3rd party hotel booking - won't repeat that mistake

[lwp2017]

I recently took DW to NYC sightseeing for her Christmas present.

Our local, small town travel agent helped us with travel arrangements. We booked a very nice king bed room at the Midtown Hilton near Rockefeller Plaza. We did this last year and had a great time.

This year the reserved nice king room resulted in a twin bed in a tiny room barely big enough to turn around in . My reaction was "WTF!" .

Spoke with Hilton customer service - was told sorry, all full, basically got blown off.

Went downstairs, was very nice to the front desk agent. She found us a king bed room in the hotel, thank goodness.

She explained that although our contract was a deluxe type room, Hilton doesn't honor agreements with third party bookings and will bump you to lower grade rooms if needed. They only honor bookings made through Hilton reservations.

Must have been in the contract fine print. Travel Agent received some feedback.

 

[audreyh1]

I've always been a bit nervous about booking hotels through a third party and only use them if the hotel itself directs you to a third party as some of the smaller hotels do.

 

[USGrant1962]

I came to the conclusion that those sites, even though they are well known and considered legit, are sleazy.

It seems that some idiot named Daryl, and his other brother Daryl, has started using my old work email address to reserve rooms/cars through these sites. So I would get his confirmations in my work email.

One month it would be a hotel on hotels.com, next time a car rental on booking.com. I actually wasted about an hour on the phone with one of these sites trying to get it straightened out. Their final solution what for ME to change MY email address that I've had for 20 years at Megacorp. I told them to pound sand.

A couple of times in the past I went to the booking site, clicked on forgot password, got the password reset email, reset the password to nonsense, and canceled the reservation. But it didn't stop.

One showed up just last week for a car rental in Tucson (I'm still part time and access my megacorp email). Seriously, the name on the reservation was "Daryl Daryl" and there was no other identifying information. How can these sites even take reservations with such BS info?

For my own travel I've always gone directly to the airline/hotel/car rental site and will continue to do so. Sometimes I'll look at sites like Expedia to make sure I'm not missing a huge bargain, but have never found anything that really beats directly booking on the hotel/airline site. Though I do tend to stick to major chains/airlines since I have loyalty cards in most of them.

 

[Sunset]

This of course makes me nervous as I just booked 2 hotels, one via hotels.com and the other booking.com

 

[easysurfer]

This of course makes me nervous as I just booked 2 hotels, one via hotels.com and the other booking.com

I have 3 nights reserved through hotels.com.

I use them mostly because they do have a nice website and I don't want to have to set up a new account with all the I indvidual hotels if I booked directly. But maybe should rethink my approach.

 

[Chuckanut]

The hotel booking websites take a huge chunk of money for their ‘service’. Often booking directly with the hotel will get you a better room since they make more money that way. Smaller family owned hotels need those extra $s and may reward the customer with a free breakfast or a nicer room. The booking customers get the room overlooking the trash cans.

 

[tinlizzy]

For what it's worth it's not just 3rd party bookings.i got bumped out of a room with a perfect view of the macys day parade in NYC on the 10th floor at the W hotel booked directly with them. The manager on duty actually laughed at me when I objected and told myself, my mother and my child good luck finding another room in NYC on Thanksgiving.

Another time my son, his friend and i were stranded at OHare overnight and i had a nonrefundable room booked thru expedia. I called the hotel (the Salisbury) to explain so they didnt cancel the rest of the days on my booking and he refunded that night to me. I was forthcoming and told him the booking was non refundable and he said, Nonsense, we can do what we like.

My feeling is that the hotel itself has the final say.

 

[skipro33]

I've booked several rooms, whole vacations even including air and car rentals, through COSTCO and every one of them was better than I could have hoped for.
Example; took my youngest son and his family; wife/2 kids plus my wife, to DisneyWorld. The rental car was a three-row van. At the airport we were given a brand new, less than 100 miles Escalade. That thing was HUGE! All our luggage and plenty of room for car seats for the littles. It was silver and we named it 'Silver Maximus' Our condo turned out to be on the 12th fairway on the golf course, so that was nice too. The condo community was gated with a 24hr security guard at the gate. Even better!
It has been like this on every trip. Our trip to Kauai same thing with a 2 bedroom hotel room that turned out to be a 3 bed, 3 bath penthouse suite that was as close to presidential as I could imagine. Beautiful marble floors everywhere, the elevator was keyed for our floor so only we could take it to the penthouse, etc.

