Using Accommodation Booking Agents

It is said again and again that third party sites do not honor separate discounts on top of their rates (no AAA discount, no loyalty discount, no credit card points and other types of discounts). Those discounts are for hotels to entice people and provide offsets to their (usually high) rack rates. In contrast, some small mom & pop places don't even need to give discounts because their rates may be very competitive. Everyone should compare third party sites against what they can achieve with the hotel directly or by applying whatever discounts they're eligible for. Some people, like me, don't have other discounts to fall back on so booking.com often works for certain classes of hotels. To each their own and for them to figure out what works best given their situation. There is no "one" answer that applies to everyone, so there's no point of having these debates because there's no clear winner. It's always a trade-off between time costs spent with additional searching, costs of prepaying for rooms (if applicable), costs of convenience of booking and canceling, etc. People value these costs differently - that's ok.

Why don't you cancel the booking.com bookings? Is it too late?

I often use booking.com, but on our last trip to England I decided to do some checking. Most of the places were the same price as the hotel website. However a few places there was a huge difference in price. By booking directly with the hotel, I saved quite a lot. So it is definitely worth it to double check the prices. I would see if you can cancel and rebook, I was able to.

I'm leaving for Italy next Sunday and I did a combination of methods. Our plans kept changing, so I had to have reservations that could be cancelled without a penalty. I decided it was worth a slightly higher price (my travel partner and I will be splitting the cost of the rooms, so it's not that much per person) to book on both booking.com and Expedia. We will begin the trip in Venice, and I booked that directly with the hotel. Next is Verona, where we are staying at a Best Western. I got a AAA discount there. I just have to remember to bring my AAA card, which I would not ordinarily do. I don't think there is any one 'best' way.

judy the only time I have every used them , ( once) in booking hundreds of nights of accommodation, was when I couldn't contact the hotel direct. ( which seemed a bit dodgy anyway- but turned out OK)
While I use their search function to refine and compare etc, I can't see any point in using them to book. I figure that when I book direct if there is any problem the owners, or us, can contact each other directly. Also you can sometimes get a bit of a report with the owners before you get there when you email each other. which is nice.
I could understand it if they were cheaper, but I have never found this to be the case?

I think some people use them because they think its easier?

I have found that not one of them ( that I have tried) shows all of the accommodation available at each place, so I often use a few of them simultaneously.
have a good time in tassie.

Interesting thoughts. Two distinct battle lines have been drawn on this issue.
We are flying out early tomorrow morning. I only discovered the 'discount' situation 24 hours ago when I was re-checking bookings, accommodation sites etc. Bit late to be cancelling and re-booking. Could be more trouble than it's worth.
Because I have used Booking.com many times and have found it to be on par or cheaper with the hotel's rates, I just 'went with the flow'. I 'dropped the ball' on this one. It's been quite a few years since we have holidayed within Australia. I have had 5 overseas trips since 2008. Had no idea about Australian Autoclub discounts I know now!!!!

I always prefer dealing directly with the hotels, and don't see any reason to involve a "middleman". If a problem were to occur, the hotel and the booking agency often pass the buck and that leaves the unfortunate guest to deal with two parties rather than one.

There's just no one method. I like Booking.com because I can secure a cancellable room while I continue my search or if I am unsure of our final itinerary. Sometimes once I've picked a place, I contact the hotel owner directly and see what other options they have.

If you are booking for a multi-week/multi-stop trip, it is nice to use a booking engine and save time over making dozens of individual contacts that may-or-may-not respond to you.

What hasn't been mentioned is that there are two types of third party hotel reservation systems.

The first, like booking.com, acts the same as a travel agent. They book the hotel for you, and you pay the hotel. Booking.com then gets a commission. If there is a problem, hotels can make changes to help the guest.

The other type, like Expedia, is when you pay Expedia up front. Expedia then books a room at a negotiated price and the difference is Expedia's profit. To make changes, a hotel has to contact Expedia. Hotels, in general, don't like these type of booking agents but deal with them because they bring in a lot of business.

I will always check the hotel first, then look at booking.com to see if they have better deals. I never use the pay-up-front third party sites.

