they can overbook. Although all the major brands have a policy of providing a free room night and transportation to an equivalent quality hotel nearby. All the airlines do it to, too. Also, if a VIP comes in wanting to spend a month at the hotel and the hotel has to overbook a couple nights, they’re not going to turn away thousands in revenue. Even the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan cancels reservations when the Saudi royal family is in town.
- mrandish 7y ago
  Sadly, many (if not most) hotels will oversell their capacity. I'm now a Marriott Platinum member and one of the benefits of being Platinum is that they are bound to pay a premium to me if they oversell my room. IIRC it's 200%, meaning they don't charge me, buy me a comparable nearby room AND give me a credit for the original reservation price. I would sometimes need to arrive to check-in really late, like 3 a.m. If the hotel was nearly full I'd actually get a call on my mobile phone from the desk manager around 10p or 11p asking if I was still going to be checking in. I'm sure it was only because the hotel would get dinged by corporate for having to pay me out if they gave away my room. Too bad they don't care enough to do that for everyone before selling out their room from under them. An alternate strategy I use with other chains when I'm concerned there might be an oversold situation is to call the hotel around the normal check-in time (~3p) and get the front desk to check-in my room while I'm on the phone and insist on getting the actual room number. That way, it'll be some other poor schmuck who trying to check in at midnight that will get shafted.

pbourke 7y ago

> if the hotel belongs to a brand let’s say Hilton or Marriott I’ll email them directly to get a better price. Does this work differently than calling the front desk? I tried that a few times over the years and never got a price improvement over the online brokers or the hotel website itself.

ant6n 7y ago
After long at booking.com, I once went directly to a hotel website to book, but still ended up with a booking.com reservation...
jaclaz 7y ago
>Does this work differently than calling the front desk? I tried that a few times over the years and never got a price improvement over the online brokers or the hotel website itself. That depends (now) from a lot of factors and until not so long ago the contract with booking.com didn't allow to publicize lower prices than what was on the booking.com site. But it depends also on the hotel (how it is organized, if it is a chain, etc.). Think at the front desk employee as an unsupervised/lazy employee of a largish organization. You book through booking.com, it means less work for him/her and no change in his/her pay (but less revenue for the hotel). I have had more than once conversations on the telephone with the front desk of an hotel, where they just told me to "go book online". If I have no time I simply choose another hotel, if I have some spare time I call again and talk to the director about the matter. Now think at the front desk employee as someone that has an interest in the income of the hotel (directly or indirectly) , the amount of work is the same (as there is not any "web reservation center" or the like) whether your booking is made by means of booking.com or directly (at the telephone and possibly with a confirmation e-mail) and he/she has the possibility to increase - even if slightly - the income of the company.
muse900 7y ago
Bigger hotels tend to have a reservations team. Not every hotel will give you a better offer than whats on booking but depending on how you'll put it on your email etc yes you do get some discount against booking.com. Don't forget that a hotel has to pay 15-20% fee on the booking at booking.com and also has to deal with booking.com's rating system afterwards. For me so far its worked everytime I am emailing the reservations team at a hotel. (I am in their trade though and tend to use my business email when booking) I reckon phoning a hotel might be harder to get you a discount because most of the times the frontdesk staff won't put you through to the reservations rep because he might be unavailable or whatever so they'll just give you whatever price the system tells them which is what you'll get on their website if you go to book directly. Its important to be able to contact the person that can amend the booking prices and frontdesk staff usually can't do that.

jaclaz 7y ago

>It’s cheaper to overbook and relocate someone to a near hotel having 105% capacity than having running lower than 100% on high season. And your relocated customers are surely happy about that. I (used to) travel a lot for work and the one thing I am pretty sure is that I never returned to a hotel that overbooked and had me relocate, additionally I told everyone I knew about the shitty behaviour and made sure that noone in the company I worked for ever booked there again. Now, I make some consulting work for a small, independent, hotel, and - luckily enough - even if it is "cheaper" to overbook, the management holds the care and respect for the customer well above that.

mantap 7y ago
Thankfully we have websites such as booking.com to sniff out fraudulent operations like GP's. Reviews where guests have been turned away with a valid reservation are the reddest of red flags for me. Dirty rooms can be cleaned, cockroaches can be eradicated, but intentional overselling indicates an incurable dishonesty at the heart of management.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Accor/Choice/Wyndham/Hyatt, everyone overcooks. The systems are set to allow a certain number of rooms to be overbooked every night, since there is a high probability of a certain percentage of people not showing up or wanting to cancel every night. The more rooms a hotel has, the more they can overbook. Although all the major brands have a policy of providing a free room night and transportation to an equivalent quality hotel nearby. All the airlines do it to, too. Also, if a VIP comes in wanting to spend a month at the hotel and the hotel has to overbook a couple nights, they’re not going to turn away thousands in revenue. Even the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan cancels reservations when the Saudi royal family is in town.
mrandish 7y ago
Sadly, many (if not most) hotels will oversell their capacity. I'm now a Marriott Platinum member and one of the benefits of being Platinum is that they are bound to pay a premium to me if they oversell my room. IIRC it's 200%, meaning they don't charge me, buy me a comparable nearby room AND give me a credit for the original reservation price. I would sometimes need to arrive to check-in really late, like 3 a.m. If the hotel was nearly full I'd actually get a call on my mobile phone from the desk manager around 10p or 11p asking if I was still going to be checking in. I'm sure it was only because the hotel would get dinged by corporate for having to pay me out if they gave away my room. Too bad they don't care enough to do that for everyone before selling out their room from under them. An alternate strategy I use with other chains when I'm concerned there might be an oversold situation is to call the hotel around the normal check-in time (~3p) and get the front desk to check-in my room while I'm on the phone and insist on getting the actual room number. That way, it'll be some other poor schmuck who trying to check in at midnight that will get shafted.