Booking with agent booking site vs direct with hotel

I use booking.com for reviews. But I always book directly with the hotel.

Like many posters here we use booking.Com mainly for reviews. I look for hotels by location and their maps help. Also, it gives you an idea of which hotels to look at that fits your criteria - price, A/C, parking, etc. When you apply the filters
Also, in some countries, such as Croatia, smaller B&B’s use booking cause they don’t have enough rooms to support their own website. Even if you direct email them, they direct you through booking.com. If you never check their website, you could overlook a great place to stay.

The only advantage I can think of is that the range of options opens up if I'm not looking for a lodging affiliated with one of my memberships. However, I've had my share of "charming" European hotels which frequently were not as comfortable as I prefer. I rather like booking a known quantity. What am I missing for other advantages?

You answered your own question. It's a good site for finding independently run hotels. They have more filtering options than every other similar site that I've found, and making changes/cancelling reservations is easy and convenient.

For Hilton/Marriott/IHG/etc properties it has no value, especially if you have status.

Thanks for the thoughts so far!

I have used other sites for reviewing hotels, but not Booking.com so much. I will try them next time I am shopping for a hotel. It sounds like the filters are better than the sites I've been using.

As stated above, most people here use booking.com to find available lodging and to read the reviews. But we always push for booking directly with the hotel, if possible.

Like others, I use Booking.com for reviews and info but book directly with the hotel. Only booked once with them, for a very small village hotel in Calabria that didn’t have its own booking site.

I sometimes book with booking.com. If you book a few times, you "unlock" further discounts of 10-15% on future bookings. One disadvantage is that you don't earn points for stays which would not work for the OP. I like being able to cancel easily if needed.

Occasionally, I have found a better no-free cancellation option using booking.com rather than direct with the hotel. On a recent trip to Mexico City, booking.com included a free cab ride from the airport to the hotel for the same room price. As others have mentioned, some smaller hotels or b&bs don't have convenient credit card secure online booking option direct with the hotel. I check the hotel site and choose the better deal for my needs.

My practice is to use aggregator sites (google flights, booking.com, TripAdvisor, etc) to research air and lodging, but I always book the airline through their own site, and I almost always book the hotel through the hotel site, too.

The exception on hotels: I have had good results with Expedia in recent years for booking hotels in the US. For Europe, however, I always book through the hotel site. The only problems I ever had with hotel bookings in both the US and Europe was with booking.com about 10 years ago, and I lost trust in them. YMMV...

I prefer booking directly with the hotel or BNB, but occasionally sites like Booking.com have a lower price. I am a Hilton Honors member and when I pick a Hilton hotel, I can book it through Hilton Honors and save as well as get points toward a free stay. Further, I am a member of the Holiday Inn membership that has many brands and do the same as with Hilton Honors.

While I am a member of those two places, I decide on the lodging based on price, ratings and location.

Hilton/Marriott/IHG/etc

Noting that many of us don't want a generic hotel experience in Europe. And many places don't have those hotel chains anyway, Booking.com is essential for the Iceland Ring Road for example. It's also nice to have bookings listed chronologically in the app, and there will be a warning if stay dates overlap for do it yourselfers.

I will say I have used points for free stays in many European countries. An exceptional stay was at a UK Marriott with 3 free night certs (earned during the easy terms after financial crash) where after a minor problem with the reservation at check in I was given club access, it was really heaven! Free cooked to order breakfast, free wine, beer, and deserts the rest of the day. And open 24 hours so perfect for jetlag.

I think you have misread many of the posts you saw which “pushed “ booking dot com.

Many experienced travelers here will suggest using the site to find hotels which match their criteria for the desired dates. Booking.Com makes it easy to do that. And in situations where lodging is getting booked up, like around Oktoberfest in Munich, for example, it is much faster than checking individual hotel recommendations one by one.

But the advice to use the site for searching is almost always followed by the statement “once you find a hotel go to the hotel website to book directly with them”.

I suspect you are right, Sasha.

I started this thread after reading a post from someone who had just booked using Booking.com and probably conflated that with my recollections of the many other mentions I've seen of Booking.com on different threads and posts.

I will certainly join the group from here that uses Booking.com to research for my next hotel. But, as you say, will continue my practice of then booking directly with hotel! Glad to hear that many feel the same way.

I'm wondering what advantage Booking.com patrons find?

After a few completed Booking.com stays, there is usually a 10% discount on all future stays booked through the site, but confess to never checking if this is a real discount, and cheaper than booking direct.

Edit to add: Actually I have a real experience with Hilton. Booking an Embassy Suites on hilton.com was about 10% more than the same room on Booking.com. I didn't earn points, but I don't feel Hilton points are very valuable, since it takes far more points for a free night than IHG or Choice. So I pocketed the $15 saved by using booking.com in lieu of receiving points.

