Expedia: Bad for the Traveler, Bad for the Hotel

http://playazone.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/expedia-bad-for-the-traveler-bad-for-the-hotel/

by ValentineC • 14 years ago

467 175 14 years ago

playazone.wordpress.com

Outrageous if true, though I'm inclined to blame Expedia's incompetence rather than intentional misdirection...

A bit of a shame because I've found Expedia to be pretty decent for booking flights (though that's mostly by way of comparison with other sites; most flight booking sites are jaw-droppingly horrible...).

win_ini• 14 years ago

Try Hipmunk.com.... best flight search I've seen. It the refers you to the airline's page to complete the booking. No sketchy third-party to buy from.

It's visualization of flights schedules is awesome!

jiayo2• 14 years ago

I see Expedia as no different from traditional middle-men (travel agents). If I search a flight+hotel deal on Expedia, I can always get the exact same price by booking directly with the airline and hotel, and without the potential hassles described in the article.

Perhaps it's naive, but I feel safer booking direct, because then if I have any problems, I'm dealing with a first-party and it's harder to be given the three-way runaround.

stoolpigeon• 14 years ago

One thing I learned on a trip this summer is that Delta will charge an extra fee to change tickets if they were booked through expedia.

I don't know if other airlines do this too but if I'm flying Delta it is a motivator to book directly. Which I'm sure is the point.

OafTobark• 14 years ago

Interesting to know. I personally avoid Delta, United, American, and a few others if at all possible. My main airlines are:

Virgin America

Southwest

Alaska Airlines

In that order with JetBlue mixed in somewhere in there. Helps to have a narrow set if you are racking up air miles and I've had HORRID experiences with the others. I only take them if I have to now

Nagyman• 14 years ago

You might have been somewhat fortunate finding the same direct price. I'm aware that Expedia is large enough to get bulk discounts from airlines that aren't always publicly offered to direct passengers.

jiayo2• 14 years ago

It probably has to do with being located in Canada.

aj37• 14 years ago

The rationale for the discounts is that you don't know (or at least it's non-obvious), whether the discount is coming from the flight or the hotel. If the "Book together and save" amount is positive then you'll generally be getting a better deal than direct. You might see the same total price occasionally but it certainly won't be the case the majority of the time.

jrockway• 14 years ago

A classic "small business is mad" blog post. It even contains the a quote about how much money they spent on their business, "We put all of our money, time and heart into making it work," as though that's a criterion Expedia uses when deciding how to respond to customer service inquiries.

I'm also surprised that the links broke and Expedia's "IT department" said they'll "never" be fixed. That doesn't really make any sense. I can't help but think that the images are hosted by the hotel itself and that they broke the images. I don't know. The story sounds plausible but unlikely to me and has all the classic "crazy person" literary features. (Some sources to back this up would be good: emails, screenshots, etc.)

adambenayoun4• 14 years ago

Ditto. Some more proofs would be great in order to establish some trust with this post. If everything written here is right then I would say they have a pretty good case in suing them. I would also argue some lawyers would even take this case (granted the proofs are solid) based on a success fee.

EDIT: I strongly recommend to read the comments, someone wrote that he witnessed this personally (of course comments could be fake but it's still something).

David Beau. said - December 4, 2012 at 11:29 pm

We can verify parts of this. We have stayed at the Luna Blue almost every year since Tony and Cheri have opened. In late 2011 I was checking on availability of the Luna Blue for our vacation. I was surprized to find expedia said they had no room available. I then checked a couple other small hotels in Playa and was told they were also full. I then contacted Cheri and found that they did have plenty of rooms. Which we did book thru the hotel.

Deanna said - December 5, 2012 at 11:03 am

I know first hand about this. I had booked a room back in Feb. to travel in November. I got an email mid Oct. from Hotels.com that Luna Blue no longer had any openings for that time. It didn’t make sense to me. After calling Hotels.com and them wanting me to book elsewhere I got hold of Cheri. She was in San Francisco at the time but took the time out to make sure I was able to rebook through their website directly for the time I had originally booked. I was also able to save 10% off what I had originally expected to pay. We went and stayed at Luna Blue and it was truly a wonderful experience. Cheri was out of town when we came so I was not able to meet her but Tony made us feel welcome and we wish you guys all the luck fighting this horrible thing that has happened. I would certainly stay here again if I return to Playa.

dquigley• 14 years ago

While frequently with these articles you have to wonder about the validity of all parts of the story, I can say I've had A similar experience from a consumer perspective. I was trying to book hotels for my wedding and couldn't find a hotel that I knew was in the town my in-laws lived in.

I looked up the hotel on the corporate website and it showed it as completely booked, and this particular had didn't show up in any searches for rooms because of that.

I ended up calling them and found out they had left the chain and were becoming independent and had plenty of rooms. So I can't confirm this small business' story, I Can confirm that similar things happen.

bloaf• 14 years ago

I'm not familiar with how hotels inform 3rd party websites about room reservations. Could it just be that smaller independent hotels simply don't have the technical chops to correctly set up or manage such notifications?

jasonlotito2• 14 years ago

Just for reference in case you miss it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4966004

Of note, the subtitle on the resulting page: [Expedia and companies] Portrayed [hotels] as fully booked even though they were not.

wpietri• 14 years ago

I disagree on a couple of levels.

First, Expedia, as a service business, should definitely pay attention to passionate customers. Word of mouth matters.

Second, this lacks "all the classic 'crazy person' literary features." The copy is reasonably well written, the formatting is solid, the narrative is coherent, and it's part of a long-running blog with reasonable articles. It's a bit over-written and over-dramatic, but not egregiously so.

brudgers• 14 years ago

I tend to find the story believable. I just replace "Expedia" with "Apple" or "Google" and hotel with "app" or "adwords account."

The screenshots of email is a feature of tech industry rants - an industry which tends to take email as more self verifying than the general populace.

usaphp2• 14 years ago

I guess you never read the full story, you can clearly see a link to evidence of Expedia doing the same thing in France and getting sued for it: http://www.tnooz.com/2010/04/19/news/tripadvisor-and-expedia.... Just think about it, if a huge company with hundreds of lawyers still got sued for these tricks - I bet they have done lot's of similar things and got away with it.

Also a part regarding images not hosted on Expedia. Do you really think such a big company as Expedia will allow to host images on hotel's own servers? It's impossible to handle Expedias traffic with a small shared hosting which most of the small hotels are using...

shadowmint• 14 years ago

    First of all they have a well-deserved reputation for bad customer service. 
    Google the words “Expedia bad customer service” and see what comes up.

Yes.

Anecdotal I know, but I've used Expedia twice, and will never use them again.

It took a year and an offer to take the case to court before they issued a refund, and the second time they just screwed all the bookings up with no apology or comment upon complaint.

easytiger• 14 years ago

To add something contrary to this, i had the opposite experience. I had to cancel a flight/hotel booking at short notice because I couldn't go. They said normally they charge for that but this time would let me do it free. Replies were fast and prompt at awkward times of day etc.

adambenayoun4• 14 years ago

I have experienced pretty good customer experience with Expedia as well. However we're not talking about the end customers here but rather the suppliers (of services).

