Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#111

Post by ratww » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

thrdbndndn wrote: post #44

ratww wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Booking.com is a terrible company in pretty much every regard. I've had a reservation to a hotel that was pretty full according to the website scare tactics, but when I got there I was the only person to come in weeks. Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stu…

I agree with all your points. However, last time I travel for a extended time (hotel everyday at different place for a month), I found Booking has the best UI after some comparison between all the major players (keep in mind lots of them are from the same company), I still used it. Would like a recommandation about what to use instead.

I still use their UI but I just call the hotels directly.

When I can't find anything, I use AirBnB.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#112

Post by Anthony-G » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

lentil_soup wrote: post #93

shp0ngle wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will give you a tip. * search hotel at booking.com * find that hotel at google * call them directly, by actual phone You will get a lower price always. Of course, you need to actually manually call them, which people don't want to do; but it always worked for me.

sometimes they even have their own website so no need to call! Quite often I get a lower price or free goodies (ie. a bottle of wine) because I skipped booking.com

I always try the hotel’s own website but often the prices are higher. I have previously got cheaper prices by talking directly to the owner or hotel management when deciding to extend my stay.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#113

Post by kofejnik » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

throwaway47292 wrote: post #49

iso1631 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the majority of clients are happy, and go back to booking.com after their first visit, thus costing $0

yes, loyalty just reduces the cost per click, but the math is the same, so they buy 100 people instead of 10 people with one reservation, but the game is the same. EDIT: also think about how many times people book per year, maybe 4-5 times in the upper quantiles? so if booking pays 3$ for you, it will take a couple of months until your next booking so they can reinvest your 15% commission to buy other people.

A a freelance consultant, Pre COVID I was easily booking 50 times/year

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#114

Post by kmarc » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

shp0ngle wrote: post #84

dessant wrote: post #28

The first time we booked a place on Booking.com, we were anxious the entire afternoon. Not sure if things have changed, but at that time they made it feel like a racing game, flashy countdowns, everything but THAT place sold out in the area, OTHER PEOPLE WERE LOOKING AT IT, several email notifications in the span of hours because we haven't decided yet, and now it might be TOO LATE if we refresh the page. I wouldn't…

I will give you a tip. * search hotel at booking.com * find that hotel at google * call them directly, by actual phone You will get a lower price always. Of course, you need to actually manually call them, which people don't want to do; but it always worked for me.

This might work in the US, but the rest 80% of the world...

I am aware of booking's dirty tools to make you feel you have to book NOW! However, after around 100+ booking.com booking all around the world (including small villages in Amazonia or Laos) I am eternally grateful that for that extra 1$/night or so I get instant support with whatever probleem I had.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#115

Post by subpixel » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

Much like the calls to action in an infomercial:

- these BS tactics work, very well, for a segment of the audience

- the rest of the audience is not sufficiently offended to do any harm

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#116

Post by techcode » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

dessant wrote: post #28

The first time we booked a place on Booking.com, we were anxious the entire afternoon. Not sure if things have changed, but at that time they made it feel like a racing game, flashy countdowns, everything but THAT place sold out in the area, OTHER PEOPLE WERE LOOKING AT IT, several email notifications in the span of hours because we haven't decided yet, and now it might be TOO LATE if we refresh the page. I wouldn't…

I was part of "Consumer Psychology Team" at Booking.com for years. That team was/is one way or another involved in pretty much every functionality you mentioned (among other things I did in particular latest version/implementation of "X other people looking at this") and TL;DR: All of it is real - and majority of people don't find it as annoying as you, many even find it helpful

---

While I can't really give too many details (BTW I still work at Booking - just moved teams).

I did the real time (it's a stream so technically that's "near real time") processing back-end which collects all the "views events", uses anonymous unique user identifiers to make sure it's truly not counting duplicates, bots are also excluded ...etc. And result is a reverse index of sorts.

On the FE side (technically still BE so think backend for frontend) as part of producing message (or not) we literally do a real-time query on that reversed index to be sure that even if looking only at count it's "1" - we want to be sure that it's not you.

As of things like "Only X left" - that's literally how many rooms we've got left to offer to you for the dates you've entered.

---

And speaking generally. Booking.com being 25+ years old global company, one can imagine that company is basically constantly under microscope of various regulators and consumer protection agencies. So even if there was someone that wanted to fake this type of stuff (and that would be going against what they've learned in various mandatory ethics, privacy, legal ... training). Well something like that would've been very short lived.

And with so much money on the line - companies (at least those that don't have walled garden ecosystems and such) actually do look into long term effect of things like Marketing/Sales/Persuasion - because they don't want to annoy potential customers so much that they never come back.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#117

Post by Terry_Roll » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

grujicd wrote: post #89

virgilp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an opposing pov: we mostly use booking.com for our reservations, and have never had an issue with them, and found their support useful the one or two times we needed it. They're the best reservation site that I know (others are way worse), and are fairly customer friendly [+]. I still book directly whenever I can because I don't want the hosts to pay the rather large booking.com fees... but we often find places to…

I'm using booking for 15+ years, mostly in Europe. I'm a satisfied user. These scare tactics don't bother me since it's easy to ignore. What I care about is that I see exact micro location of property, if I'm going with friends to a mountain cabin it's a real bonus if it's a bit further from other cabins or surreounded by woods. Airbnb burned me more than once with hidding this critical piece of info and only showing…

Do you recommend any mountain cabins? I've used and will be trying more of these https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/ but some of the cabins in the Swiss alps look good, paid and free.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#118

Post by drclau » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

rsstack wrote: post #18

I implemented this functionality for a certain SaaS with many large customers. I made sure to have a scalable way to measure unique viewers across different time frames. Only after we launched it, we realized all our competitors just put a random number that looked nice.

> competitors just put a random number that looked nice

Is this even legal? It seems this is used to mislead the customer.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#119

Post by als0 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

I have the same question about Etsy listings.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#120

Post by ransom1538 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

dessant wrote: post #28

The first time we booked a place on Booking.com, we were anxious the entire afternoon. Not sure if things have changed, but at that time they made it feel like a racing game, flashy countdowns, everything but THAT place sold out in the area, OTHER PEOPLE WERE LOOKING AT IT, several email notifications in the span of hours because we haven't decided yet, and now it might be TOO LATE if we refresh the page. I wouldn't…

Here is what I do. Find the hotel on booking.com. Call the hotel directly. Tell them the price is what you found online - per night on booking.com. EVERY time they give me that rate over the phone. The end. Done.