5 ms·

The way the pay-per-click machine works, is you pay like 3$ for 'hotels in amsterdam', their average (public info) commission is 15%. Looking at booking.com/ams

The way the pay-per-click machine works, is you pay like 3$ for 'hotels in amsterdam', their average (public info) commission is 15%. Looking at booking.com/amsterdam you can see vague idea about average price, lets say most bookings are 2 nights, then you can get ballpark average reservation of around 200$, 15% of that is 30$. So for each room they sell they can buy 10 clicks on 'hotels in amsterdam'. This is super ballpark estimates, could be order of magnitude different, but the idea is that there is enormous incentive to push people to book, its the same as the example in the article, pushing people to buy. Purely because the pay-per-click is so expensive, you need ROI > 1 to survive. Those companies are in survivor mode, and anything that is even remotely legal, or can be defended in court, is allowed and encouraged. Thing like 70% off on pair of shoes, that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute, just so there was a record in the database that they actually had higher price, nobody cares that they never sold at the high price. Companies constantly push the legal boundary.

iso1631 5y ago
Presumably the majority of clients are happy, and go back to booking.com after their first visit, thus costing $0
- throwaway47292 5y ago
  yes, loyalty just reduces the cost per click, but the math is the same, so they buy 100 people instead of 10 people with one reservation, but the game is the same. EDIT: also think about how many times people book per year, maybe 4-5 times in the upper quantiles? so if booking pays 3$ for you, it will take a couple of months until your next booking so they can reinvest your 15% commission to buy other people.
  - kofejnik 5y ago
    A a freelance consultant, Pre COVID I was easily booking 50 times/year
    - iso1631 5y ago
      hotels.com gave one free night for every 10 nights, effectively a 10% discount. Change in contracts at work means I now book with ihg with massive discounts over hotels.com rates and get the points from them instead, but before then I'd get several weekends away for free each year.
alickz 5y ago
>Thing like 70% off on pair of shoes, that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute, just so there was a record in the database that they actually had higher price, nobody cares that they never sold at the high price. In my country this is explicitly illegal. A good or service must be sold for a certain period of time (2 weeks I think) before it can be used as the pre-sale price. I've only heard this in relation to physical stores though, not sure how it works for e-commerce.
- WilTimSon 5y ago
  What country is that, if you don't mind saying? I'd love to cite that example when friends who work in marketing start to babble about "cool tricks" they can do next time.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    I'm not sure where the rules come from (law, business association regulation etc), but here are a couple of links for the UK. https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/marketing-and-selling/consumer-protection/unfair-trading-trade-descriptions-and-pricing-faqs https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/marketing-and-selling/co... https://www.lewissilkin.com/-/media/files/main/insights/cmi/important-new-guidelines-for-advertising-prices-to-uk-consumers-2.pdf https://www.lewissilkin.com/-/media/files/main/insights/cmi/... You'll find similar rules in many European countries, though most won't be available in English. This document is, for Denmark: https://www.consumerombudsman.dk/media/14560/forbrugerombudsmandens-retningslinjer-for-prismarkedsfoering-awfeng.pdf https://www.consumerombudsman.dk/media/14560/forbrugerombuds...
    - WilTimSon 5y ago
      Ah, thank you for the links, hopefully translation tools will help me get at least the gist of the Danish document.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    As one example, it's illegal in Brazil. Booking doesn't even display the "X people are looking at it" here because that would get a lot of attention from consumer protection.
denton-scratch 5y ago
> that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute In the UK, that's a criminal offence.

iso1631 5y ago

Presumably the majority of clients are happy, and go back to booking.com after their first visit, thus costing $0

throwaway47292 5y ago
yes, loyalty just reduces the cost per click, but the math is the same, so they buy 100 people instead of 10 people with one reservation, but the game is the same. EDIT: also think about how many times people book per year, maybe 4-5 times in the upper quantiles? so if booking pays 3$ for you, it will take a couple of months until your next booking so they can reinvest your 15% commission to buy other people.
- kofejnik 5y ago
  A a freelance consultant, Pre COVID I was easily booking 50 times/year
  - iso1631 5y ago
    hotels.com gave one free night for every 10 nights, effectively a 10% discount. Change in contracts at work means I now book with ihg with massive discounts over hotels.com rates and get the points from them instead, but before then I'd get several weekends away for free each year.

alickz 5y ago

>Thing like 70% off on pair of shoes, that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute, just so there was a record in the database that they actually had higher price, nobody cares that they never sold at the high price. In my country this is explicitly illegal. A good or service must be sold for a certain period of time (2 weeks I think) before it can be used as the pre-sale price. I've only heard this in relation to physical stores though, not sure how it works for e-commerce.

WilTimSon 5y ago
What country is that, if you don't mind saying? I'd love to cite that example when friends who work in marketing start to babble about "cool tricks" they can do next time.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  I'm not sure where the rules come from (law, business association regulation etc), but here are a couple of links for the UK. https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/marketing-and-selling/consumer-protection/unfair-trading-trade-descriptions-and-pricing-faqs https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/marketing-and-selling/co... https://www.lewissilkin.com/-/media/files/main/insights/cmi/important-new-guidelines-for-advertising-prices-to-uk-consumers-2.pdf https://www.lewissilkin.com/-/media/files/main/insights/cmi/... You'll find similar rules in many European countries, though most won't be available in English. This document is, for Denmark: https://www.consumerombudsman.dk/media/14560/forbrugerombudsmandens-retningslinjer-for-prismarkedsfoering-awfeng.pdf https://www.consumerombudsman.dk/media/14560/forbrugerombuds...
  - WilTimSon 5y ago
    Ah, thank you for the links, hopefully translation tools will help me get at least the gist of the Danish document.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  As one example, it's illegal in Brazil. Booking doesn't even display the "X people are looking at it" here because that would get a lot of attention from consumer protection.

denton-scratch 5y ago

> that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute In the UK, that's a criminal offence.