I wouldn't want to use a company (no matter how good they are) who have been known for crushing smaller players to maximize their bottom line.

adambenayoun4• 14 years ago

I wonder if we can repay them and play the same game they are playing. Maybe if many of us reblog/post and link to that amazing detailed blog post with the anchor text being "advertise with expedia" - maybe when new hotels who will want to advertise with Expedia (and google about it) will be able to read about that horrible experience.

impendia2• 14 years ago

I am a typical travel customer. I often go to conferences and book hotels in unfamiliar cities. I am very sympathetic to this story. And yet -- at the end --

>either use the internet to do the research or go to a reputable travel agent.

Let's look at these alternatives. Use the internet to do the research? Expedia makes it very easy, that's the point. Are its competitors better? Maybe. How am I supposed to be able to tell? Is Hipmunk also evil? Orbitz? Some other random website I find which compares hotels? If I use these websites to do my research and then book directly, I'm avoid some of the problems -- but probably not all?

Go to a reputable travel agent? No, sorry. That's a pain in the ass.

I'm disappointed in this article. It makes a very convincing case that we should avoid huge internet travel monopolies, but yet doesn't compellingly suggest what I should do instead.

adambenayoun4• 14 years ago

The main problem is that Expedia is really great for customers like us since they really help us in making better and (cheaper) decision when booking a flight.

I think this should be fixed with either suing the company and the people involved (granted everything they wrote is true) or talking to a high level manager who could look into the case and make the right decision (ie. Fire the people who were involved).

whydee• 14 years ago

Sounds like a problem calling out for a solution.

lotsofpulp10• 14 years ago

www.roomkey.com is the hotel franchises attempt to get control back of online reservations.

Also, the best method is simply finding out the hotel's phone number via Google or TripAdvisor, and speaking with someone at the hotel. This way, you can guarantee yourself a certain room at a certain location in the hotel, away from traffic noise, on the 2nd floor, etc. I recommend TripAdvisor for reviews, they have an option where hotel managers can sign up and respond to guest complaints.

calbear816• 14 years ago

You get to see only a limited selection of the chain hotels that participate with RoomKey which doesn't replace the primary function of the OTAs which is to compare many different options at once (vs looking them up, checking each website, etc.)

No hotel will guarantee a specific room but with any booking engine you're able to put in specific requests in the comments area that the hotel will try and honor. To have the best chance of getting those rooms, you actually have to talk to the hotel around the time of room assignment (24-48 hours prior to arrival) so that they can actually do something about your request. Check out the floor plans and virtual views we've compiled at room77.com for ~3,000 hotels to get some specific room numbers to ask for.

geofft• 14 years ago

Use Expedia to find the names of the hotels in the area. Then pick up the phone.

tibbon• 14 years ago

Tried that before. Oftentimes they end up having rates that are 2x what the websites offer.

taybin• 14 years ago

I think a lot of the evils in the world continue because of your sort of attitude. Merry Christmas!

monochromatic3• 14 years ago

It's very easy to say "X is bad, you shouldn't do X." It's a lot more difficult (and a lot more valuable) to be able to say "You should do Y instead of X, and here is a convincing argument why."

impendia2• 14 years ago

Okay, please tell me what I should do instead, if you grant me:

(1) I cannot easily garner which big corporations are "evil" and which are good. I do not have any practical way of finding out about hotels elsewhere without going through some large corporation. Whether it be Expedia, Hotels.com, Hipmunk (okay, Hipmunk is probably smaller), Google, Yelp... I have heard complaints about all of them. If I switch from Expedia to something else, am I doing better?

(2) My time is valuable. If two minutes of effort on my part would divert $20 from Expedia to an independent hotelier, and everything would otherwise be the same for me, then I would happily do this.

Sometimes, surely it would. But it is my experience that this often takes more effort than it should, the first phone number I call often turns out not to be the right number, or the price will be higher, or I get put on hold, etc., etc.

And for that matter, don't travel agents charge commissions too? They have to eat, so someone has to pay them. I don't want to pay extra, and if the hoteliers pay the commissions, then is this better than Expedia?

Grant me at least that the solution is not obvious.

desireco42• 14 years ago

I think he is right that even small hotel in Mexico should provide easy to find information online. This kind of incompetence from small biz owners is simply not excusable today.

On everything else related to their treatment by Expedia I am all with them.

ryguytilidie• 14 years ago

What? They make it very clear. They ask you to book directly with these hotels. What more were you looking for?

vlenin• 14 years ago

I've never booked with Expedia because they have never offered a better price than I can get from the travel agent in my neighbourhood.

dotBen• 14 years ago

Travel hack: as the article points out, Expedia take 25% cut of the booking rate, which is usually the same a the hotel's direct rate.

Because the hotel will make more profit from you, you have a higher chance of getting a room upgrade at the property, better amenities or even just better service if you book direct rather than via Expedia.

fmavituna• 14 years ago

Here is the funny fact, whenever I check the hotels' own websites, prices are almost always higher than Expedia's listing. Does anyone know why?

nayanga• 14 years ago

some time with Air tickets also

gniv2• 14 years ago

That's been my experience as well. The article claims it isn't true, but I know for sure it is, since I remember researching a particular hotel extensively -- I really wanted to stay there -- and Expedia was by far the lowest price. This was an overseas hotel, so I was not fond of calling them up and asking for a discount from somebody who might or might not speak English.

ebiester• 14 years ago

It make it look like a more expensive hotel. Much of the time, you can get them to match Expedia's price by asking. Think of it as price discrimination.

lotsofpulp10• 14 years ago

It's due to competition, and price discrimination. In highly competitive areas, other hotels will offer their rooms at a discount to Expedia/Travelocity/etc, to catch the market that visits these websites (due to the websites' marketing and reputation as being the place to go for online bookings). If a hotel doesn't offer their rooms on the third party websites, then they effectively lose those sales. I know some of the agreements will make it so that they can't advertise rooms at the rates given to travel agents, so that may be why you see it cheaper. Priceline has a different system, where each hotel provides three price levels, and if a person bids at or above a price level, then Priceline gets the difference between the price level and what the person bid.

At hotels that don't have problems selling rooms, they have no reason to offer rooms to travel agents, so you won't see any price discrepancies there. In fact, you probably won't even see the room offered on third party websites.

viraptor• 14 years ago

Also, you may find that the room you want is actually available even if not marked as such on the aggregated list. Unless the smaller hotel is doing business exclusively with such website, they will have to spread their available rooms manually across multiple services and manually close them once they become reserved.

That means some room may be marked open on one website and another room on another. If there's a large number of rooms open, there may be some overlap... but then overlap means a possibility of overbooking. I've seen the systems that small hotels have to deal with and really I'm surprised we don't run into overbooking more frequently.

antonpug• 14 years ago

I disagree with this post. Never had any issues with expedia. Always use them for air/hotel bookings and they are awesome. They do a really good job filtering out the junk "non-chain" hotels and making clear to the buyer that what they are getting it high quality.

jasonlotito2• 14 years ago

Nothing in your comment explains why you disagree with the post, however. Nothing you are saying is contrary to the original article.

Hates_• 14 years ago

You disagree from the point of an end customer. If you have no hotel preference and are mis-directed away from certain partners to those that pay better commission then to you it has been a good experience. Just because they have got you good bookings, does not mean they haven't lied and screwed people over in the process.

jowiar2• 14 years ago

What the post is saying is that they also do a really good job filtering out the non-junk "non-chain" hotels, making life difficult for the independent hotelier.

frqunttraveller• 14 years ago

I see few posts where people are in doubt. This behavior is unfortunatly their business model. Mark "non participating" hotels as full and listen against their will and trick users to more expensive/hotels they get more commissions from. Not long ago they even lost in court around this in Norway http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...

mikecane• 14 years ago

Why should anyone be surprised? Do you really think abuse of power is absent because a business is on the Internet? How many times have publishers had their Buy buttons removed from their books at Amazon? How many stories are there of small devs getting ripped off by Apple and Microsoft? What about late payments to devs from the Google Play Store? I will never use Expedia now. Better that I should be inconvenienced than be jerked around by smug companies out to crush small businesses.