Frank II, there is no appreciable difference between the way Expedia works and Booking.com works. They both have contracts with hotels and the prices of the rooms change dynamically based on demand. They may or may not have the same inventory to show (depends on whether hotels have contracts with both). Neither generally allows additional discounts, although I just noticed that Expedia is now partnering with AARP to give a 10% discount to those members (I don't know if this is a new development). They both have a mix of rooms that you can either pre-pay or pay at the hotel (it's not that Expedia is pre-pay only while Booking.com is not). I would say they function more like comparison web platforms where you can see a bunch of hotels side-by-side based on date and other criteria rather than travel agents who (I believe) are actually supposed to do human work and offer you advice and options (and do more complex tasks). Give the volumes of rooms they have control over in the US, I'm surprised how many people are flatly against them - if you have that much volume, you can indeed drive discounts and there are usually unfilled rooms in larger business type hotels (that seems like a win-win situation to me). European hotels rooms are not as much under their influence, although they have their own third party sites with different shares of the market like venere.com and agoda.com, etc.

I've booked rooms both with booking.com and hotels.com and found the former to provide a more than adequate customer service when there was an issue. They dealt with the hotel on my behalf and gave me a refund when the payment terms were violated - I was happy with the price and the outcome. I haven't dealt enough with hotels.com on the customer service side but I earned at least a night stay through their own loyalty program.

I also dealt with a real disreputable non-name third party site (based in China) many years ago which filed bankruptcy and I had to file with my credit card to get reimbursement and rebook my lodging from scratch. Fortunately, it was easy because I received no services for money paid.

Judy, thanks for the endorsement. However, most people here seem to have the "wrong end of the stick".

It's not so much comparing the prices on a booking website vs booking direct for the same hotel. In that case, for top-of-the-line hotels, and I'm not sure because I hardly ever book them, booking websites might offer a price less than the hotel's rack rate, but the hotel itself offers significant discounts for select groups (AARP, AAA, etc). I recently booked a well-known hotel in a resort area of Colorado, and on the hotel's own website they had a special rate for Colorado residents only that was better than anything offered on a booking website.

On the other end, I do book a lot of small properties, especially in Germany, and I often find that if you book directly, so that the property does not have to pay the 15% fee, they can give you better deals. Sometimes the listed rate is just lower than on the booking website, but more often they have less expensive rooms, perhaps without a balcony, not shown on the booking website. Or they offer a package deal including meals or spa admission (which I was going to use anyway) that make the room rate less than shown on the booking website.

But, more importantly, I find a lot of places that are not listed on any booking website, that offer better rates than the places in town that are on booking websites. And, I consistently find that only a half to a third of the places in town are shown on a booking website, and they are generally the more expensive places. So you get more choices and lower cost if you find hotels outside a booking website.

On my recent trip to France, for our few free days before and after our house rentals, I used booking.com for 2 of them and direct with the provider for the other two. And all went fine, and the prices were incredibly reasonable. I don't worry about points and AAA discounts and the like, because that's not relevant to the kind of places I stay at. I also disagree with the statements that places listed on Booking.com are generally higher priced ones. Both Booking.com places I just stayed at were about 70 Euros, and I don't think I've ever paid more than 80 Euros at a Booking.com place. And I've never been disappointed.

" I also disagree with the statements that places listed on Booking.com are generally higher priced ones."

Maybe that's because you haven't done the kind of detailed analyses that I have done. Have you found comprehensive listings of accommodations in the same towns and compared their prices to those on a booking website? I have.

On my latest trip, I saved 10% on 3 places that were actually listed on a booking website, primarily because I saved 13% at one place by getting a package deal not available on the the booking website.

At the other 3 places, I saved an average of 13% using places not listed on booking websites vs. comparable ones on booking websites. One time I saved nothing; the other two times I saved 19% and 21%.

You neglected to mention that I also saved 19% and 21% on two places that weren't on any booking website vs the "best" alternative listed on a booking website.

I book both via hotels own website and booking.com..

Sorry.. no one can convince me that one way is better than the other to be used exclusively.. hundreds of nights booked and my experience shows you may.. or may NOT get a better price doing it one way or the other.

I don't limit myself my travel style to being done just "one right way"

On the Camino, everyone was using Booking.com to make last minute reservations. Seemed to work just fine, especially when we would find out a day ahead of time that a town was having a fest and beds were scarce. You don't want to walk 20km, and then find out you don't have a place to sleep and shower.

Personally I use ww.hrs.com to find hotels. I like their free cancellation service as well as their review system. Do I check the reviews of those hotels that they list on Trip Advisor? Sure I do. Do I go to their websites to see if it is cheaper? Sure I do. Do I go to a towns website to see if there are better offers? Sure I do. One can do all of those things and then pick out the best place that fits your budget and what kind of amenities you want.

There is no reason to be so dogmatic and inflexible.

"Maybe that's because you haven't done the kind of detailed analyses that I have done. Have you found comprehensive listings of accommodations in the same towns and compared their prices to those on a booking website? I have."

