Are hotel sites ripping you off based on your IP address?

Yes, When we were in Portugal last year, I saw that the hotel we were staying in had different rates if you had a US
VPN vs a VPN from Spain. The difference in the rate was substantial. I do not know if they have different rates based upon where in the US you are from. But they do have different rates based upon what country you are from and it appears it is based upon the VPN.

So the explanation was that the higher price is the standard price and the lower price is the discounted rate. It would have been more revealing if the author had gone to the hotel website and checked that price, too. If it were consistently the SF price, I would feel better about it.

Apparently, the practices are not pricing the hotel out of the SF market, so I have mixed feelings because a commodity is worth what someone is willing to pay and apparently SF folks are willing to pay more .... Still, sort of twisted for a capitalist like me. Gotta ponder this one a while.

I think "ripping you off" is quite a harsh way to put it. I read about a big kerfuffle on this Forum last Fall regarding an article that locals in Lisbon were getting better pricing at some restaurants than tourists were. I never considered that getting ripped off either. Another topic on this Forum was that through some rental car agencies you can get a better rate using the .eu site rather than the .com site. To me that's just smart shopping by the consumer to discover this and take advantage.

From the article:

A pub offering a happy hour discount, for instance, is an example of
price discrimination, Goldman noted, though not one that consumers
usually carp about.

I also recall a story last week that someone tried to sue a bar for discrimination because of holding a ladies night where women got cheaper drinks than guys. https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/31/business/ladies-night-lawsuit-small-business/index.html Sadly, it drove the restaurant out of business. Why a guy would launch a lawsuit over that is beyond me. When I was 18 years old we welcomed a place with ladies night because you know who went there? Young ladies!

I know the hotel thing is different than that, but I'm pretty sure geographic discrimination is not a thing.

Thanks for the information. I would have never guessed that the Booking.com conglomeration and Expedia conglomeration were price discriminating based on personal information such as relative wealth as algorithmically determined by IP location.

I'll make it a point of avoid using either on them.

I was listening to the Mr E recommended history of Ukraine lecture series from Yale and a recent episode had a guest lecturer who made an aside about post communist Prague:

"... this lawlessness that is accompanying

the transition to capitalism. I mean, I still remember the transition
to capitalism even in so-called

"gentle places," like Prague, where you just got in a cab and they
could charge you any amount of money.

There was no in there being any kind of limitation, or any kind of
commitment to rates

that were pro... That were posted. I mean, you just felt constantly
vulnerable because there were no rules. "

Ah, America has become Prague after fall of iron curtain! How exciting!

Happy travels!

I would have never guessed that the Booking.com conglomeration and
Expedia conglomeration were price discriminating based on personal
information such as relative wealth as algorithmically determined by
IP location.

David. If you believe Booking.com, and even the author seems to believe them, what you describe is exactly what is not happening.

But T. SNYDER is excellent.

I am not a fan of the practice, but I still have to side with Allen on this one.

Did I misread Mike Beebe's article which I thought asserted that you received different and higher prices for hotel rooms if your IP address was from San Fransico (a wealthy area) vs. Kansas City? If I have, my apologies Mr E.

P.S. Thanks for linking Timothy Snyder's lectures on Ukraine. Fantastic!

With regard to Allen's post, about 50 years ago, a night club in a beach town in the panhandle of Florida got into trouble for doing a similar thing. On "ladies night", the ladies paid a price for a drink if they bought it themselves. If a guy bought them a drink, the price was double. A law suit was threatened, but I don't remember how the issue was resolved.

At any rate (no pun intended), the airlines do the same with their "dynamic pricing". All the old theories of supply and demand have devolved into "control the supply and demand what you want". The consumers are at the mercy of the few conglomerates that own just about everything in any given industry.

David, unless I read it wrong, always a possibility. Its the hotel not Booking.com that's doing the manipulation. But I will read it again.

Mr. E, not to continue this digression too long but I assumed hotels such as the "Little Charlie Hotel" which was used as an example lacked the IT staff, the dynamic pricing algorithms and the general technical prowess needed to pull off scalping-style discrimatory pricing whereas the mega-corps of Booking.com and Expedia did. So even if the Little Charlie Hotel was "in on it", I'm going to assume the muscle and brains of the operation are not these small hotels, Airbnbs, boutique hotels and so on.

Now many think it is fine for a company to offer discounts (or the reverse higher prices for some) based on sex, age, good looks, race, income, religion, carry-on vs checked luggage or zip code but by golly those of us from the Mecca of Northeast Ohio don't appreciate not getting the same deal of those fat cats from Kansas City!

Happy travels!

David, I agree with you and was surprised that Booking.com said that the pricing structure was set by the hotel and that the hotel was capable of doing such things. I think the truth might be that Booking.com has the capability to do such things but only does it as directed by the hotel. When going direct to the hotel page to book, especially among the smaller hotels, I have noticed that there are the same booking engines being used by a lot of different hotels. Must be somehting they buy or rent the use of. Those might be capable of a lot of things. Dont know. And you illustrate the problem with doing this sort of thing. It could be bad business if the practice creates bad perceptions and bad public relations. If eventually bad perceptions and public relations affects income it is bad capitalism.