EDIT: Typo fixed.

irahul5• 14 years ago

> For the most availability, best prices and service, always book directly with a hotel.

It has never been the case with me. Expedia, or any other travel site, always had better deals. In fact, I once called the hotel in question to ask why there is a big price discrepancy between their site listing and makemytrip. I was concerned makemytrip is selling me rooms that doesn't exist and the hotel won't honor my reservation. The hotel staff told me the hotel sells rooms to makemytrip well in advance, and whatever the price that is listed on makemytrip will be honored(doesn't really matter; you pay directly to makemytrip).

Also, I am a bit paranoid. I would hate it if some hotel overbooked and told me "lol sorry" when I arrive. I know travel sites aren't really on my side, but at least I will have someone to appeal to.

I didn't have any bad experience with Expedia but then, I had very limited interactions with them(I didn't even modify or cancel my bookings).

I would advice against agoda and booking.com as they forward your credit card info to the hotel as security. In what world does forwarding a customer's credit card info to a random hotel makes sense? Imagine the surprise when you are at the hotel counter and the staff shows you a printout of your credit card info(nothing obscured; everything in plain text).

> If you would like to know more about our hotel just visit our website at www.lunabluehotel.com.

I tried, and the link is down. Most of the hotels don't even have websites, let alone online reservations. There is a reason customers go to expedia in the first place.

EDIT: Random travel tip. If you are in a foreign or an unknown location, a hotel which provides airport transfer generally ends up cheaper than a hotel which doesn't + cab fares. You would be surprised how wrong your assumptions about transport might be. "You have a flight to catch at 8, it's 5, you are in the lobby and there isn't a cab in sight and looks unlikely there will be one for another 2 hours" isn't a pleasant situation to be in.

sorbits2• 14 years ago

I concur!

When you book via Agoda.com you get points that can be used toward future bookings. It’s effectively a 4% rebate, so even if the hotel can match the Agoda price, it’s still a better deal to book it via Agoda, that said, in the past I would often ask the hotel, before booking, if they could match the Agoda price, and more often than not, the answer was no.

Despite my best efforts, I did not succeed in getting an explanation of this policy.

In the case of Agoda, they do not buy the rooms in advance.

lotsofpulp10• 14 years ago

Did you ask to speak with a manager or someone in sales? Most desk clerks are minimum wage employees who won't go out of their way to make a sale, but any competent manager would never forgo cutting out a middleman.

lotsofpulp10• 14 years ago

This is because of momentum. The online travel websites have established themselves among a portion of the population. As a result, in competitive regions, hotels have to play the third party travel website game, which means offering their rooms cheaper there, otherwise their competitors will get that business if they choose not to offer it. However, as I noted below, if you call directly, and offer to pay the hotel directly 5% less than what Expedia or whoever is offering you a room, they should take the money, unless they are incompetent. I would ask to speak to a manager if the lowly desk clerk doesn't accomodate.

The larger hotel franchises are combating this with www.roomkey.com, which is a direct link to the hotel.

As for credit cards, all major hotels (Choice/IHG/Wyndham/Hilton/Accor) have systems that comply with credit card standards. Credit card numbers should not, and I have never seen them, printed plainly on any piece of paper. They are not even visible to most employees, only managers, if proper procedures are followed. They are forwarded to hotels as a security deposit because sometimes the third party websites are not paying, the guest is, and the hotel then pays the travel agent. In this case, the hotel needs the guest's card info to authorize the card after the cancellation period has expired, so that the hotel has a guarantee of being able to collect the money.

>I tried, and the link is down. Most of the hotels don't even have websites, let alone online reservations. There is a reason customers go to expedia in the first place.

In America, most hotels certainly do have websites, via their franchise. If they don't, I'd advise looking up their phone number (google, tripadvisor), and calling them.

adrr• 14 years ago

Online travel didn't establish themselves, it was failure of the hotel industry to do competitive online booking. It still is a failure, i get better prices through hotels.com. Also if I book through the hotel directly, some hotels tack on $20 to $30 resort "fees", they'll match hotel.com and when you get there, you get nailed with bogus fees. There is absolutely no reason to book through a hotel directly.

irahul5• 14 years ago

> if proper procedures are followed.

I have seen the proper procedure violated. I don't think hotels need to comply with PCI, so that safety net isn't there. I am a bit paranoid and I can't just count on people being good and competent.

> In this case, the hotel needs the guest's card info to authorize the card after the cancellation period has expired, so that the hotel has a guarantee of being able to collect the money.

Won't work with me. I do all online payments with a virtual credit card. The virtual credit card is linked with my actual credit card and I can reset the limit of the card as often as I like. If I am buying a hotel room which lists itself as X per night and I am buying it for 2 nights, I reset my limit to 2*X and make the booking. If you try to slap extra charges on me, the transaction will be denied.

In a similar vein, if I don't turn up, I will simply reset my limit to 0. The hotel won't be able to charge me.

jfriedly• 14 years ago

> I tried and the link is down.

lunabluehotel.com seems to have gone offline yesterday, I suspect as a result of a traffic spike following their blog post. From their twitter stream:

> Seems that our website, http://www.lunabluehotel.com is currently down. We have a call in to find out why & solve the... http://fb.me/15notFYoE

(Note the link at the end of the tweet is also broken.) They also posted on the 23rd that views of their wordpress-hosted blog post were spiking:

> We just noticed that views of our Expedia blog post have gone through the roof for the 24 hours or so, all coming... http://fb.me/zyw2aX7R

avar7• 14 years ago

(Disclaimer again: I work for Booking.com in IT)

    > I would advice against agoda and booking.com as they
    > forward your credit card info to the hotel as security.

They don't forward your credit card as security. They forward it for the hotel to charge you for the entirety of your booking.

Companies like Expedia follow the merchant model, they buy up hotels rooms in bulk in advance and then re-sell them directly to customers. When you buy from a merchant your credit card isn't shared with the hotel as there's no need to do so.

Other companies like Booking.com and Agoda follow the agency model. They find customers for the hotels, forward their payment details along to the hotel, the hotel charges the customer, and then pays the agency a percentage of the booking as an agency fee[1].

Both models have their pros and cons. The merchant model works brilliantly in the US where large chains are the norm. It works less well in Europe where the vast number of hotels are small properties.

    > Imagine the surprise when you are at the hotel counter
    > and the staff shows you a printout of your credit card
    > info(nothing obscured; everything in plain text).

It's fair enough that this makes you uncomfortable. But the hotel with that printout has a contract with the credit card company like any other merchant and is responsible for treating it responsibly.

I think you'd also be very surprised at the number of other merchants you might deal with where this is the case. Having a printout with a credit card number is not at all unusual in a lot of businesses.

lawnchair_larry• 14 years ago

Not unusual doesn't make it acceptable. It is still a PCI DSS violation.

irahul5• 14 years ago

> They don't forward your credit card as security. They forward it for the hotel to charge you for the entirety of your booking.

Security, as in, the hotel will charge me with the passed-on information if I don't turn up. I still have to swipe my card if I turn up.

