7 ms·

If your hotel double books you, they're out of rooms and can't help. If Booking.com double books you, they can pull strings to give you a different room in any

by rjh29 4y ago

If your hotel double books you, they're out of rooms and can't help. If Booking.com double books you, they can pull strings to give you a different room in any hotel on their site (and they do). I don't doubt you had that experience personally, but it doesn't match my experience at all, and I spend 1/3 of my life in hotels.

iudqnolq 4y ago
I showed up at a (cheap) hotel booked on Booking.com earlier this year. They had no record of my booking. They couldn't help me. I spent the next hour on the phone or on hold with a booking.com rep. They claimed the hotel had made a mistake and should be the one to fix it. They attempted to contact the appropriate person at the hotel but were unable to. About four hours later somebody appropriate from the hotel responded to the booking.com rep and "found" the "lost" booking. I brought up the policy you mentioned, and the booking.com rep told me that they hotel gets a chance to fix it first. They seemed quite surprised the hotel ghosted them for four hours, and told me that eventually at some point at night they would book me some other room. So I'd say the booking.com policy you mentioned isn't quite as valuable as you might think at first.
TylerE 4y ago
If you’re booked 3rd party you’re much more likely to be the one bumped I. The first place. You’re also likely to get the least desireable rooms on the least desireable floors.
- rjh29 4y ago
  People say that but it doesn't ring true in my experience. Let's face it, you're just paying more for the same service if you book directly.
  - Benjamin_Dobell 4y ago
    Strangely, at least in Australia, you often pay more for booking directly. On multiple occasions I've checked a hotel's website and found aggregators with cheaper rates, then literally walked in the front door and asked what's the best they can do. It's worse and I end up getting my wife to book on her mobile phone from the parking lot and let her complete the check-in. Don't get me wrong, generally not a fan of middlemen. But the experience when booking a hotel directly comes down to the owners/management, and it's going to vary wildly compared to one of these big aggregators.
    - rjh29 4y ago
      I've heard booking.com forbids them to charge first-party customers less than the booking.com price, and the hotel is beholden to the site for income so they play along. The only people booking directly are basically idiots, so for those people they charge as much as they can. In the UK there are large chains such as Travelodge who have pulled out from booking.com entirely and made people go to their site.
      - rjh29 4y ago
        And yes downvote me but maybe think about whether spending more money going to first-party sites is actually serving you?
        rfrey 4y ago
        I didn't downvote you, but I did notice that you are making repeated assertions about price disparity between direct and third party; multiple people are posting actual links and experiments showing you wrong; to which you more vehemently ("idiots") repeat the assertions (without evidence).
        rjh29 4y ago
        I apologised in another comment and admit it is not universally true, as many people have pointed out. However I have repeatedly tried to get hotels to price match; they don't, and they never mentioned a loyalty scheme. That is my personal experience. Of course it may differ based on the type of hotel (I don't use very expensive chain hotels), the country, etc.
        chipotle_coyote 4y ago
        While I didn't downvote you, I'm one of those "idiots" who tends to book directly on hotel web sites because I'm a member of several free-to-join hotel loyalty programs. The aggregators generally do not beat prices available for members (which, again, I can be for free). It's not uncommon for me to find specials, room types, or even availability, period, available on the direct sites that the aggregators don't have. And I have never once been told "sorry, we can't find your reservation" if I book on the direct website, whereas I absolutely have run into that issue -- albeit generally with independent hotels and B&Bs -- when booking through aggregators. But, sure, I'm obviously an idiot! I'm just over here drooling stupidly while I get better and/or cheaper hotel rooms.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
    I'll tell you a story about Booking.com. I booked an ostensibly available hotel in Ouray, CO in fairly peak season. I got there and they of course, had already sold the booking beforehand and because the systems didn't link up correctly Booking's availability was not updated. It was the hotel's fault, but it didn't matter. Not a single other hotel in Ouray had availability, and, if you happen to know the area, anything that resembles a hotel outside of Ouray is going to be a significantly long drive. Booking.com was zero help at all when I called them. None. They couldn't find or book me another hotel, and basically just told me that there was nothing they could do besides refund my money. There are many, many stories like this. Don't get me wrong, I actually like Booking. I think it's a great way for smaller properties to get visibility without having to build and maintain that web presence themselves. But when it goes wrong, don't expect them to go to bat for you. They are incentivized to keep making money, and threatening to delist hotels for fucking over customers when the hotel clearly messed up is clearly not a game they have decided to play. I always book directly with the hotel if I can, because, if you do that, the shit that I mentioned just doesn't happen. Sure, if it's double the price, I'll roll the dice with Booking. But it basically never is. If it's something like 5-10% of the nightly price extra, I'll pay that premium to not have to deal with any BS. Usually it's the exact same price anyway, if it's an available option (there are some hotels that literally only survive via Booking these days).
    - JimDabell 4y ago
      > Not a single other hotel in Ouray had availability, and, if you happen to know the area, anything that resembles a hotel outside of Ouray is going to be a significantly long drive. > Booking.com was zero help at all when I called them. None. They couldn't find or book me another hotel, and basically just told me that there was nothing they could do besides refund my money. I get that you were in a very difficult position, but if there weren’t any hotel rooms, what were you expecting Booking.com to do? And what did the hotel do to help you? > I always book directly with the hotel if I can, because, if you do that, the shit that I mentioned just doesn't happen. Of course it does. Booking.com didn't invent double bookings.