I do not use at all booking.com for hotels, but I do use it to find apartments in Italy. Often these are listed only on third-party sites like that, including VRBO and AirBnB, but I have found the booking policies and communication with booking.com to be very good. And their map search makes it easy to find something in a desired location.

One more thing about booking.com. the reason a lot of people seek them out for reviews is that they only will let you review if you actually have stayed at the property which is not the case for some other sites.

Another fan of booking.com for some of the same reasons already presented:

"Many experienced travelers here will suggest using the site to find hotels which match their criteria for the desired dates. Booking.Com makes it easy to do that....it is much faster than checking individual hotel recommendations one by one."

"Occasionally, I have found a better no-free cancellation option using booking.com rather than direct with the hotel."

"As others have mentioned, some smaller hotels or b&bs don't have convenient credit card secure online booking option direct with the hotel."

"If you book a few times, you "unlock" further discounts of 10-15% on future bookings."

"It's a good site for finding independently run hotels. They have more filtering options than every other similar site that I've found, and making changes/cancelling reservations is easy and convenient."

Additionally, you can't leave a review on the site unless you've actually stayed at the property: they send you a review link AFTER your verified stay. What with the amount of fake reviews, both glowing or not, out there....

It's all up to style and maybe frequency of travel so no right or wrong but we are personally not loyal to any of the chain hotels, and object to paying for "services" we don't want or need. This is especially true of annoying resort fees for amenities we don't use. I've found the overall quality can also vary a LOT from hotel to hotel under the same brand. As far as making direct reservations by phone or internet, if I'm going to be doing it with "Kevin" or "Jane" in India, I might as well just use booking.com? :O)

Many of the hotels and rooms on Booking.com actually prefer people booking through the site, rather than direct. These are cases where Booking.com is their primary source of bookings and marketing, and only guests going through Booking.com can leave reviews. They also use them for processing payment, in all reducing their effort.

I find the site handy for comparing options available, from hostels to luxury apartments and homes. The map function is very handy, not only for location, it also shows what is booked, so you can get a rough sense of demand for rooms. Being able to sort by wanted options (that place with a refrigerator) a breeze, and the act of booking is very easy, just minutes, and secure. Most of the time payment is through booking, a few at the place.

As for points and such, traveling in Europe, I rarely stay in chain hotels. I still have status and points from my business days, but other than a large city, and even then, the hotels just are not where I want to be, and the average cost is usually much more than the small hotel, so you wind up paying dearly for those points and status. With booking you get discounts, plus you earn cash credits which build in a wallet, that you can use for future bookings. Over the course of a 2-3 week trip, I earn enough to pay for a night or two.

One feature thing that I like Booking.com for, is the interactive map. If you search for hotels in a certain area of a town, pick one and then look at the map of where it is, you can also identify other hotels in the area, and go from there. I also book direct.

In the US I use Hotwire when booking last minute reservations using their Hot Rates. I never know the name of the hotel until after I have paid, but I can pick the location/rating, and I have never been unhappy. I had one issue over 20 years when a Minneapolis hotel moved me to one of their nearby properties. Hotwire refunded me $50 when I brought it to their attention.

I used booking.com once in Jackson, Wyoming when the rate was so much better than what the hotel could offer. I used them in other countries when it appeared to be the hotel's only option, and I have never had a problem. Like other posters, I sometimes use them just to read reviews before direct booking with the hotel.

We're headed to Norway later this year and five of the hotels are booked with booking.com. Most of these are what you would probably refer to as "charming" and maybe not as comfortable as you would like. One was chosen because it is blocks from a cousin's house, another is directly on the fjord at Aurland, and one is located in a beautiful valley in the Telemark region where some of my husband's ancestors lived. Although I didn't set out to use booking.com, I'm liking that I can access five very different reservations on one app.

I don't think you are missing anything. It sounds like what you are doing works best for your solo travel style.

I'm a budget traveler, but sometimes chain hotels are competitive with independents, especially when you are looking for a room with a/c. I have memberships in the affinity groups for a few chains and always check their direct-booking rates since they give a bit of a discount to members.

On my current trip I had two diametrically different experiences when comparing rates on booking.com and corporate websites. In Helsinki a centrally located Holiday Inn had some weird pricing on IHG.com. The difference in the AARP rate between the same (basic) room with and without breakfast was only €3 or €4 a night. Booking.com approximately matched the no-breakfast rate. I'm not a fool--I know Finnish breakfasts are worth considerably more than €3 or €4. I grabbed that deal on the corporate website even though I normally opt out of hotel breakfasts.