I don't like increasing the number of variables. When I pay directly to booking.com, I am dealing with a PCI compliant company. When you pass my credit card info to a hotel clerk, I am dealing with a hotel clerk who has my info who is free to pass it to his friends, or dump it in a trash can(knowingly or unknowingly) from where someone else picks it up.

nolok• 14 years ago

> I would advice against agoda and booking.com as they forward your credit card info to the hotel as security.

I always pay agoda with paypal when I travel in SE Asia, and now more than ever i'm glad for it ...

raverbashing• 14 years ago

Dear small business hotel

Yes, Expedia sucks, but here's what you should do

YOU make your website and booking system available on the web. Make people able to google your hotel and get there. (Edit: this seems to be already in place)

If I search your hotel on Expedia and it shows no dates available, I begin to suspect Expedia, or your integration of systems with them.

And if they really say your hotel is going out of business, get a lawyer. Edit: get a lawyer NOW

lotsofpulp10• 14 years ago

I know people in the hospitality business, and all third party travel websites (and travel agents) are bad for the traveler and hotel, for a few simple reasons.

1) Middlemen always need their cut. In this case, you pay the website, and then the website pays the hotel less.

2) By bypassing the middleman (call the hotel directly, and speak to that specific location's on site employees), you SHOULD be able to get a better deal. Simply compare prices, and if you find it cheaper on a website, ask the hotel to give you 5% off. Any competent manager will do this because it costs much more than 5% to get your reservation from a travel agent. Obviously, they will have to verify that third party price, but in the case of Expedia, they can just search it.

3) Additionally, it's good to book directly with the hotel for the following reasons too (or at least call them directly after booking online to confirm):

-In the fine print of travel websites' T&C, it will say you are guaranteed A room, not THE room you want. This means if only smoking rooms are available, the third party site will still sell it to you as a non smoking room. Also, there are many incompatibilities in the GDS/Central reservation system software, so there is a chance there can be an error in your reservation.

-Third party reservations don't go to the hotel with the guest's contact information. This means if the hotel wants to contact you about some issue, they cannot reach you, and the websites won't give out the guest's information. This was a big problem during Sandy a few months ago.

All in all, third party websites are a relic of the times when hotels did not have the technical expertise to implement internet reservation systems. Nowadays, you can just look up the hotel's reviews on TripAdvisor, call the hotel directly, and make sure you get the room you want by speaking with someone directly at the property, with actual knowledge of the place. The ONLY benefit these third party websites can provide, seems to be with the bundling of hotels/flights/rental cars, but I still wouldn't use them. Going straight to the vendor has been the more pleasant experience for me.

Edit: I should have noted that my knowledge comes from US and British hotels, mostly franchises like IHG/Hilton/Choice/Wyndham.

irahul5• 14 years ago

> Simply compare prices, and if you find it cheaper on a website, ask the hotel to give you 5% off.

I did. The staff told me they sold a number of rooms well in advance, and the travel site does the pricing with a guaranteed return to the hotel. To the hotel, it doesn't matter how much they are selling it for, but they can do only what is listed on the site.

Also, many 3 star rated hotels don't have online reservations.

lotsofpulp10• 14 years ago

I should have noted that my experience is with Hilton/IHG/other American/British hotels. I don't have much experience with international hotels in other countries though. But I do know that it is not typical for hotels to sell rooms to Expedia/Travelocity/Hotels.com/Orbitz/Priceline. They may have a special arrangement, but I doubt it.

Basically, the hotel manager can decide to make rooms available to those travel agents, and then they are displayed on Expedia's website. If someone buys it via Expedia, then Expedia sends over a reservation to the hotel's Central Reservation System with just the guest's name, and Expedia's card, and the system is instructed to NOT print receipts or room rates for the guest, so that they do not find out what Expedia is paying the hotel.

What you were told may be true, but I bet it was just a desk clerk that didn't know any better.

krenoten5• 14 years ago

Full disclosure, I work for an OTA and CRS (central reservation service) specializing in boutique hotels.

1. Often the hotels themselves charge the customer, and pay the OTA commission on a monthly basis.

2. Many contracts between hotels and availability services mandate that the hotel provide the lowest rate to the OTA, and that if they use several that the rates are in parity with each other. If you find a lower rate by going to the hotel directly, there's a chance that they are breaching contract.

3. The OTA can only be as accurate as the hotelier providing it with information. If the customer is not satisfied, we get a partial refund or credits for future bookings. For our more remote hotels, sometimes they have to throw up a satellite transmitter once a week and update the information they are telling the world about themselves. If they are on a good CRS, it will fan-out that information to many online sites.

The OTA I'm at does provide the hotel with the customer's information, and requires that all communications between the hotel and customer are CC'd to them. This is because when the customer calls our customer service with a problem, we want to know what the back-and-forth between them and the hotel was so we can address the issue more objectively.

Third party websites yield value to people who feel like being backed by the OTA's brand to ensure that they receive the experience they paid for. They offer comfort insurance, and will go through the hassle of fixing problems with the hotel for you. For hotels, the agency may also forward their information to google and bid on ad placement. The one I'm at also guarantees certain perks to people who book through us, and offer a membership program for travelers to receive champagne on arrival, breakfast, transportation, etc... It sounds like you've really been burned by the lower end OTA's. Sorry for the blatant spam, but maybe you'd be interested in TabletHotels.com

lotsofpulp10• 14 years ago

Thank you for providing the perspective from an OTA's side. I shouldn't have said all OTAs are bad. It seems as though your organization operates quite differently than the bigger OTAs, and from the list of services you provide, I think your market may be quite different than the one I'm referring to (i.e. higher end, less commoditized).

However, for run of the mill franchise hotels, the quality control is already being provided for by franchises (i.e. Marriot, Hilton, Choice, Wyndham, IHG, Accor, etc). In my experience, third party reservations at these places is only a hindrance because the OTAs don't guarantee room types, so people show up expecting a certain type of room, but the OTA takes whatever is available from the hotel, even if it's not what the guest wants, and then the hotel has to deal with the fallout when the guest arrives.

barrkel• 14 years ago

I usually book hotels between 24 and 12 hours before checkin, usually before leaving the previous hotel. This is because most of my hotel bookings are on motorbike tours and are dependent on weather, roads and whimsy. A single interface is much easier to deal with, and I seldom stay at chain hotels. OTAs have made my style of trip way way easier.

prostoalex• 14 years ago

>>> "a long, detailed list describing our rooms"

Hint: a red flag right there. You're selling what's perceived as standardized commodity. If a long and detailed list made the job of corporate copy-and-paster hard, imagine potential customer confusion.

cyberp• 14 years ago

I stopped booking with Expedia when there was a problem with an incorrect flight time. Delta said they couldn't do anything and I'd have to resolve with Expedia. Expedia said they couldn't do anything, and I'd have to resolve with Delta. I had a clearly nonsensical flight plan (I was scheduled to be at the destination for 1 hour), and no way to resolve it. I gave up on both businesses.

gritsscholar• 14 years ago

Given the owner's complaint, I find it odd that when I clicked the Room & Amenities link at the bottom of lunabluehotel.com, the link was dead, or at least, timing out repeatedly.

woof• 14 years ago

This is a known problem and I see no reason not to believe every word Tony & Cheri writes.

Check out this (poorly tranlated) article from Norway:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...

greghinch• 14 years ago

Here's my reason for avoiding Expedia.