COSTCO rocks

 

[DrRoy]

This of course makes me nervous as I just booked 2 hotels, one via hotels.com and the other booking.com

We have used booking.com a lot and hotels.com occasionally with no trouble. Usually though, we do that to find local lodging where there are no chain hotels around. If there is an IHG property, we book through their website for max benefits.

 

[JoeWras]

Reading the posts here sounds more like a New York problem than a third party booking problem.

 

[Christine]

The hotel booking websites take a huge chunk of money for their ‘service’. Often booking directly with the hotel will get you a better room since they make more money that way. Smaller family owned hotels need those extra $s and may reward the customer with a free breakfast or a nicer room. The booking customers get the room overlooking the trash cans.

My brother travel a lot through work and book through hotels.com since they give him the occasional free stay that he can use on his own. I guess they must get the money for these free stays from somewhere.

 

[VanWinkle]

I have used Hotwire for several years. It is a booking site where you pick the # of stars for the hotel and the area you want to stay. You get several quotes for discounted rates and commit without knowing the name of the hotel. It has worked mostly great for 4 years. I did get burned one time in Wheeling on a nasty downtown hotel. That is only one out of 30 plus reservations. Most were much nicer than the price would have indicated. You have to have a sense of adventure since you don't know the name of the hotel before you pay for it.

 

[athena53]

I've booked several rooms, whole vacations even including air and car rentals, through COSTCO and every one of them was better than I could have hoped for.

Thanks- this is good to know. Costco must have a lot of leverage. Did you get all applicable hotel/frequent flyer points?

One of my major complaints about 3rd-party sites is that sometimes you pay the 3rd-party site directly and don't get any credit for loyalty programs- I try to watch that carefully but have been stung a few times on hotels. It's OK if you're getting a bargain rate but sometimes you're not. This happens especially with the rates where you're charged immediately and it's non-cancellable.

It's also another layer where things can go wrong and each side blames the other. DH and I were once driving to SC and decided to stop for an overnight in Paducah, KY because it was the weekend of the International Quilt Show. I booked the room through Orbitz. We got there and found that they'd been trying to reach us- apparently a room was showing as available in Orbitz' system but had been grabbed by someone using the hotel chain system. We got back in the car and drive another hour before stopping for the night. We skipped the Quilt Show.

I feel guilty just using Orbitz to check availability and then booking directly, but that's what I do most of the time now.

 

[audreyh1]

It's also another layer where things can go wrong and each side blames the other. DH and I were once driving to SC and decided to stop for an overnight in Paducah, KY because it was the weekend of the International Quilt Show. I booked the room through Orbitz. We got there and found that they'd been trying to reach us- apparently a room was showing as available in Orbitz' system but had been grabbed by someone using the hotel chain system. We got back in the car and drive another hour before stopping for the night. We skipped the Quilt Show.

I feel guilty just using Orbitz to check availability and then booking directly, but that's what I do most of the time now.

That’s the main concern for me is a middle man screw up and each blame the other. But I had also read plenty of times where third party reservations were “not found” or guests were sent to other hotels in the same chain.

That said, I did just book a foreign small town in through booking.com but that’s because their site said to use them. They don’t offer online bookings otherwise. This is not unusual.

 

[brett]

The booking sites are just one way that we shop for hotels.

But when we book, we try to book direct. We often find that we can get a better room, better terms, a breakfast, etc by booking direct. Somethimes this is not possible.

We also use hotel corp webstites. We recently booked two three /four days stays in SE Asia hotels on Accor and Marriott respectively. We prepaid, no refunds, but we got great rooms/breakfasts at a very attractive price.

We use Accor, Marriott, Melia, Hilton, Copothorne, IHG, Choice, BW, etc. Does not always work but worth a try.

 

[foxfirev5]

DW goes thru a ritual of third party / hotel chain website / hotel direct to get the best price. Never use pay in advance . Rarely is our first reservation the one we end up with. It merely establishes a worst case or starting point. Likewise with rental cars.
On our upcoming two week Fl trip she was able to shave $600 off the hotel and $330 off the rental car. In the case of the car a new AAA discount was cheaper than my old corporate rate we originally booked with. However the discount only lasted a day or two so you need to check frequently.
Then we blew half the savings on first class upgrades.

 

[ivinsfan]

When you are talking the major chains most of them offer price match guarantees...

