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After browsing hotels for some time I've seen booking.com show several hotels start to sell out of rooms. That usually causes me to hurry up and book, but after

After browsing hotels for some time I've seen booking.com show several hotels start to sell out of rooms. That usually causes me to hurry up and book, but after several hotels showed full at once I got suspicious and checked my partners phone. The hotels still showed as available there. Dark stuff. Their website is otherwise pretty good though and I still use them.

Nextgrid 4y ago
This kind of behavior should just fall under fraud laws. If a person intentionally lies or misrepresents themselves for the purposes of gaining money it's usually considered fraud in most countries. This should be the same. The problem is that there are a lot of laws that in practice only apply to not-well-connected individuals. When done by companies or well-known people it's considered good business acumen.
- Quarrel 4y ago
  In the UK at least, they've tried. https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-hotel-booking https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-hotel-booking Booking.com, amongst others, gave enforceable undertakings that they'd change their practices.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  i've started flying recently a lot and in this one particular circuit i see loads of dark patterns. 1. there was this snow season last month and the roads stopped working and suddenly the air prices skyrocketed. (as is now expected), i had to buy a ticket in emergency which i paid 4x the reasonable rate with all websites saying "oops, the fare has increased" trick. 2. many websites did the "just 1 seat remaining" trick and i jumped the gun. when the next day i traveled, the plane was half empty. what happens is, travel agents buy up tickets well in advance and then sit on the bookings, they either sell directly or wait for online portals to sell them. these travel agents having purchased tickets in bulk then say "oh, the ticket is priced $100 on kayak, i will sell it for 95. lets give you some discount" all the while having purchased the same for like 20. these people are willing to forego tickets because its more profitable to keep the prices high
  - GFischer 3y ago
    They're gambling, because there are actually fines for those sorts of behaviors if they don't clear the unused bookings in a reasonable time or if ARC (the Airlines Reporting Corporation) or the distribution systems detect a fraudulent pattern. I'm actually building an internal tool for such fines (called "debit memos") for a company with several thousand travel agents, and they're not uncommon at all.
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    Usually, the notices I have seen actually say "only 1 ticket remaining at this price". Which they can technically make true by simply setting their pricing algorithm to sell the next ticket for a penny more or a penny less.
- wjnc 4y ago
  In the Netherlands it probably does (“oneerlijke handelspraktijken”). The main regulator for the European activities of booking is in the Netherlands. If GP were to document this and submit it to the ACM [1] this might be picked up. The maximum fine is a puny 900 k€ though. They already got a few of these and don’t seem to care much. And that just shows the problem with regulating these large platforms - local regulators with their hands tied against billion dollar platforms. The EU should just step in and regulate these monsters directly and pro-consumer. Or regulators should grow a pair and try to get the CEO / board replaced (a theoretical possibility when they keep getting administrative fines in NL). That will shake up the stockholders enough to shake some sense into these firms. [1] https://www.consuwijzer.nl/doe-uw-melding-bij-acm-consuwijzer https://www.consuwijzer.nl/doe-uw-melding-bij-acm-consuwijze...
  - mapcars 4y ago
    Well if you made 5 mil with this and payed 900k fine you still made 4 mil, so yeah.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  I wonder if the fraud is a two way street. Could I just craft a POST request and book what I want? Each of these companies are only allocated a certain amount of inventory so the availability is probably there, especially at the larger hotels Additionally do they float the price and if so can I edit that also in the post request and name my own price? If their interface has a fuzzy relationship to reality than maybe you can fuzz it your way I'm not a criminal but I'm still curious.
mdale 4y ago
It banks on the experience that many have had where delaying a decision has resulted in "Lossing" out on staying where (or at a price) you wanted. Much worse if coordinating with multiple parties going on the trip :) I guess the most fair disclosure would provide a Google flights like pricing chart that shows cost increase and seasonal availability projections. I try to make the decision independently of the point of sale vendor. The aggregator can help limit impact of these tactics by API contract with these sites that focus on price/availability without artificial urgency.
sjducb 4y ago
I've seen that too.

Nextgrid 4y ago

This kind of behavior should just fall under fraud laws. If a person intentionally lies or misrepresents themselves for the purposes of gaining money it's usually considered fraud in most countries. This should be the same. The problem is that there are a lot of laws that in practice only apply to not-well-connected individuals. When done by companies or well-known people it's considered good business acumen.

Quarrel 4y ago
In the UK at least, they've tried. https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-hotel-booking https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-hotel-booking Booking.com, amongst others, gave enforceable undertakings that they'd change their practices.
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
i've started flying recently a lot and in this one particular circuit i see loads of dark patterns. 1. there was this snow season last month and the roads stopped working and suddenly the air prices skyrocketed. (as is now expected), i had to buy a ticket in emergency which i paid 4x the reasonable rate with all websites saying "oops, the fare has increased" trick. 2. many websites did the "just 1 seat remaining" trick and i jumped the gun. when the next day i traveled, the plane was half empty. what happens is, travel agents buy up tickets well in advance and then sit on the bookings, they either sell directly or wait for online portals to sell them. these travel agents having purchased tickets in bulk then say "oh, the ticket is priced $100 on kayak, i will sell it for 95. lets give you some discount" all the while having purchased the same for like 20. these people are willing to forego tickets because its more profitable to keep the prices high
- GFischer 3y ago
  They're gambling, because there are actually fines for those sorts of behaviors if they don't clear the unused bookings in a reasonable time or if ARC (the Airlines Reporting Corporation) or the distribution systems detect a fraudulent pattern. I'm actually building an internal tool for such fines (called "debit memos") for a company with several thousand travel agents, and they're not uncommon at all.
- jjeaff 4y ago
  Usually, the notices I have seen actually say "only 1 ticket remaining at this price". Which they can technically make true by simply setting their pricing algorithm to sell the next ticket for a penny more or a penny less.
wjnc 4y ago
In the Netherlands it probably does (“oneerlijke handelspraktijken”). The main regulator for the European activities of booking is in the Netherlands. If GP were to document this and submit it to the ACM [1] this might be picked up. The maximum fine is a puny 900 k€ though. They already got a few of these and don’t seem to care much. And that just shows the problem with regulating these large platforms - local regulators with their hands tied against billion dollar platforms. The EU should just step in and regulate these monsters directly and pro-consumer. Or regulators should grow a pair and try to get the CEO / board replaced (a theoretical possibility when they keep getting administrative fines in NL). That will shake up the stockholders enough to shake some sense into these firms. [1] https://www.consuwijzer.nl/doe-uw-melding-bij-acm-consuwijzer https://www.consuwijzer.nl/doe-uw-melding-bij-acm-consuwijze...
- mapcars 4y ago
  Well if you made 5 mil with this and payed 900k fine you still made 4 mil, so yeah.
kristopolous 4y ago
I wonder if the fraud is a two way street. Could I just craft a POST request and book what I want? Each of these companies are only allocated a certain amount of inventory so the availability is probably there, especially at the larger hotels Additionally do they float the price and if so can I edit that also in the post request and name my own price? If their interface has a fuzzy relationship to reality than maybe you can fuzz it your way I'm not a criminal but I'm still curious.

mdale 4y ago

It banks on the experience that many have had where delaying a decision has resulted in "Lossing" out on staying where (or at a price) you wanted. Much worse if coordinating with multiple parties going on the trip :) I guess the most fair disclosure would provide a Google flights like pricing chart that shows cost increase and seasonal availability projections. I try to make the decision independently of the point of sale vendor. The aggregator can help limit impact of these tactics by API contract with these sites that focus on price/availability without artificial urgency.

sjducb 4y ago

I've seen that too.