A few years ago I booked a trip to the UK to visit some friends. The morning I was supposed to leave, I get an email from one of my friends saying that I should check if my flight is still on, because there is "something going on with a volcano in Iceland". Turns out it's the start of that major eruption and all air traffic in Northern Europe is grounded with no foreseeable reopening.

I first called the airline, Virgin Atlantic. They were very friendly, apologetic, and as helpful as possible. They said they could reschedule me, but given all the unknowns they weren't making any new bookings for at least 2 weeks. Now this was a two week vacation I was taking, with lots of other things scheduled, so I couldn't really just up and shift the whole thing two weeks on a whim. They would have gladly given a refund, but since I booked through Expedia, I had to talk to them. That's when things started going downhill.

First of all, even on what I'm sure was a crazy customer service day, the people at Virgin answered the phone in minutes and were quite friendly. The Expedia call took almost an hour to be answered. Every agent I spoke too was borderline rude and confrontational, and had the worst broken English of any oversees call center I've dealt with. From the start they only wanted to argue, that because it was the day of the flight, I could neither cancel or reschedule. Finally, after about 90 minutes of arguing and being transferred, I got to a high enough manager who actually seemed to listen to what I said and not just be reading a script, and got my refund authorized. And I thought it was over.

Months go by and the credit never appears back to my card. I call Expedia a couple times, each time they say it is being processed by the CC company, but it can take up to 90 days. I check with the CC, they have no record of the credit. Finally after 90 days, I get a hold of Expedia and they say it is fine if I just have the CC company cancel the transaction on their end (as a dispute), as there must have been a "glitch" somewhere. And that flipped the trouble switch.

Apparently there is an automated system in Expedia, if you dispute their charge with you CC company, they automatically flip it to a collections agency. A few months after I did, I got a very threatening letter and phone call saying I owed the charge plus penalties and interest. If I did not pay, they would flag my credit rating and possibly take further legal action. I contacted Expedia again to ask WTF is going on, and their response was that they are not allowed to communicate with the collections agency once the matter has been given to them. They were confident that if i just explained why I didn't owe the money, the collections guys would drop it. But they couldn't provide me with any documentation to give them.

After another month of letters and phone calls with the collections agents, and quite a bit of stress on my end, I stopped hearing from them so I guess it was resolved.

Keep in mind, all told this is about 8 months down the road from when I was originally supposed to travel. In fact I rebooked the entire trip for about a month after the original, and had already gone and come back. But definitely not with Expedia.

eli3• 14 years ago

Totally an aside, but if you're in the US and there's a collections agency after you for a bogus debt, it's easy to make them go away: Send them a formal dispute letter under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act and advise them not to contact you further. If they do anyway, you can sue them for punitive damages.

lotsofpulp10• 14 years ago

For reference, Section 805(c):

http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.shtm

j45• 14 years ago

This is an interesting piece of information, thanks! Up in Canada I have heard of stories where debt collectors will call a "John Smith", ask them for their DOB, and SIN, type that information into their debt file (which does not have this information) and make them pay. I wonder if there's similar legislation in Canada.

rmc• 14 years ago

I wonder is there any similar EU law?

dsl• 14 years ago

Just a side note, this only works for third party collectors (i.e. after your debt has been sold). In-house collections is pretty unregulated.

benatkin2• 14 years ago

So this stops them from leaving a bad mark on your credit report?

diego2• 14 years ago

Something similar happened to me once. I rented a car with Alamo through Expedia at Chicago ORD, pick up around 11:30 pm. My flight was a bit late, and when I got there the Alamo counter was closed. It turned out they closed at midnight. It was impossible to pick up a car from Alamo.

I called Expedia. They told me to rent a car from Hertz and pay for it, they'd pay for it. When I called Expedia on subsequent days nobody knew anything about this conversation. They refused to pay for my rental, and said that if I could prove that Alamo was closed they would refund the original rental. Of course it would be a long and tedious process.

It wasn't worth my time, so I forgot about it. Never used Expedia again.

marquis• 14 years ago

To be fair, your flight being late is something that your travel insurance company should deal with. If airlines and travel industries had to subsidise late flights and erratic weather patterns they may go out of business. Get travel insurance, it's affordable (but read the fine print, some may have over $100 excess which makes such incidents not claimable).

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

That is crazy. I've never heard of a CC credit taking up to 90 days to process, I think they just pulled that out of their ass. Also, the idea that a company would advise you to authorize a dispute/chargeback is pretty amazing (read: ridiculous). I have a fair amount of experience in this space and to me these things just shout incompetence.

chris11• 14 years ago

Yeah, the one time that I filed a chargeback I immediately got refunded. I can't imagine it taking 90 days.

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

> They were confident that if i just explained why I didn't owe the money, the collections guys would drop it.

Yes, collection agencies are an understanding and forgiving bunch.

calbear816• 14 years ago

> It wasn’t cheap, as Expedia takes 25 % of every booking made through their sites–a fact that hotels are forbidden by Expedia to disclose to guests.

This is forbidden to be disclosed because business contract details are covered under an NDA they signed with Expedia. 25% is their negotiated commission but it will vary by partner and hence they don't want that being disclosed to be used as leverage in negotiations with other hotels.

> For the most availability, best prices and service, always book directly with a hotel.

This may be the case with the Luna Blue, but is definitely not what we at Room 77 see in the marketplace. We're connecting with the GDS and pretty much every major OTA in the US (Expedia, Orbitz, Booking.com, Priceline, etc.) and what we're seeing is increasing price fragmentation in the marketplace. This is why we fundamentally believe that metasearch is a better model for the consumer since prices and availability do vary.

> Secondly they do not offer discounted rates as many claim.

As someone else mentioned, even if a rate is not discounted against the rate the hotel has directly, it may be a promotion against the regular rate and you have to factor in the loyalty programs that exist on many OTA sites (Hotels.com book 10 get 1 free, Agoda 4% rewards, etc.). The most probable reason that an OTA has a lower rate is that the room availability has changed. For example, a hotel has two types of rooms (A & B) may have presold a percentage to Expedia and if the hotel has sold their own allocation of room type A and only has room type B left, the lowest price the hotel has for ANY room is the price of room type B. Expedia may then show a lower price for a hotel because they still have room type A available to sell to travelers since they own that percentage of inventory that was presold to them.

The core value proposition of booking through an online agency wasn't really addressed by Tony and Cheri which is that people by and large don't want to shop a single hotel's price and availability. When I want to go to Playa del Carmen, I want to see ALL options I have in an area and compare hotels and rates and the easiest way to do that is through an OTA or a metasearch engine.

Booking directly through a hotel has it's own advantages which include: 1) payment is usually not required until you arrive at the hotel, 2) you earn the hotel's loyalty points if they have a program, and 3) the hotel will prioritize your booking for upgrades, etc. since they didn't have to pay a large commission.

From my perspective working at a metasearch company, we want to provide maximum choice and availability of options/inventory so we show both direct hotel inventory and OTA inventory and let consumers decide which one they want to choose.

coditor• 14 years ago

I work for an OTA and this is likely not Expedia per se, but the local office trying to up the value of their sales. Small hotels are always going to have more problems than a big chain, as they don't have any real time data connection to provide availability and room information. Either they send in their information and hope someone enters it correctly, or they are provided with access to a portal they can manage their own data in. If the local property manager is only interested in getting credit for high value sales and the small property owner doesn't have access to the portal, then likely the manager can screw them over so that people wind up at the more valuable properties. OTA's prefer data connections because that way the data is more up to date. It also means any errors are the fault of the chain (unless the hotel system itself has bugs).