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I mostly deal with Hilton brand hotels for both work and our newish “hybrid digital nomad” lifestyle where we hop across cities in the US for 7 months a year. We stayed in Hilton brand hotels for around 160 days over the last year. You don’t get loyalty points and days don’t count toward status when booking through a third party. With Hilton, those loyalties points can account for 20%-35% toward future stays. Meaning if I spend $100, I will get points worth $20-$35 toward future stays. Based on rooms I’ve already booked this year with just points, we are staying free for 25 days in 5 cities this year. Of course point accumulation is a lot slower for most people. But there are a lot of people who stay in hotels using other folks money when traveling for business. Most hotels chains also have a “lowest price guarantee” where they will match a price found on a third party site. This isn’t even mentioning all of the hassle you can avoid dealing with hotels directly if things go wrong or if you just don’t like the service. Last year, I booked a 7 day half work half personal stay in San Francisco at the Hilton Financial district. It was a run down dump. I went to the front desk, told them I would be cancelling the rest of my stay and booked another hotel - the Hilton Parc 55 - for the rest of the week. The first hotel charged me for one night. That would have been much more of a hassle going through a third party site. First you would have to hope that Hilton gave the money back to booking.com and then go through the hassle of getting your money back from them. On that same note, I booked a regular room at Parc 55, messaged the hotel on the app before I got there and asked did they have any free Diamond upgrades available. They upgraded me to the fitness room - with a gym inside the room - for free. You don’t get those benefits when booking through a third party.
    - rjh29 4y ago
      It seems to make sense if you're going to use the same brand for a long time, yeah. I tend to stay wherever is cheapest so I haven't exploited loyalty schemes yet, but reading the comments I might be missing out.
- ptero 4y ago
  That does not match my experience. IME the bumping is first and foremost dependent on the time of arrival. While the hotel has rooms, they will give them out to those who booked and show up. Should the hotel run out due to overbooking, how the next guest booked a room is not going to matter. My 2c.
  - vinay_ys 4y ago
    Big sophisticated hotels have blocks of rooms at different price points. So, even if there are rooms currently empty but have been reserved for customers who have paid higher price, they won't give them to you. In recent years, I have not had any booking problems whatsoever. Only problem I had more than 10 years ago was about arriving very late and finding that my room reservation had been released and they were full. Luckily it was a big chain hotel which had another property nearby and was able to get me a room there for the night and then resume my original room for the rest of the week long stay. This was very busy conference week and all 3+ star hotels were full in the area.
    - e12e 4y ago
      > even if there are rooms currently empty but have been reserved for customers who have paid higher price, they won't give them to you. In my experience (not very big hotel) - the emphasis was on full occupancy - rooms would only be held (with other guest with booking at the counter) in rare circumstances (eg we knew an incoming flight was delayed and we were certain the other guest would arrive. Even then we might bump the other guest if it meant we had more time to scramble to find an alternative room for the guest that hadn't shown up yet).
ww520 4y ago
If a hotel double booked you and you showed up, the hotel would walk you to a nearby similar hotel all paid for by the hotel. The “walk” process is a standard industry practice.
- conical 4y ago
  This whole reply thread looks astroturfed.
  - e12e 4y ago
    I worked a few years as a night manager in a hotel in Norway - we always had to figure out a solution when overbooked - at "our" expense (customer pays/pre-paid agreed upon price, we cover room and transport at alternative accommodation - usually more expensive). As a bonus re: booking.com - they integrated with our booking system and always overbooked, unless our system lied about available rooms (would happily sell rooms when none were available - especially annoying at night, when a booked room typically means an occupied room).
  - rjh29 4y ago
    Or maybe booking.com is actually a better experience for most people than the legacy hotel sites. It's more streamlined, it's cheaper, you don't have to sign up etc. If you think I'm an astroturfer look at my comment history, I've never mentioned hotels before.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    By which party?
  - ww520 4y ago
    I notice it every time when the benefit of booking 3rd party is questioned.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Having to walk a guest when the hotel cannot meet the terms of the reservation is part of the contract between the big hotel brands and franchisors. If the hotel operators do not fulfill the walk policy, then you should contact the 800 number for Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Choice/Wyndham/etc and they will mail you a check for your expenses and bill the hotel owner.
classified 4y ago
So funny how this thread got nerd-sniped from Brave search to hotel booking.
- rjh29 4y ago
  I love the word nerd-sniped and indeed it applies to HN comments very often. We just want to bicker.
- GCA10 4y ago
  As the guy who started the thread, I'm just glad to have provided an (accidental) portal into a whole new subdomain of HN community expertise. We've ended up with the perfect mix of helpful insights, provocative theories, well-documented personal experiences (sample of one) -- and brief snark that gets reined in before it gets ugly. Later on this year, I'll offer some thoughts about hotel bookings that can be nerd-sniped the other way -- into a discussion of Brave search
crossroadsguy 4y ago
Well a hotel has never double booked me. A hotel in India however of Taj group (business class) took me to a much better class which was not from their group/chain in a Mercedes and put me up there for the same duration and added full meal plan from their side because my room had some problems and they were fully booked. And booking.com? Heaven’s sake! Where do you even want me to start! First of all I can’t contact them right then. Nope I can’t! And if I do they fucking stonewall me and more than once just waved the T&C in my face. Once they fucking refused to refund because they said “I should take it with the hotel” I mean the experience has been so shitty with TPAs that I don’t even want to look for deals now. I just call the hotel and book. They confirm and they double confirm and if anything goes wrong there’s literally a desk with more than one people 24x7. It’s just so much worth it.
- rjh29 4y ago
  If you're using hotels with Mercedes then you're booking an entire different class to the hotels I book and that may explain our difference in experiences :)