Fast forward a bit more than a week and I was looking for a room in Tallinn. As usual I started with booking.com, which had a decent rate for a conveniently located CityBox hotel. I thought perhaps the CityBox website would do better, but no--the corporate website was something like €80 higher for the week.

Failure to check both booking.com and the hotel's (or chain's) website means you may overpay. It can go either way.

There are some hard-to-quantify benefits to booking direct--a better chance of an upgraded room, perhaps a greater chance of getting into a room before check-in time (though that happens pretty often for me even with booking.com reservations), and I suspect more flexibility on the rate if you ask to extend your stay.

On the other hand, using booking.com saves a lot of time if you're price-sensitive and are going to a new city or not looking to return to a hotel where you've previously stayed. I want to know what a bunch of hotels are charging before making a decision.

Two reasons to use Booking.com.
1) Research the area for what is available and check out the location for ease of access by car as well as local transportation and points of interest. The reviews are reliable since they only come from people who have been there, just throw out the highs and the lows and look at what the majority says.

2) When I have to change plans, like for a pandemic, I only have to go to one place and they are operational 24/7/365 as opposed to the independent hotels who will get to it when they get to it.

Due to "Price Match Guarantees" by the brand hotels I tend to book, I have had a few free rooms or change of listed price to price match a consolidator's price through the years. After discovering the discrepancy, I've had no trouble getting the rate their Guarantee entitled me to when I've booked directly.

Failure to check both booking.com and the hotel's (or chain's) website means you may overpay. It can go either way.

I have also noticed that booking.com may not have the same availability of rooms at a particular hotel - e.g., it may not have all the room types that are available on the hotel website. I often find the descriptions of the rooms on booking.com to be less clear than what is on the hotel website.

Again, it can work both ways. I fairly often see a single room listed on booking.com when the hotel web site has nothing smaller than a double. But you're right about variety of rooms--the hotel web site is likely to give a fuller picture.

I seem to be the only one using hotels.com.

I can't explain it but I've seen better deals on hotels.com than on the hotel website.

In addition to what others have said, I like Booking.com because I can filter by Review Score which is based on the reviews from people who have actually stayed there. Stars don't impress me. High Review Scores do. I always filter by Very Good 8+, find some possibilities and read the recent reviews, never going back farther than a year before the time I plan to go up to the present.

If I'm wrong, someone please correct me, but my understanding about stars (*) in Europe mean something different from what they mean in the US. They're about what the place has, not the quality of it. Many of the places I prefer to stay are B&Bs or apartments which don't have stars attached to them.

Often, the chain hotels (Hilton/Marriott, etc) don’t exist where I want to go. Even if they did, I probably wouldn’t select them. When I travel, I purposely look for places that FEEL like where we are. I don’t want to stay in a hotel in Switzerland that could have been plucked right out of Tokyo. I want a local feel, with a chalet style and flower boxes on the balconies. Even if it means creaky, slopped floors and a few stairs. I do look very closely for refurbished bathrooms, though. Many of the hotels/ apartments we stayed at over 3 weeks in June/July have been wonderfully refurbished, keeping the charm while providing modern conveniences.

The one exception was one night in the Munich Hilton after a late flight in, to get over jet lag before picking up a rental car the next morning. But that choice was based on proximity and convenience only.

I use booking dot com as well as HRS and also book direct. Sometimes it is about the cancellation offer. If a hotel does not allow an easy cancellation, then maybe a booking firm is better.
For small hotels, and expected guests from around the world who all speak a different language, having this all handled by someone else is an advantage and may be worth the commission they are paying. It may help to keep their small place fully occupied as well as the marketing they are getting. There are myriad reasons why a place uses booking dot com. There are myriad reasons why we use them too. All your reservations are in one place, you get easy cancellation, you may have discounts, or get a breakfast, your reservations and emails are all in English.

3 years ago I was going to go to Iceland. The place I was looking at was on booking dot com, but they made the offer of. free breakfast if you booked direct, so I thought I did the right thing and booked direct. Then Covid hit and my trip to California to visit my dad with that layover in Iceland was not going to be possible. Guess what, they refused to give me a refund. The only offer they had was a 10% discount on my next booking! They were told by the Iceland Tourist board that they didn't have to do refunds. We had about 50 emails going back and forth before they finally gave me a voucher good for 3 years. I am using it next month. Guess what though, the room is now more expensive. I so wish I would have booked this room on booking dot com with a simple cancellation. My 3 day trip next month is costing me way more than what I originally planned.

I search for lodging on Booking.com, and I use them for my reservations. I’ve never had an issue with a reservation….but I do check recent reviews again during the last month before the trip. If I am returning to a hotel that I have stayed at during a previous trip, I usually go to their website to reserve a room. One of the advantages for me is that I stay in a lot of hotels during one trip because I’m fine with some 1-night stops. Having all of my reservations at one site makes it so much easier. And, I receive a discount often because I use their site a lot.