By making Expedia aware of how their local managers are operating they might actually get this fixed. No OTA wants this kind of bad publicity. Just the US alone my employer (and its parent company) have nearly 300,000 hotels available. Keeping the data current is a massive pain at that scale since at the other end are individual people.

Also note that for most OTA's there are only a couple providers of hotel photos and one dominant one, and we all hate them as they suck terribly. Unless you are a speciality provider like Oyster or Hotel Tonight and can take the few photos you need, or are Tripadvisor and can get customers to take them, you are at the mercy of the photo provider.

So a quality bitching can get you better service (as a hotel provider) from an OTA. Even better is make a deal with someone who provides small hotels with data management (which does cost money) so that your room availability is all electronic.

The hotel business is all about filling rooms. The average hotel hopes for 70% rooms filled tonight. OTA's do provide a lot of hotel bookings so you can't do without them. But if the local OTA hotel property manager sucks there are 4 major players you can deal with (plus all the speciality ones). Yes you have to give them a commission (20%+ usually) but if you work with them correctly they can fill your rooms.

dchinyee• 14 years ago

What's the name of the dominant hotel photo provider? Any particular reason why they suck so terribly? Just curious to see if it might be an easy problem for a new player to solve.

aneth4• 14 years ago

I don't use Expedia as I've found their service to be horrible, and their technology in the early days had all kinds of issues with losing session and the like, so I abandoned them 10+ years ago.

I do use Orbitz. I'm not sure if they are guilty of the same sins, but I've generally found their service to be adequate. I book directly with airlines when it makes sense and doesn't take too much effort - but most hotel booking sites are horrible and prices are usually higher.

It would be great if an open platform like AirBNB emerged for hotels - perhaps AirBNB itself.

buster• 14 years ago

To be honest, i'll still book where it's cheapest. Usually i use a lot of those sites, including tripadvisor, etc. to check for accomodations and in the end i'll book where it's cheapest. I'll check on google maps for hotels, check online pricing, but in the end.. when the hotel itself is more expensive (plus expedia and co offer me a good meta search not only one hotel!).. why should i pay more for "less"?!

Never had problems with expedia&co myself but i rarely need to cancel/change reservations.

It's not my fault that the whole hotel business doesn't seem to be capable enough to do this on their own.

avar7• 14 years ago

    > For the most availability, best prices and service,
    > always book directly with a hotel.

(Full disclosure: I work for Booking.com an online hotel booking website and Expedia's competitor)

I think it's a gross misrepresentation to say that the customer is always best off booking directly with the hotel. You get something you wouldn't get when booking directly through the hotel.

When you use an OTA you have collective bargaining power; If the hotel screws you around in any way it's now the OTA's problem. They'll call up the hotel on your behalf (in their native language, which you may or may not speak) and either sort it out with them or make sure you have somewhere else to stay because you're now their customer.

Of course the service you get differs a lot by OTA. But from the customer's perspective there's usually a net gain by booking through one.

krenoten5• 14 years ago

FD: I'm at an OTA/Central Reservation System specializing in boutique hotels.

When you book with a respectable OTA, it is basically like purchasing comfort insurance, but you pay nothing for it. You are being backed by their brand and your problems become theirs to solve. OTA's sometimes offer perks to people who book through them like free or discounted transportation and comped room upgrades.

Also, it is often in the contract between the hotel and the OTA that the hotel will always advertise the lowest rate available through that OTA. If the hotel works with several OTA's, then the hotel must offer the same room rate to each one that they have this arrangement with. They sometimes offer the same rate on their own, too. If you contact the hotel and ask for a room directly, and they offer you a lower rate, there is a chance that they are in breach of contract.

So the customer should definitely be getting value from their decision to book through an OTA.

For hotels, they usually have contracts with several OTA's. To let them know which rooms to sell, a hotelier will periodically update the availability and rates using a CRS that distributes the information to several OTA's, simplifying the process. But there are some really nasty CRS's out there, built in the 70s on mainframes that have not changed much since. They can be complicated to work with, and discourage smaller properties from putting in the effort. It sounds like the writer likely had a problem updating availability information through the CRS that expedia uses, leading to them not showing any availability.

mistermann6• 14 years ago

You seriously expect us to believe this? Your comment, at least in my mind, just adds to my opinion of how truly evil companies such as yours are. Have you no shame whatsoever?

lessnonymous2• 14 years ago

This is weasel words:

> Also, it is often in the contract between the hotel and the OTA that the hotel will always advertise the lowest rate available through that OTA. ... If you contact the hotel and ask for a room directly, and they offer you a lower rate, there is a chance that they are in breach of contract.

You're scare mongering. A hotel can charge a customer anything they like. They can give them the room for free. Your contract with them MIGHT preclude them ADVERTISING a lower rate, but it doesn't preclude them offering a lower rate when asked for a room directly. Even if it did, the only remedy I can imagine would be ending the contract.

When I want a room today or tomorrow, I find the best rates I can via OTAs, then phone the hotel and ask for the manager. I then ask for and GET a cheaper rate because they don't have to take the 25% OTA hit.

Until the web is flooded with "would you believe the extra value this OTA provided?" I'll continue to avoid them.

gingerlime5• 14 years ago

    > If the hotel screws you around in any way it's now the OTA's problem

We're just in the process of trying to sort out a dispute with a hotel we booked via booking.com. It doesn't feel like it's booking.com's problem, but rather ours. We were essentially forced to pay for full 7 nights even though we stayed only one, after it wasn't possible to stay any longer with a non-functioning toilet. Not to mention false information published on booking.com.

    > or make sure you have somewhere else to stay because you're now their customer

That's interesting. In our case booking.com has never offered any such help. We went by ourselves to try to find alternative accommodation. Not that it makes a huge difference, but it is our honeymoon so I'm sure yo'd agree there are many better ways to spend it...

So far you guys are trying to help, but I can't say that the problem is resolved or that it feels like you're treating it as your problem. To quote a part of the latest email from booking.com on this:

> ... the hotels themselves are responsible for all the information provided to you. Booking.com acts as an intermediary between the guest and the hotel and is therefore responsible for delivering the reservation correctly to the hotel. Once the hotel has confirmed the reservation it then becomes their responsibility to accommodate the guests.

krenoten5• 14 years ago

It sounds like you dealt with a rotten hotel, sorry for your experience. Unfortunately, the OTA is only as accurate as the hotelier filling in information about their property.

avar7• 14 years ago

I work in IT which is pretty removed from customer service, but if you send me some details at the E-Mail listed in my profile I could see if I could find someone to poke about this if needed. I'll be back at work on Thursday.

megablast2• 14 years ago

So rather than dealing with one entity, the hotel which you have to deal with, and is represented by someone standing in front of you, you have to deal with two, one who is not,

gingerlime5• 14 years ago

I think there's a potentially big advantage to having a 3rd party involved. It can help arbitrate when there are problems. However, the OTA must really help both parties, and resolve any disputes, instead of washing their hands off it and saying they're just a messenger confirming the booking. There's little value in an OTA that only provides booking confirmation and that's it.

As far as I'm aware airbnb has made a lot of progress in this very area, verifying photos and information posted, checking the identities of the guests, that helps protecting both the host and the guest. There's no reason why OTAs can't do the same with hotels.

avar7• 14 years ago

If you're a hotel dealing with one unhappy customer you only stand to lose the future business of that customer, and any negative PR (usually non-existent) that they can personally inflict upon you.

