Having worked in the OTA space, every time I see their (sometimes funny) ads, I want to call them Booking.Nope OTA make comparisons a bit easier, but everythin

Having worked in the OTA space, every time I see their (sometimes funny) ads, I want to call them Booking.Nope OTA make comparisons a bit easier, but everything is negotiated and contractually controlled to keep people from just going to the hotel directly. Secret hotel prices (like HotWire if that still exists (Expedia) or Travelocity's Top Secret hotels if that still exists (also Expedia)) are an even more crazy negotiation. Hotel Tonight at least used to contact the hotel chains every day for that day's options, though since they were bought by AirBnB who knows what they do. These days I just find a nice hotel and book with them/their system directly. Airlines too, since airlines fail to give all their options to the OTAs. In some ways its sad that aggregators don't work all that well in the main travel industry (Flight/Hotel/Car) but travel is extremely complicated, highly competitive and still very fractured except for airlines. Pricing comparisons are not very useful since they are so mangled and obfuscated that you may as well just go to several sites and do it yourself by hand. For example Spirit Airlines used to give us prices for their tickets at $X and were always cheaper than everyone else; yet once you booked at that price they hit you for everything extra (bags, res, for all I know oxygen) then our customers complained we were fooling them and the real cost was higher.