Have you ever used Trivago to book your hotel accommodations (https://www.trivago.com/)? We did a quick search and found that the prices didn’t seem any cheaper than other sites, but we might be mistaken. What do you use to book your hotel stays? Please comment.
Booking.com
Best but still little issues in arranging flight booking refunds.
I also use Booking.com but for accomodation not flights. I do not fly of recent times as we cannot afford it.
Booking.com
Lodging only. Genius Level 3. Used them for years. Find they outstrip everything I have tried before. Had only ONE issue in Wales one time and Customer Service bailed me out immediately right while I was in the lodging and talking to a disgruntled landlord at a B&B Every other experience has been great with super deals. Love the Genius 3 secret deals that appear occasionally!
ALWAYS look up and call or message the hotel/Inn that you want DIRECTLY, (unless concern with the veracity of an establishment) most will provide you with a lower rate for direct booking. The major booking websites are troubling on a number of levels. Some years ago, Two companies acquired ALL of the private booking sites. Thus, if you look, almost all of them are owned by Expedia (Hotels.com, Vrbo, Travelocity, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Ebookers, CheapTickets, CarRentals.com, Wotif, Trivago, etc), or Booking.com (Priceline.com, Agoda, Kayak, Cheapflights, Rentalcars.com, Momondo, and OpenTable). You will usually get the same rates from any of these, but occasionally one will discount its commission (to the hotels) to keep the illusion that they are different. They usually make requirements that individual establishments can’t advertise a lower rate.
They have created a monopoly on reservations to give you (the consumer) the illusion of having choices, but blocking out the small players. They charge a hefty commission (usually around 20%) to the actual inns and hotels, and don’t really provide you any service except for serving as a directory. If you have a problem, they just serve as a middleman to contact the establishment that you need to deal with, which you could do on your own with any reputable establishment.
We own a small inn, and we used to do much business through people who found us through a B&B directory. But Expedia bought it and dismantled it and it just points to their site. Now they function as a mafia that doesn’t own or operate any inns or hotels, but has bought up the internet, gives consumers a sense of choice for the 10 different websites to search, but then charges the inns ‘protection money’ in order to be able to connect to customers. Especially in busy locations, individual websites are buried below the listings of the big companies that specialize in SEO and spend on advertising so that you won’t find us in a general search.
Thanks for sharing this. It’s helpful to understand the business landscape that is often not front and center when doing business.
Daniel, thanks for the insight as we seek to support small business owners. What is the best way then to find smaller inns that may not be listed on commission driven big sites?
Thanks so much for this view behind the curtain!
This is helpful insight
Used booking . Com once only and a real hassle to cancel and get a refund. Never again. I call directly to the accommodation and no contact with any of the so called cheap fare sites.
I usually check Kayak for all my bookings (flight, hotel, car). Kayak surveys all the major sites and lists out all the prices from each site.
Another option is Agoda. The prices on Agoda is sometimes a bit cheaper than the hotel’s actual site.
I use Booking (the Genius levels suck you in…), but occasionally go straight to the hotel site.
Although I have used Trivago and Booking.com and others I have found that once you have seen a hotel that you think suits, call or message the hotel direct for a quote and it is usually cheaper than any of the booking sites.
To broaden things a bit, the advice of checking both booking sites and the provider really applies to any travel services, not just hotels. The same thing applies to airlines and car rentals, as well.
A key consideration for differences is not just for cost, but where you interact for customer service. If you have some sort of complication, the provider will generally direct you to whoever you booked through as the first point of contact. I know that once or twice I’ve had issues with a hotel reservation, and when I talked to the people at the hotel, they referred me to my booking agent (Hotels.com, I think). This is especially important when interacting with a provider that is a large conglomerate, rather than a small operator, where it may be easier to interact with the proprietor directly.
But the same thing applies to airline reservations. If you have problems with an airline booking, and you call the airline’s support line, they’ll often tell you that you have to interact through your booking agent.
Thus, it’s always worth comparing costs between the provider directly and a third-party booking agent, but unless the price differentials between the two are dramatic, it’s usually not a bad idea to book directly, even if the provider’s cost is a little higher. And for good measure, if the cost quoted by the third party is dramatically lower, then that’s an indication that the level of service provided may be significantly lower (such as limited hours, or difficulties getting through to a live agent).
We’ve found that booking online is generally cheaper and sometimes hotels will even recommend that we book on line to get the better price. We tend to find the better prices on Hotwire.com.
I sometimes find that priceline.com last minute deals are a great option when I’m driving through the US. There’s often where you’re driving and you’re not sure how far your drive for the day so you can decide your tired and pull over at a restaurant or gas station and then pull up priceline.com on the app and find some pretty good last minute deals.