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This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. This quote really caught my attention: "OTAs earn a roughly 20% commission from hotels for each reservation they book, which covers their cost of marketing, inventory acquisition, customer support and payment processing." 20% is a ton! Later in the editorial, the writers complain about how Google takes "a…
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Can you elaborate on the WSJ's agenda against Google ?
The owner of WSJ is News Corp whose executive co-chairman is Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch's views about Google are well known, Example : https://www.forbes.com/2009/04/03/rupert-murdoch-google-busi...
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I don't know about hotels since airbnb is almost always cheaper, but with flying you will almost always find cheaper flights going directly to the airline or using something like The Matrix [1] than using kayak, expedia etc. These companies used to be cheaper than going directly with an airline, but since they were so easy to use everyone uses them now and they charge high margins for that convenience, so the positio…
> I don't know about hotels since airbnb is almost always cheaper AirBNB is super annoying. You have to agree to meet at a certain time. You have to hope they accept your booking. While booking you cannot sort by price, etc. AirBNB informs about demand causing prices to go up in popular periods. Then for most places you basically have to put in writing if you could pretty please rent the place. This while on any hote…
For us, AirBnB is just another booking source but it’s fairly annoying.. I can definitely agree with you — just on the opposite site of the table (the property owner.)
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> But the OTAs (who have been living off fat profits for years; see Priceline stock [1]) get none of my sympathy. Any move that hurts Booking.com's revenues is a good move, by me. I don't have an issue with them taking 20% commission, but I loathe all of the dark patterns they employ to make that commission.
'... but I loathe all of the dark patterns they employ to make that commission.' I tried to leave a negative review for a hotel on booking.com and the overall result was 3.5 out 5! At least with google reviews I can get a fair picture of what the place is actually like. And, all that 'just one room left at this price' is basically fraud. It does annoy me though when I try to book direct and get charged the exact same…
Do you mean tripadvisor? Booking.com works on a scale of 1-10.
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> I don't know about hotels since airbnb is almost always cheaper AirBNB is super annoying. You have to agree to meet at a certain time. You have to hope they accept your booking. While booking you cannot sort by price, etc. AirBNB informs about demand causing prices to go up in popular periods. Then for most places you basically have to put in writing if you could pretty please rent the place. This while on any hote…
I have a property in France and we use a combination of AirBnB and until now, Booking.com; on AirBnB we have it set to instant book— we essentially have a small hotel type property so we don’t go through the that whole “approval” theater. However I agree AirBnB IS annoying because most people trying to book us always want to ask dumb questions like “is your property still available” — well yes, that’s why you can ins…
I have never used AirBnB, but I am loathe to rely too much on entirely electronic information, without a real human confirming it. Case in point: several restaurants claimed they'd be open on Christmas day on their websites, so we planned to pick up food for a gathering. When we arrived at the restaurant on the day, they were closed, at a time which was at least 2 hours before their posted closing time (which did include holiday hours). This caused a last-minute scramble to arrange food for people at short notice on Christmas day. If we had tried to reach an actual person on the phone, presumably this mixup would have been avoided.
If my travel arrangements depended upon the availability of an AirBnB, then I'd probably want to confirm with the host too. A major hotel isn't going to lose my reservation, but with AirBnB who knows. Maybe the host will be "out of town" that day and forgot to mark their property unavailable, just like the restaurants that "forget" to mention when they'll be closed.
(Have I mentioned how much I hate hate hate when businesses don't keep to their posted hours?)
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> This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. Superficially, but more deeply it's part of the propaganda war the WSJs corporate parent has been carrying out against Google on all fronts for quite a long time, which is in part partisan/ideological, and in part business over similar issues in publishing.
I still don't get why we can't talk about banning "fake news" like wall street journal on hn. These are clearly hit pieces and as my parent mentioned, part of a coordinated effort to undermine Google. They did the same thing with YouTube. Everyone is worse off because of wsj.
My criteria are all about size and reach. For example I wold consider a flat earth discussion (99% parody, 1% wtf I assume) a waste of HN attention bandwidth.
And the Editorial Board of the WSJ publishes this advertorial shamelessly promoting OTAs?
"Online travel agencies like Expedia, Priceline and Travelocity have replaced brick-and-mortar agents by offering consumers more choice and convenience at a lower price."
"OTA websites let travelers sift through hotel offers based on price, brand, location, amenities and guest rating, among other search filters"
Google Flights/Hotels are somewhat nicer than other experiences, but you then lose out on the combo discounts that OTAs offer. With it being such an expensive market to enter I'm not convinced we'll see much changing soon.
This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. This quote really caught my attention: "OTAs earn a roughly 20% commission from hotels for each reservation they book, which covers their cost of marketing, inventory acquisition, customer support and payment processing." 20% is a ton! Later in the editorial, the writers complain about how Google takes "a…
Seems like almost every hotel chain nowadays pitches booking through their own Web site, often throwing some extra perks for direct bookings. They also try to rope the customers in with fairly generous loyalty programs, “unpublished” rates and credit card marketing tie-ins. So yeah, seems like OTAs were okay with this as long as it was IHG, Hilton, Marriott, Accor, Choice Hotels and Best Western doing this on their o…
I guess I don’t know how agreements work. Seems like OTAs are more flexible with pricing compared to the hotel staff.
Contracts which sell some goods from person A to person B, but then apply conditions on person A selling similar goods to person C should be outlawed.