“ However, I've had my share of "charming" European hotels which frequently were not as comfortable as I prefer.”

I am looking for a very different type of hotel than you want, and that’s why your method is probably best for your criteria. My first criteria after safety is location. I’m looking for the small family-run hotel in the middle of the historical center of cities. Unique hotels with a comfortable bed (Booking shows the rating number for bed comfort, too!) describes many of my favorite choices. Some of those smaller places don’t have their own website and depend on Booking as their conduit for their reservations.

I also use it for our domestic hotels, too, to keep my discount level, and it’s often cheaper than booking direct.

I always filter for “8+” rating, less than 1/2 mile from the center, & hotel.

Certainly not “trying to sell” anyone on Booking, but here’s my current level and the perks as an FYI:

Genius Level 3
Enjoy this level at participating properties worldwide upon completing 15 stays in 2 years.
10–20% discounts
Free breakfasts on select stays
Free room upgrades on select stays
Priority support on all stays

I rarely book direct with a hotel unless it is a major hotel or the hotel has an online system for cancellation. I have no interest in chasing a refund through email of a family run business in Europe. I have read too many stories on here about people waiting months for a refund or having to go through the chargeback process of their credit card or just plain losing their money. Many times the rates are not cheaper booking direct anyhow or it may be only a few euros. To me it is just an additional cost of travel. Booking.com has never mishandled any changes or cancellations for me and until they do I will be glad to pay a few extra euros a night for the convenience.

We have always booked directly with the hotel or airlines. One thing I have noticed on more than one occasion is that if someone is having an issue for whatever reason and they booked through a third party site. The person behind the counter will not deal with them. They say to contact the third party site. Not sure if this happens all the time but I have seen it happen more than once to the person in front of me at the customer service counter.

In 18 years of travel in Europe, most of that in Germany, I've booked 49 different overnight accommodations for 163 nights in 38 towns. One was a place I knew from travel in the 80s, and one I got out of Rick's guidebook. The other 47 were all selected using either the town website or Google Maps, and all were booked directly. I no case did I use a booking website to book accommodations in Europe.

I've also never had to pay in advance. I always correspond with the hotel in German. I don't know if that has an effect.

I have extreme confidence in Germanic places. They have such a high standard. I've never had a bad stay in a Germanic country. I'm not so sure, however, that I would trust my system in some other countries in Europe.

I've studied the accommodations in many of the towns I've stayed in, and the places on booking websites are usually the most expensive properties. I haven't deliberately avoided places listed on booking websites, but I find that using the sources and the selection process I use, I rarely select a place listed on booking websites. In Germany, I have saved lots of money this way.

I read that Booking.com customarily takes a 15% - 20% commission on bookings. Someone has to pay it.

I've booked smaller hotels places in Schleswig Holstein several times, booking direct, using German. With some larger hotels, I've also booked direct via the hotel website in English. Similarly in France where I have booked, direct, small places using French and larger using English language websites. All methods have gotten the job done!

There was an indication that it could be problematic to deal with all hotels if a refund is due. I had several European cancellations in 2020 due to Covid closures. Maybe hoteliers were geared to responding to the crisis, but I had no problem communicating and receiving refunds of deposits for lodgings and per-paid tickets. I have heard of many problems getting refunds from agents. Perhaps Booking.com is better with that than some others.

Thanks, Jean for enumerating the advantages you have received with frequent Booking.com bookings. I knew there were perks similar to those I have with memberships I have. Sounds similar - I suppose with Booking I could look for unaffiliated "brand" properties. Any downsides that you've encountered as a frequent user?

When I book directly with the hotel in Germany, I use its website in German, never English, or I call up the hotel directly on the phone, using only German again.

When I use booking.com in Germany or elsewhere in Europe, Poland, France, etc, I use English. I'm mostly a budget traveler, which precludes staying with Hilton, Marriott, Holiday Inn, etc. Even if they dropped their prices, I still would not patronize them.

Even if they dropped their prices, I still would not patronize them.

Same here. When I'm in Germany, I want to feel like I'm in Germany. Once, on a business trip in the 80s, I stayed at what is now the 4* Marriot in Heidelberg. Afterward I observed that I might have well stayed in the Marriot in Peoria, with pictures of Germany plastered over the windows. With an English speaking staff and American food, it didn't feel very German.

As far as I'm concerned, spending more for your hotel just builds a
bigger wall between you and what you traveled so far to see. If you
spend enough, you won't know where you are. Think about it.
"In-ter-con-ti-nen-tal." That means the same everywhere — designed for
people who deep-down inside wish they weren't traveling

RIck Steves