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Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

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Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#21

Post by owebmaster »

jakub_g wrote: post #6

Booking is the website with the highest density of dark patterns per pixel I've ever seen. Red texts hurrying you to make a reservation in virtually every on the page ("only 2 rooms left", "someone just made a booking", "12 people looking", "Booked N times today", "You're lucky to see this room, normally it's booked!", "You're lucky to see it for $50, normally it's more expensive" etc.). All of those texts are flashi…

As a digital nomad, this "dark pattern" has proved very useful for me a lot of times. It is a worse experience to check a place and when you look again it is not available anymore.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#23

Post by bdcravens »

dbatten wrote: post #17

This happened to me with Expedia. They advertised a lower rate on a different room at the hotel I was looking at... Didn't catch until after I checked out that the advertisement was for a different day than my search results. (Because obviously I'm just as happy to stay at a random hotel just off the interstate in rural Ohio a week after my trip as during it?) Thankfully, Expedia has good customer service and fixed t…

Same issue. Went up to Dallas for a few days to avoid Harvey floods, and the $99 site rate increased to $147 on the weekends.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#24

Post by tyingq »

mewciv wrote: post #9
jakub_g wrote: post #6

Booking is the website with the highest density of dark patterns per pixel I've ever seen. Red texts hurrying you to make a reservation in virtually every on the page ("only 2 rooms left", "someone just made a booking", "12 people looking", "Booked N times today", "You're lucky to see this room, normally it's booked!", "You're lucky to see it for $50, normally it's more expensive" etc.). All of those texts are flashi…

Is there any other company not using these dark patterns? I tried to use many others (big enough to have choices) and it's all the same. Sometimes you're even wondering if it's not just the same website with another branding.

Booking.com is the white label hotel provider for many websites. Kayak, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, etc.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#25

Post by nemothekid »

owebmaster wrote: post #21
jakub_g wrote: post #6

Booking is the website with the highest density of dark patterns per pixel I've ever seen. Red texts hurrying you to make a reservation in virtually every on the page ("only 2 rooms left", "someone just made a booking", "12 people looking", "Booked N times today", "You're lucky to see this room, normally it's booked!", "You're lucky to see it for $50, normally it's more expensive" etc.). All of those texts are flashi…

As a digital nomad, this "dark pattern" has proved very useful for me a lot of times. It is a worse experience to check a place and when you look again it is not available anymore.

>It is a worse experience to check a place and when you look again it is not available anymore.

I'm not sure that's what the GP cares about - it's a dark pattern because I don't think any of those statements are true. Sure they are unverifiable, but I wouldn't be surprised if you book a room, open a incognito widow, and find the same hotel again with the same number of rooms available. Or if you try to book a room 1000 years in the future, and you'd also find that "there are only 3 spots available".

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#26

Post by moondev »

The only time I used booking.com, the hotel wouldn't honor my reservation, even though I showed them the booking confirmation number. They were sold out and simply said "not my problem, third party and we never got it". Who knows who's fault it was but with something as crucial as a hotel in a specific location/date I tend to just book through the actual hotel site from now on.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#27

Post by amag »

mandarg wrote: post #14
pingec wrote: post #8

Even as a host using booking.com I dislike many shady things they put you through but at the end of the day these dark patterns must work in practice as there is no other platform that delivers even closely as many guests as booking.com.

What are some alternative sites that send you guests? I have used hotels.com sometimes (has dark patterns too, but fewer of them). I would definitely prefer using something that was more...sensible. I would naïvely think that booking directly with hotels would be cheapest, but I have definitely seen deals on these aggregators that were unavailable on the same hotel's own site – which is the only reason I even think a…

Oh, don't get me started on hotels.com. It's seems to be quite common for hotels.com to sell you the room with breakfast (in countries where breakfast typically is included) but when you get the confirmation, there's no mention of any breakfast and the booking code is for a room without breakfast. So when you arrive at the hotel and they say: "Nope, breakfast is not included" you have nothing to prove that you booked with breakfast, in fact, to the hotel your reservation is the very definition of a no-breakfast reservation.

This happened to me and we had to run through a lot of hoops to eventually get hotels.com to reimburse us. It helped that we had called them for parts of our reservation because all calls are recorded and the operator clearly stated that breakfast was included.

The same thing happened to my father who was a bit more alert and noted the missing breakfast from the confirmation. He then had to call them something like five times for a confirmation that actually said breakfast was included. Each time they sent him a new reservation but it wasn't until the last call it did say breakfast was included.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#28

Post by JCharante »

aluhut wrote: post #10

I gave up online vacation reservations this year. This is the second time I wasted hours on several portals before I've found one that worked in a decent way and had a useful choice. When I've finally found a destination, I tried to book the trips I've found and they all have been "sold out". When I tried the same criteria again, I got the same results but more expensive. Again sold out when I clicked any of them. Di…

Hopefully it won't be "powered by Watson". God I can already imagine the commercials.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#29

Post by FireBeyond »

mtmail wrote: post #5

Try searching for a hotel room 6+ months ahead. Oslo end of February 2018. "14 people are looking right now. In high demand! Booked 124 times in the last 24 hours. Latest Booking: 3 minutes ago" "In high demand – only 3 rooms left on our site!" "Someone just booked this In high demand!" "Limited supply in Oslo: 3-star hotels. 4 hotels like Best Western Karl Johan Hotel are already unavailable on our site!" "3 other p…

Basically exactly this. I looked at Oshkosh WI for the middle of October next year. Middle of the week, in fact, a Wed night, 1 night, 1 person stay:

"Only 1 room left!"

"Booked 14 times in the last 24 hours!" - Oh yeah? This hotel in Appleton WI, with 80 rooms, had FOURTEEN rooms booked for a random Wednesday in September 2018 through booking.com ALONE in the last 24 hours.

Screw dark patterns, that's outright deception, if not fraud.

(edited, I originally said October 2018, when in fact my example was for Wed September 19, 2018).

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#30

Post by FireBeyond »

pingec wrote: post #8

Even as a host using booking.com I dislike many shady things they put you through but at the end of the day these dark patterns must work in practice as there is no other platform that delivers even closely as many guests as booking.com.

"Dark patterns" are one thing.

They tell me that they booked 14 rooms at the Red Roof Inn in Appleton WI for Wed September 19, 2018, in the last 24 hours.

I'd love to call the Red Roof Inn and ask them if that's the case.

Other than that, that sounds like outright deceptive practices, fraud in marketing.

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