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How Booking.com manipulates users

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Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#291

Post by specialist »

Kaibeezy wrote: post #174
specialist wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The impact is worse than just hurting brands. After hotels.com boned me, I've soured on the very notion of online bookings, price comparison sites for travel stuff, trusting ratings. Caveat emptor (aka Freedom Markets™) is bad for business because it increases transaction costs (friction). Reforms like consumer protection regulations are championed by businesses trying to make an honest buck once they get tired of th…

Can you describe what happened with hotels.com? I've been using them exclusively because my travel is so random and it's just easier to have all the hotel bookings in one place. But it does make me uncomfortable that I'm getting taken advantage of in one way or another. Thx in advance.

First incident: Reservation at great place in Key West. Flew into Miami, drove to Key West, arrive late at night, no reservation. Never heard of us. Scramble find a room. Later, struggle to get our refund.

Resolve to never again use hotels.com

Second incident: Find Kalaloch Lodge resort online. Call them directly. Nice chit chat about peninsula, rain forests, etc. Drove to resort. Arrive, no reservation.

Turns out hotels.com and their affiliates buy up domain names, do SEO, and pretend to be the owner / operator of independent resorts.

aka cybersquatting. I call it fraud, theft, malfeasance.

The owners we spoke to said it happens all the time, they're super frustrated, don't know how to fight back.

Best as I can tell, Freedom Markets™ (caveat emptor) has become increasingly the norm. For everything. It's exhausting.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#292

Post by smashu »

I work in the travel industry as a developer and my current task is to make our booking engine more "bookingcom-like" (yes, this is exactly how the requirements were formulated by product management).

To achieve this task I did a small research of other travel web sites and I realised that most of them added such psychological elements lately.

Today I found this gold article and forwarded it to the product managers, hehe :)

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#295

Post by Kaibeezy »

specialist wrote: post #291
Kaibeezy wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you describe what happened with hotels.com? I've been using them exclusively because my travel is so random and it's just easier to have all the hotel bookings in one place. But it does make me uncomfortable that I'm getting taken advantage of in one way or another. Thx in advance.

First incident: Reservation at great place in Key West. Flew into Miami, drove to Key West, arrive late at night, no reservation. Never heard of us. Scramble find a room. Later, struggle to get our refund. Resolve to never again use hotels.com Second incident: Find Kalaloch Lodge resort online. Call them directly. Nice chit chat about peninsula, rain forests, etc. Drove to resort. Arrive, no reservation. Turns out ho…

Thanks for the detail. For either of those incidents, did they seem to have a low number of reviews? I can't think of what else might telegraph that kind of problem, which surely is a hassle, especially if it's precious vacation time.

When I've traveled with my family, I'll sometimes call or email the hotel directly to confirm. As a group we are not as resilient as I am solo. We've not had a reservation go missing, but we have had rooms with no extra bed, which is almost as bad.

Where we have had those kinds of problems more often is using airline miles for rooms. The only solution there is to book a suite or something else special, then they are more likely to make sure it happens.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#296

Post by Joeri »

Jaruzel wrote: post #137
Osmium wrote: post #22

To anyone from Booking.com reading this: I'll go elsewhere next time I need to book a room. Dark patterns may help profits in the short-term, but they're terrible for your brand. Just ask TicketMaster. It isn't just tech-savvy users that will catch on to this either. If an everyday user uses Booking.com, reads reviews and thinks their room will be great, but then has a bad experience, they're going to stop trusting B…

I recently used booking.com for the first time, as I was in a rush and needed somewhere to stay that night. The hotel I booked through booking.com was a Best Western. After the booking went through, I received a flurry of emails from both booking.com and Best Western. One of the Best Western emails encouraged me to sign up for their rewards scheme. Having liked Best Western hotels previously, I signed up, and downloa…

I’ve also learned through multiple bad experiences to use booking.com only to find hotels but to book directly with the hotel.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#297

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

bogomipz wrote: post #73
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #28

This and the recent Ticketmaster expose make me wonder: is it possible to objectively identify dark UI patterns like this via a browser extension? Usually I can try to see through them, but something that flags stuff like this with a non-obtrusive warning would be nice to add to the list of extensions I automatically throw on new installs for family members (that list currently includes PrivacyBadger and uBlock Origi…

What was the Ticketmaster expose? Not that I would be the least surprised by any kind of scandal from those thugs but I haven't heard anything recently.

There was a HN thread that was linked to an article about it a month or so ago, but I can't find it now. You can also check out the top comments on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13312629

The time ticker "feature" is what was referenced in the other HN article from a month ago.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#298

Post by Joeri »

etairaz wrote: post #149

You seriously had to book a shitty hotel in order to understand that you're being manipulated? Let me give you the short version of how to book on booking, which is BTW an excellent site for travel arrangements: 1) Ignore anything that makes it sound like you're in a competition. Cheapest price, someone is looking, etc. You're trying to book a hotel room that suits you, not win a race. 2) Any hotel ranked below 9+ ha…

I booked an 8.9 and only found out afterwards some of the rooms aren’t cleaned if you book through booking, because those rooms aren’t actually from the hotel but a private owner renting out their rooms. I contacted booking about it, they did nothing.

The private owner also put a hold on my credit card, as did the hotel, with the sum of both being high enough i bumped into my card’s limit before the end of my stay. Oh, and the very low rate of booking.ccom turned out to be the same price as booking direct once all the semi-hidden charges were added.

Lesson learned: always book directly with the hotel.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#299

Post by Frank2312 »

4ad wrote: post #285
tsycho wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem with Airbnb is opaque pricing at the search page. They will claim a room is say $250/night, but after fees, taxes and cleaning charges, it might be $400/night. Cleaning charges in particular can vary widely. Even though Airbnb knows the exact travel dates and hence the exact amount, they still choose to show the lower daily price rather than the actual. I consider this a dark pattern too.

Yeah. Just like in the US they don't show taxes (which vary!) on products in retail shops. It's obnoxious, and I don't understand how this is legal, even in the US.

The difference here is that you can easily calculate taxes based on the price you can see since taxes don't vary in the same state/province (because this also applies to Canada...).

On Airbnb, it's up to the property owner to decide cleaning fees and such, and there isn't any rule about what that includes (that I know of).

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