When you're dealing with a customer you get through a lucrative distribution channel you're liable to lose your standing on the distribution channel as a whole.

Negative reviews by that customer and customer service load on the distribution channel caused by you will impact your future business as a whole. This is true for all major distribution channels that I know of, such as Amazon.com, eBay and various OTA's.

michaelhoffman3• 14 years ago

This does not correspond with my experience with online travel agencies. Whenever I've had any sort of irregularity to deal with, there were now two entities to communicate with instead of one. And sometimes the travel agency doesn't pass on the lenient policies of the principal.

thibauts• 14 years ago

I had a dispute with an hotel booked through booking.com a month ago and their customer service was really impressive. As said above they called the hotel, sorted it out, called me back, sent me a few emails for order cancellation, and personal apologies. What's more the woman who handled the case was really nice and reassuring.

I was left wondering. The day I open my own internet service I'll try to provide such good support.

Spooky23• 14 years ago

The article is specifically talking about small, mom and pop places -- in these cases, calling the hotel is almost always the best thing to do.

For your average Marriott, Hilton, etc, I agree with you, calling the hotel directly isn't going to do much for you unless there is some special circumstance.

monksy3• 14 years ago

Are you guys still using Perl? I'd love to work with you guys, but I'm not a Perl guy.

avar7• 14 years ago

Yes. All our main backend code is in Perl. There's frontend tasks in JavaScript and some C and Python around, but my rough guess would be that less than 1% of our code falls under that umbrella.

We're hiring, and not just "Perl guy[s]". We hire good programmers, some of them know Perl already, but others pick it up while on the job.

Contact me at avarab@gmail.com if you (or anyone else here) would be interested in exploring opportunities at Booking.com. Our current openings are listed at booking.com/jobs.

m0dE• 14 years ago

Hotelier & PMS developer & Booking.com user here. Booking.com does call us immediately if there's any dispute between the hotel & the travellers. Irrelevant question: Expedia has HotelExtranet and Travelocity has a nice API. Why is it so bloody hard to integrate with booking.com? (Directly without using CRS)

calbear816• 14 years ago

Is it because Booking.com has an agency model vs. a merchant model like the others? Also, seems to be working pretty well for Booking.com (largest OTA in the world).

doug1001• 14 years ago

i can actually confirm this one--about 18 months ago, a hotel in SF, refused to honor my reservation ("just couldn't seem to find it in their system, though i had plenty to show that i had one)--turned away from at about 2300 on evening after a long flight. In a still more-astonishing display of incompetence, about two days later they charged my credit card as a "no show." The Site i booked with sorted it out for me (full refund within about two days) and all it took was an email to them asking for help. Booking.com, in fact--kudos.

jonknee• 14 years ago

It sounds like they aren't very savvy business people, but when I'm looking to stay somewhere that does not matter. A 16 room boutique hotel is never going to get a ton of attention from a large travel agency, there's no profit in it. They'd be better off marketing directly to their target demographic and trying for word of mouth / repeat business.

I have had great luck with Hotwire (an Expedia subsidiary) and have discovered many neat hotels with it. I live in Florida and frequently book hotel room on the various beaches for easy short vacations, the only motivator is location and price (if nothing is available, I don't go). I have booked directly at some of the places I found, but if it weren't for their being on Hotwire I never would have found them.

Also, the cost savings with Hotwire is frequently massive (50% off is not uncommon)--I haven't been able to book directly for cheaper (the trick is Hotwire doesn't tell you the exact hotel before you book, so if you want to ensure the same property you need to direct book and pay more).

zevyoura• 14 years ago

I also have had good experiences with Hotwire. One helpful note: if you do a little looking around on the internet, it's usually pretty easy to figure out which hotel they're offering based on location and amenities.

specialist• 14 years ago

Not using hotels.com is harder than you think. There are front entities pretending to be the hotel and are actually booking thru hotels.com.

Background...

We booked a hotel in Key West FL. Fair deal. Show up, no reservation. Turns out they gave us the wrong hotel info. It was super late and we couldn't resolve the mess with hotels' customer service over the phone so we just crashed where we arrived. Took months to get the charges for the other booking reversed.

People at hotel where we arrived said it happens all the time.

For our next trip, resolved to not use hotels.com ever again, I found hotel via the web. Called the number. Turns out both the website and phone number were SEO optimized front companies that book thru hotels.com. Which we did not discover until we arrived and there was a problem with the booking. We paid $40 extra per night for the privilege of being lied to.

Rant...

Personally, as a consumer, I'm very grumpy that I'm constantly being lied to. I work hard for my money. I try to be diligent about how I spend it. And I'm sick of being robbed by legal means. It seems to be getting worse (ISPs, banks, phone companies, mortgages, etc). I'm now more reluctant to spend money. Because now my transaction costs are getting too high. Too much friction.

If my wary consumer experience is widespread, it has to be dampening the economy.

Free market! Woot!

beagle3• 14 years ago

Same story here. Called a number I thought was the hotel. They replied with "Hotel name, what can I do for you". I made the reservation, based on wrong information in just about every department, the wrongest being that the hotel has room (but also wrong about cancellation policy and other stuff, as I later found out).

Got to hotel, only to be told that hotels.com screwed up and confirmed 30 reservations when in fact the hotel in fact had 2 available rooms for the day.

Went to a friend's house, as no other hotel around was available. Called hotels.com; waited an hour on the phone, no answer. Disputed charge with credit card company (took less than 10 minutes), and emailed them that I've disputed, and if they want it to NOT go through they are welcome to contact me.

They emailed me within 24 hours with some credit, saying it will take them 72 hours to resolve. After 120 hours, I email them; they say it's going to "take them more time". After 4 more days, I email them - still no response.

The next morning, credit card company gave me my money back. Haven't heard from hotels.com since, but I have a paper trail saying they will check and contact me, and then silence. And so does the credit card company.

Never booking through hotels.com again, even if it means I have to work much more to figure out a direct phone number.

hayksaakian• 14 years ago

Sorry to be pedantic, but > SEO Optimized > Search Engine Optimization Optimized

Automated teller machine machine?

white_devil• 14 years ago

This is fucking disgusting, and these scumbags (together with tripadvisor) have polluted Google's search results.

No matter what hotel you're googling for, your search results will be chock-full of these bastards.

gniv2• 14 years ago

Don't lump them together. Tripadvisor has lots of high quality hotel reviews. I can forgive a lot of annoying ads for that.

parasubvert• 14 years ago

Been using Expedia for 14 years, though not exclusively. Contrary to the post, they often post discounts unavailable elsewhere, particularly for combos. For example recently, the regular rate at Wynn Las Vegas was around $200 a night in December but with an Expedia flight it worked out to $140 a night. This is the discount they usually give their mid level Red Card members, if I recall correctly (upper get RFB).

I've also used Expedia to book a stay in Cancun a few years ago; they had a number of mom and pop hotels listed with rich details, but Ultimately I got a great combo rate at the Ritz Carlton (like $240 - it was about a week before the season really began); this rate was not available on the Ritz website.

I have had some bad experiences with Expedia when requesting refunds or changes, though this has improved over the past 2 years with more software features and slightly better call center agents (ymmv).

Ultimately I'll book direct with the hotel or airline if I have a specific reason to (schedule, FF points, upgrades, etc), but for easy price comparison and research I tend to rely on Kayak and Expedia almost exclusively.