by rjh29 4y ago

iudqnolq 4y ago

I showed up at a (cheap) hotel booked on Booking.com earlier this year. They had no record of my booking. They couldn't help me. I spent the next hour on the phone or on hold with a booking.com rep. They claimed the hotel had made a mistake and should be the one to fix it. They attempted to contact the appropriate person at the hotel but were unable to. About four hours later somebody appropriate from the hotel responded to the booking.com rep and "found" the "lost" booking. I brought up the policy you mentioned, and the booking.com rep told me that they hotel gets a chance to fix it first. They seemed quite surprised the hotel ghosted them for four hours, and told me that eventually at some point at night they would book me some other room. So I'd say the booking.com policy you mentioned isn't quite as valuable as you might think at first.

TylerE 4y ago

If you’re booked 3rd party you’re much more likely to be the one bumped I. The first place. You’re also likely to get the least desireable rooms on the least desireable floors.

rjh29 4y ago
People say that but it doesn't ring true in my experience. Let's face it, you're just paying more for the same service if you book directly.
- Benjamin_Dobell 4y ago
  Strangely, at least in Australia, you often pay more for booking directly. On multiple occasions I've checked a hotel's website and found aggregators with cheaper rates, then literally walked in the front door and asked what's the best they can do. It's worse and I end up getting my wife to book on her mobile phone from the parking lot and let her complete the check-in. Don't get me wrong, generally not a fan of middlemen. But the experience when booking a hotel directly comes down to the owners/management, and it's going to vary wildly compared to one of these big aggregators.
  - rjh29 4y ago
    I've heard booking.com forbids them to charge first-party customers less than the booking.com price, and the hotel is beholden to the site for income so they play along. The only people booking directly are basically idiots, so for those people they charge as much as they can. In the UK there are large chains such as Travelodge who have pulled out from booking.com entirely and made people go to their site.
    - rjh29 4y ago
      And yes downvote me but maybe think about whether spending more money going to first-party sites is actually serving you?
      - rfrey 4y ago
        I didn't downvote you, but I did notice that you are making repeated assertions about price disparity between direct and third party; multiple people are posting actual links and experiments showing you wrong; to which you more vehemently ("idiots") repeat the assertions (without evidence).
        rjh29 4y ago
        I apologised in another comment and admit it is not universally true, as many people have pointed out. However I have repeatedly tried to get hotels to price match; they don't, and they never mentioned a loyalty scheme. That is my personal experience. Of course it may differ based on the type of hotel (I don't use very expensive chain hotels), the country, etc.
      - chipotle_coyote 4y ago
        While I didn't downvote you, I'm one of those "idiots" who tends to book directly on hotel web sites because I'm a member of several free-to-join hotel loyalty programs. The aggregators generally do not beat prices available for members (which, again, I can be for free). It's not uncommon for me to find specials, room types, or even availability, period, available on the direct sites that the aggregators don't have. And I have never once been told "sorry, we can't find your reservation" if I book on the direct website, whereas I absolutely have run into that issue -- albeit generally with independent hotels and B&Bs -- when booking through aggregators. But, sure, I'm obviously an idiot! I'm just over here drooling stupidly while I get better and/or cheaper hotel rooms.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  I'll tell you a story about Booking.com. I booked an ostensibly available hotel in Ouray, CO in fairly peak season. I got there and they of course, had already sold the booking beforehand and because the systems didn't link up correctly Booking's availability was not updated. It was the hotel's fault, but it didn't matter. Not a single other hotel in Ouray had availability, and, if you happen to know the area, anything that resembles a hotel outside of Ouray is going to be a significantly long drive. Booking.com was zero help at all when I called them. None. They couldn't find or book me another hotel, and basically just told me that there was nothing they could do besides refund my money. There are many, many stories like this. Don't get me wrong, I actually like Booking. I think it's a great way for smaller properties to get visibility without having to build and maintain that web presence themselves. But when it goes wrong, don't expect them to go to bat for you. They are incentivized to keep making money, and threatening to delist hotels for fucking over customers when the hotel clearly messed up is clearly not a game they have decided to play. I always book directly with the hotel if I can, because, if you do that, the shit that I mentioned just doesn't happen. Sure, if it's double the price, I'll roll the dice with Booking. But it basically never is. If it's something like 5-10% of the nightly price extra, I'll pay that premium to not have to deal with any BS. Usually it's the exact same price anyway, if it's an available option (there are some hotels that literally only survive via Booking these days).