I have better things to do with my time. When I can find a room in a lovely centrally located hotel for 70 Euros, I don't need to spend time doing spread sheet analysis to see if I can save a Euro or 2.

Lee.. I think most of us are having this discussion based on travel in all of Europe, and I think you are basing yours mostly on your extensive travel in Germany.. . you also enjoy a type of accomadation that many folks would not enjoy.. so you may think the way you like for your particular type of trip.. but this was a broad based topic really.. and many of us have visited many countries and average out our experience.. there really is NO one right way no matter how much you insist.

PS .. just saved money last night .. had a hotel in London booked for last night of our visit.. a small inexpensive budget family run hotel.. it is NOT on any booking site( and you have to email or phone for reservations .. no online either) .. but.. decided to move to another hotel for last night for logistical reasons, and found one on booking.com.. 28 GBPs less.. SO... I do use small hotels with no advertising budget.. and I do use booking sites. All info is good info.

"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." Rick Steves

It's not just what I enjoy. It's what Europe "through the back door" is all about.

Two of my first three trips to Europe were arranged by the company I worked for. They put us up in 4 and 5 star hotels. I found the experience to be bland and culturally sterile.

In between the company trips I made my own trip to Germany. I didn't have a lot of money back then, so I got a copy of Michelin Guide (there was no internet then) and selected one-star hotels in the towns I was going to. I found that experience to be so much richer than the big hotels.

Later, I read Rick's comment and said, "Yes, that's what I thought, too."

Since then, I have tried to find local, down-to-earth places to stay in. To me, that's what the experience of being in Europe is all about. And you don't have to spend a lot of money. I've used my accommodation finding system in Austria successfully. I've also found accommodations for a future trip I'm planning to norther Italy and Switzerland, but I haven't tried it yet.

Just because you use booking.com (or other booking agents) to find your accommodations does not mean you can't get a RS type 'back door' experience. They are not all 4 or 5 star or big box American style hotels. You can find many small family run inns and b&b's on the booking agents too and get a good local experience. When I booked my lodgings for my trip to France I found out later that two of the places I booked on booking.com at lower prices than listed on their own websites were also in RS book as budget accommodations. They were small, family run, rural (in small villages, not big cities) and a very local experience.

I agree with others who have noted that it's been stated many times on here and other forums that most of the booking agents don't honor discounts (AAA, AARP, etc.). I, and many others who use booking agents, will do research about such discounts if we qualify for them and sometimes comparing the discounted rates on the hotel's website may still be more than on the booking agent.

All methods of research should be used before deciding how you want to book. No one way is right or wrong. Most people I know use any and all methods to find the most reasonable prices for the types of accommodations they desire - within reason of course. It may save a few $ or € to spend a lot of time researching individual town or hotel websites but if you equate time with money, then it may not save all that much. Sometimes the hassle to find the lowest price isn't always worth it.

I have found lovely, small places to stay using hrs and booking.com. Had the best B&B in Edinburgh, a cosy little place in Potsdam, beautiful old house in Logrono Spain (no one there spoke any English at all!), and the coolest hostel in San Francisco.

Many small properties rent their rooms to many nationalities, not just English speakers. If they want their occupancy rate to be enough to pay their bills, they will list with a consolidator which will handle reservations in multiple languages. Or do you think Mama Casa in Madrid will be able to handle that email reservation request in Russian, French, Korean, or Bulgarian?

I wanted to make a small correction because I forgot that both booking.com and hotels.com do have their own loyalty programs that function in the same way hotel-based programs do - they essentially tempt you to book directly with them. Booking.com requires a certain number of bookings on its site to reach what they call "genius" status whereby they discount their rates an additional 10%, while hotels.com allows you to earn 1 free hotel stay for every 10 that you book using the average value of the booked hotels as the guide. I've taken advantage of both, and they work just fine.

Let's face it though, hotel prices are as dynamic as air fare, they are not standard and fluctuate depending on demand and time you book. As far as I can tell, they seem more or less arbitrary (within some range), so 10% or 20% or even 30% off some arbitrary price that keeps shifting doesn't mean a heck of a lot...you can look at it as downright manipulative what websites and e-commerce sites do with pricing (people love to boast about how much money they saved, so the sites play into this psychology perfectly by shifting the listing price and then touting that the percentage saved is larger than, say, yesterday or two weeks ago). In a way, the mom and pop hotels with published rates that only change by season/year are the most straightforward, fair, and "honest" brokers, but they may be too inflexible to respond to demand. It's best to stick to your budget (whatever it is) and using whatever booking device you find the easiest and most satisfying to deal with...comparing several and being flexible and agnostic about them seems like the way to go.