This posting has not changed my mind that they offer a good service - they seem to have issues with their Latin American offices.

lucian303• 14 years ago

Since their rep double booked the room I had already booked online (which I told him) and I released expedia points weren't worth shit, I've been using hotels.com. Free night every 10. That's pretty sweet. (Note, I have no affiliation w/ hotels.com or whatever, it's just what works for me).

Wish I hadn't wasted all those nights getting expedia points worth what $10 bux maybe after 20+ nights?

Fuck that.

usaphp2• 14 years ago

I will NEVER book from Expedia, the end!!!

_delirium2• 14 years ago

> Secondly they do not offer discounted rates as many claim.

In Denmark at least, I have found that they typically do offer discounted rates that the hotel's own website doesn't offer, especially for smaller hotels during periods of lower demand. If you're booking off-season at the last minute, I've found discounts on hotels.com of 40-60% relative to what the online-booking system of the hotel's own website was showing. One example where I've stayed a few times (http://www.hotel-maritime.dk/) was offering €50/night via hotels.com in late January 2012, at a time when their own website was listing €80/night. It's frequent enough that I advise my friends visiting Copenhagen to always check a hotel's rate on hotels.com before booking through the hotel's website, in case there's a substantial difference.

lessnonymous2• 14 years ago

The price advertised at a hotel is called the "Rack Rate". Never pay that. Phone the hotel and get a real price from them. It's a weird system, but you'll get the same price as an OTA is offering. Often less, if you ask and quote the OTA price.

_delirium2• 14 years ago

I guess I could do that, but I generally prefer to book on the internet. Phones tend to result in dealing with international phone calls, being on hold, reading credit-card numbers over the phone, and that kind of hassle. Plus, the discovery/comparison-shopping experience is considerably worse. Some hotels offer the same discounted rates through their own websites, and I do book with them directly if they do. If they don't, but somewhere else on the internet does offer the discounted rates, then I prefer that option to calling.

duopixel• 14 years ago

I worked in the online booking industry for a couple of years, coincidentally I also live in Playa del Carmen now.

What most likely happened was this: Expedia and other big players buy wholesale room inventory from large hotel chains. Expedia might come up and say that they want to buy 30% of the rooms of a hotel for a certain period at a steeply discounted price.

This might be something that the hotel itself can't fill, so the happily sell to Expedia et al. To Expedia, selling these rooms might be something like 80% profit, against 25% for a small hotel such as the Luna Blue.

Expedia then promotes the hell out of the hotel through their website: they make it appear on top of search results, they "pimp" they profile of the hotel, and such. They are not allowed to undercut the price, because other retailers might ask for the same price.

Then, the office managers of Expedia Cancún are most likely on some sort of incentive to sell most of these wholesale rooms (travel is dominated by such economic incentives). The hack is is pretty clear: "closing" smaller hotels causes users to book another hotel, and it will most likely be one of these pimped out hotel profiles that provide much more profit than other hotels.

I'm guessing this is a regional issue, just some dim witted office managers at Cancún that are trying to game the system in order to get a big incentive.

mistermann6• 14 years ago

This sounds very plausible, and this type of thing should be closely watched by corporate and punished harshly when it does occur. The older I get, the more I think government should get involved in business, because it seems increasingly common that corporations will not police themselves - "oh, we had no idea this was happening!"

Personally, I am getting tired of hearing lie after lie from corporations. I have always been right wing or libertarian, but I am starting to adopt the political opinion that I would like to see the government step in and start punishing these companies so hard that they will very seriously regret that they didn't self-police.

drpgq• 14 years ago

Well that explains some of the weirdness I've seen for hotels that Expedia said were booked out where it didn't seem likely (dead season).

bhntr3• 14 years ago

It would be great if this blog post were picked up by a legit news organization, researched and fact checked, cross referenced with other stories (like the French one) and published more widely as an expose.

This is bad for consumers and bad for hotels. I like small local hotels. I want them to succeed. I want an easier way to connect with them. They are hard to find on hotels.com, etc. and I always assumed it was because the owners didn't maintain the listing, but it seems it's because expedia doesn't care.

desult• 14 years ago

Here you go. http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/28/3809328/one-small-hotels-...

michaelhoffman3• 14 years ago

Since this was posted on 5 December and has a fair amount of attention now, I'm surprised that Expedia hasn't officially responded yet. Maybe because so much of the attention has come in the past couple of days. I sent them a Tweet asking what was going on, and I notice someone posted this on their Facebook Page.

benatkin2• 14 years ago

One does not simply post something on a business's Facebook page. Either the page has to share it or the viewer has to make two clicks to see it.

michaelhoffman3• 14 years ago

Well, it's there[1] and a bunch of people seem to have seen it. Expedia has replied to posts made by others after this one but they seem to be ignoring this.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/naptown/posts/295460857241207

LunaBlue• 14 years ago

Thanks to all the folks offering support here and sharing their own stories of frustration with Expedia. We also wanted to note we are aware that our site is down. Our host server is having real troubles today and tell us things won't be fixed for 24 hours. If you need to contact us before then please email us at info@lunabluehotel.com or via our Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/lunabluehotel. Again thanks for the voices of support. Tony & Cheri Owners, Luna Blue Hotel

kqr2• 14 years ago

What are good alternatives to expedia that provide good customer service and are also friendly to small businesses?

javajosh• 14 years ago

When the cost to enforce a contract is higher than the value of the contract, then there is no justice. Small businesses are left with what is effectively vigilante justice, writing blog posts and appealing to the public directly.

Frankly I'm biased against large organizations in general, and so I'm tempted to take this post at face value, and get angry with Expedia. And perhaps that's the right thing to do (although, as someone else pointed out, some e-mail quotes, screenshots, or other corroborating evidence would make for a more convincing story). But I can't help but think that we're all missing the big picture: that the high price of justice creates an enormous advantage for large companies. That justice is priced out of most people's ability.

I used to hear about how 'litigious' American society has become. And yet, is that really true? Personal injury is no doubt quite popular. What what about simple fraud and breech of contract? What about conspiracy to commit fraud?

Unless the justice system is priced for people to actually use it, then it's useless. So the question arises: what cheaper options does the OP have for pursuing this case?

ilaksh• 14 years ago

If Expedia is misrepresenting the status of the smaller hotels and cutting them out then I think that is a type of fraud or collusion with the bigger hotels. It is at the least, a policy that is antagonistic to competition.

monksy3• 14 years ago

You don't want to book airline tickets with Expedia. If they are cheaper, they are only slightly cheaper, and you'll have to deal with Expedia when things go wrong. The airline gives a minor discount due to pushing over customer service to Expedia.

sethg• 14 years ago

Expedia is (allegedly) lying about one of their “partner” hotels in a way that drives customers away from the hotel. Isn’t this the kind of thing that a lawyer would call “tortious interference with business relationships”?

liranja• 14 years ago

Well, that's exactly why we created http://live.Roomixer.com A Guest Exchange marketplace where Guest Rejections can be bought and sold. If hotels would cooperate with other hotels there would be less work for Expedia!

saosebastiao• 14 years ago

Friendly PSA from someone who has dealt with lying businessmen and customer service reps: record all your conversations. Be careful to notify them that you are recording the conversation if you live in a two-party consent state.

In fact, letting them know you are recording them is a great way to get them to take you seriously. I've gotten a phone call from a VP of a company, wishing to "settle our differences" to my satisfaction once word got to him that I had recorded a conversation with a beligerent rep.

Expedia: Bad for the Traveler, Bad for the Hotel

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