  - JimDabell 4y ago
    > Not a single other hotel in Ouray had availability, and, if you happen to know the area, anything that resembles a hotel outside of Ouray is going to be a significantly long drive. > Booking.com was zero help at all when I called them. None. They couldn't find or book me another hotel, and basically just told me that there was nothing they could do besides refund my money. I get that you were in a very difficult position, but if there weren’t any hotel rooms, what were you expecting Booking.com to do? And what did the hotel do to help you? > I always book directly with the hotel if I can, because, if you do that, the shit that I mentioned just doesn't happen. Of course it does. Booking.com didn't invent double bookings.
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
- scarface74 4y ago
  I mostly deal with Hilton brand hotels for both work and our newish “hybrid digital nomad” lifestyle where we hop across cities in the US for 7 months a year. We stayed in Hilton brand hotels for around 160 days over the last year. You don’t get loyalty points and days don’t count toward status when booking through a third party. With Hilton, those loyalties points can account for 20%-35% toward future stays. Meaning if I spend $100, I will get points worth $20-$35 toward future stays. Based on rooms I’ve already booked this year with just points, we are staying free for 25 days in 5 cities this year. Of course point accumulation is a lot slower for most people. But there are a lot of people who stay in hotels using other folks money when traveling for business. Most hotels chains also have a “lowest price guarantee” where they will match a price found on a third party site. This isn’t even mentioning all of the hassle you can avoid dealing with hotels directly if things go wrong or if you just don’t like the service. Last year, I booked a 7 day half work half personal stay in San Francisco at the Hilton Financial district. It was a run down dump. I went to the front desk, told them I would be cancelling the rest of my stay and booked another hotel - the Hilton Parc 55 - for the rest of the week. The first hotel charged me for one night. That would have been much more of a hassle going through a third party site. First you would have to hope that Hilton gave the money back to booking.com and then go through the hassle of getting your money back from them. On that same note, I booked a regular room at Parc 55, messaged the hotel on the app before I got there and asked did they have any free Diamond upgrades available. They upgraded me to the fitness room - with a gym inside the room - for free. You don’t get those benefits when booking through a third party.
  - rjh29 4y ago
    It seems to make sense if you're going to use the same brand for a long time, yeah. I tend to stay wherever is cheapest so I haven't exploited loyalty schemes yet, but reading the comments I might be missing out.
ptero 4y ago
That does not match my experience. IME the bumping is first and foremost dependent on the time of arrival. While the hotel has rooms, they will give them out to those who booked and show up. Should the hotel run out due to overbooking, how the next guest booked a room is not going to matter. My 2c.
- vinay_ys 4y ago
  Big sophisticated hotels have blocks of rooms at different price points. So, even if there are rooms currently empty but have been reserved for customers who have paid higher price, they won't give them to you. In recent years, I have not had any booking problems whatsoever. Only problem I had more than 10 years ago was about arriving very late and finding that my room reservation had been released and they were full. Luckily it was a big chain hotel which had another property nearby and was able to get me a room there for the night and then resume my original room for the rest of the week long stay. This was very busy conference week and all 3+ star hotels were full in the area.
  - e12e 4y ago
    > even if there are rooms currently empty but have been reserved for customers who have paid higher price, they won't give them to you. In my experience (not very big hotel) - the emphasis was on full occupancy - rooms would only be held (with other guest with booking at the counter) in rare circumstances (eg we knew an incoming flight was delayed and we were certain the other guest would arrive. Even then we might bump the other guest if it meant we had more time to scramble to find an alternative room for the guest that hadn't shown up yet).

