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Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

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Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#131

Post by Simon_says »

petre wrote: post #111
lucaspiller wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are booking with a chain you usually get better perks by booking through their site, especially if you are a loyalty member (even the most basic level often gives perks so it's worth signing up). Some are even cheaper by booking directly (e.g. Accor group). The place where booking.com really shines is for individual hotels and smaller properties like bed and breakfasts - often they only use one provider and it…

They're cheaper directly because booking.com takes 15 or 18% comission.

You would think so, but I travel a lot and it's been extremely rare that the price in cash at the hotel is less than Booking.com's price.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#132

Post by matthewmacleod »

Obviously I'm an odd one out – I quite like booking.com. Sure, it'd probably be a bit nicer if it didn't have all the flashing red shit everywhere, but broadly speaking I've found it's pretty useful for locating hotels and getting the details in a consistent manner. I've never had a booking made through it cancelled or anything like that, and the prices haven't been obviously inflated versus those offered booking directly with the hotel.

Obviously it sounds like other have had a worse experience…

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#133

Post by hkmurakami »

tibiapejagala wrote: post #57
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…

I'll take all the dark patterns they have if it means I can avoid hotel chains' own booking systems. At least I already know the dark patterns of booking.com. Tried to book a one of Starwood Preferred Guest hotel. Had to create an account, but this is a given. For a single room there are 12 offers you can choose, really simple /s. The cheapest offer is for "SPG Member Exclusive. Am I one? How do I know? I guess I'm n…

Regarding defrauding your employer, Japanese hotels are worse. They have plans with actual $20 or $30 general use vouchers included in some plans to "top you off" to the limit of your business travel approval.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#134

Post by _hyn3 »

surfmike wrote: post #34
mewciv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google Hotel search. Hipmunk.

Hipmunk now owned by Concur.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#135

Post by yebyen »

brianwawok wrote: post #115
tudorconstantin wrote: post #66

These dark patterns are the result of successful A/B tests. They don't do it because they enjoy it. They do it because the data says the platform performs better. And I know this because I met dozens of Perl developers at conferences and I asked them explicitly about the FOMO spreading. The question is: how can one measure the long term impact these dark patterns have on future sales? I do my best to avoid using book…

You let the backend stack of a site determine if you visit it or not?

Why not? I'd be more inclined to give my money to a company too, if I knew they were playing nicely in the community, and contributing positively to the ecosystem of one of my own personal pet projects.

It's not a standard that most people will use to decide, but most people don't love software... but if you do love your software and it's not leading-edge anymore (or even if it is, I don't know much about modern Perl development and I assume that is because it's unfashionable...) you want companies that also love that software to do well, and keep putting their improvements back into the upstreams.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#136

Post by lathiat »

chrisper wrote: post #116
oskarth wrote: post #68

I was booking a place in Budapest this summer on Booking.com, and there was a specific area I wanted to be in. I searched for that area and found a place that was marked as having a certain location that was perfect for me. Upon arriving, it turns out this was just where their "main office" was, and the specific apartment I was renting was situated in a different area, several tram rides away. I tried to get my money…

When you reserve with Booking.com, they don't even charge your credit card. At least that's how it has been the last 100 times when I used them. How come it was different this time?

They offer both types of bookings. Some are paid online immediately, others are paid at the hotel in checkout.

Generally speaking if it's not a flexible/refundable rate you will probably pay online from what i noticed but don't quote me on that.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#137

Post by lathiat »

tibiapejagala wrote: post #57
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…

I'll take all the dark patterns they have if it means I can avoid hotel chains' own booking systems. At least I already know the dark patterns of booking.com. Tried to book a one of Starwood Preferred Guest hotel. Had to create an account, but this is a given. For a single room there are 12 offers you can choose, really simple /s. The cheapest offer is for "SPG Member Exclusive. Am I one? How do I know? I guess I'm n…

Exclusive just means only if you're a member. But you are, you just signed up.

I think they term it that way for 2 reasons: first, to try and build some fake loyalty and familiarity (you're already exclusive!) but secondly it's so their normal rate is the same as other booking agents - they can offer it cheaper by making it "member exclusive"

With regards to flexible / cancellable that's usually exactly what flexible means - you can cancel it (and as a flow on, can change the dates, since worst case you can just cancel and re book)

Extra guest charge is most common with a rate that includes breakfast and lastly I've always assumed those double points rates are a cheap way to abuse people booking business expenses.

Hope that helps...

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#138

Post by dennisjauntify »

Ha. As someone on the other side of this, we used to spoon feed availability to OTAs that do this. Set up a competitive price, and it worked wonders. Now they just took it to another level, which would make that technique work even better, Booking sites never know the exact availability of any property. It could look like only a couple left, but there could be blocks, cancellations, who knows why the hotel decided not to give all the rooms. That is part of the inspiration behind priceling getting hotelnija and expedia releasing its own. Even hostelworld had their own PMS for years. So dont believe when there is only a few left.
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