ww520 4y ago

If a hotel double booked you and you showed up, the hotel would walk you to a nearby similar hotel all paid for by the hotel. The “walk” process is a standard industry practice.

conical 4y ago
This whole reply thread looks astroturfed.
- e12e 4y ago
  I worked a few years as a night manager in a hotel in Norway - we always had to figure out a solution when overbooked - at "our" expense (customer pays/pre-paid agreed upon price, we cover room and transport at alternative accommodation - usually more expensive). As a bonus re: booking.com - they integrated with our booking system and always overbooked, unless our system lied about available rooms (would happily sell rooms when none were available - especially annoying at night, when a booked room typically means an occupied room).
- rjh29 4y ago
  Or maybe booking.com is actually a better experience for most people than the legacy hotel sites. It's more streamlined, it's cheaper, you don't have to sign up etc. If you think I'm an astroturfer look at my comment history, I've never mentioned hotels before.
- flangola7 4y ago
  By which party?
- ww520 4y ago
  I notice it every time when the benefit of booking 3rd party is questioned.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Having to walk a guest when the hotel cannot meet the terms of the reservation is part of the contract between the big hotel brands and franchisors. If the hotel operators do not fulfill the walk policy, then you should contact the 800 number for Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Choice/Wyndham/etc and they will mail you a check for your expenses and bill the hotel owner.

classified 4y ago

So funny how this thread got nerd-sniped from Brave search to hotel booking.

rjh29 4y ago
I love the word nerd-sniped and indeed it applies to HN comments very often. We just want to bicker.
GCA10 4y ago
As the guy who started the thread, I'm just glad to have provided an (accidental) portal into a whole new subdomain of HN community expertise. We've ended up with the perfect mix of helpful insights, provocative theories, well-documented personal experiences (sample of one) -- and brief snark that gets reined in before it gets ugly. Later on this year, I'll offer some thoughts about hotel bookings that can be nerd-sniped the other way -- into a discussion of Brave search

crossroadsguy 4y ago

Well a hotel has never double booked me. A hotel in India however of Taj group (business class) took me to a much better class which was not from their group/chain in a Mercedes and put me up there for the same duration and added full meal plan from their side because my room had some problems and they were fully booked. And booking.com? Heaven’s sake! Where do you even want me to start! First of all I can’t contact them right then. Nope I can’t! And if I do they fucking stonewall me and more than once just waved the T&C in my face. Once they fucking refused to refund because they said “I should take it with the hotel” I mean the experience has been so shitty with TPAs that I don’t even want to look for deals now. I just call the hotel and book. They confirm and they double confirm and if anything goes wrong there’s literally a desk with more than one people 24x7. It’s just so much worth it.

rjh29 4y ago
If you're using hotels with Mercedes then you're booking an entire different class to the hotels I book and that may explain our difference in experiences :)