For example my DD's and I did a girls night in a Hilton property. For some reason Hotels.com was much cheaper.

I booked on Hilton applied for "found a cheaper price on-line". It was verified and I got the hotel.com price plus and additional 25% off both rooms.

This isn't effortless ...in this case it was so much cheaper I booked 2 rooms on Hotels.com in case there was a problem with the price match.. It was a refundable price of course..both bookings were refundable, so I wasn't risking anything moneywise.

 

[sengsational]

I have used Hotwire for several years. It is a booking site where you pick the # of stars for the hotel and the area you want to stay. You get several quotes for discounted rates and commit without knowing the name of the hotel. It has worked mostly great for 4 years. I did get burned one time in Wheeling on a nasty downtown hotel. That is only one out of 30 plus reservations. Most were much nicer than the price would have indicated. You have to have a sense of adventure since you don't know the name of the hotel before you pay for it.

I didn't know Hotwire did that. Thanks for that information. Priceline does it, but Priceline sucks; I had an instance where they simply would not honor their pricing guarantee.

Concerning the "only one out of 30 instances were ok", one must wonder if that, or something around that, is the rate of failure, is it worth the trouble? Based on the hours I spent to win the battle with Priceline, it probably would be smarter for me to learn the prices from places like Hotwire, then go shop directly and be willing to pay at least a little premium.

 

[fidler4]

According to Wikipedia Priceline also owns Booking.com.

Expedia owns all these according to Wikipedia: “Expedia, Inc. is an American travel company that owns and operates several international global online travel brands, primarily travel fare aggregator websites and travel metasearch engines including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, trivago, Venere.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, and HomeAway”

 

[ivinsfan]

I didn't know Hotwire did that. Thanks for that information. Priceline does it, but Priceline sucks; I had an instance where they simply would not honor their pricing guarantee.

Concerning the "only one out of 30 instances were ok", one must wonder if that, or something around that, is the rate of failure, is it worth the trouble? Based on the hours I spent to win the battle with Priceline, it probably would be smarter for me to learn the prices from places like Hotwire, then go shop directly and be willing to pay at least a little premium.

We've considered this for our long drives to get away from winter. When I look at hotelscombined many of the cheaper hotels are located away from some amenities, or you if you are traveling on the interstate far away from the exits. I figure there is a better than average chance these properties are lurking around on hotwire or priceline, on the mystery hotel or the name your price. Some of the smaller interstates stops only have one area to bid on. Its not worth to us..

 

[Aerides]

I'm very picky with my hotels, particularly location and amenities, definitely one of my splurge areas. The only time I'll go "3rd party" is through my credit card travel service, such as Amex, in which the deals are more likely to be partner-arranged so the hotel has more skin in the game, and somewhat vetted by amex.

A lot of hotels (hyatt comes to mind) offer discounts for booking directly, especially if you're a member of their rewards program.

I save the adventure when travelling for the sites and events - I want no chance of unpleasant surprises in my hotel itself.

Other niceties such as early check in, late check out, chance for an upgrade on arrival, etc., are NOT going (generally) to go to the cheap rate bookings.

 

[skipro33]

Thanks- this is good to know. Costco must have a lot of leverage. Did you get all applicable hotel/frequent flyer points?

I don't believe so, but maybe the flyer points when we take Alaskan. I can't recall. I do know that the hotels will contact us after the trip and annually with discounted offers on return visits. I don't think the room prices are all that much cheaper, but they throw in a lot of 'extras' like free dining, theater, excursion trips, etc.

One thing about booking through COSTCO; if you have a flexible schedule, check with them on short notice discounts. We have gone to Maui for 10 day trips that included air, car and hotel along with free breakfasts and several vouchers for dinners for under $3,000 total for the two of us. Longer stays are even more economical considering the air fare is portion is unaffected. Any cheaper and I may as well move there and rent out my house! Ha!

I also think you need the upper tier membership for this concierge service. It's very good though. While you can book on-line, it's much more pleasant to just call them. Their agents are very polite, listen to what you are wanting to set up a trip for and find you the best deal. They get their discount by booking blocks of rooms for a particular window of time. Deepest discounts are during the off seasons of course, but as a retiree, it's all good!

 

[CRLLS]

I had a business trip to Munich a few years back. A group I was meeting with was staying at a specific Hotel. When I tried to book directly with that Hotel, there were no rooms available. They told me to try a 3rd party site, which I did end up booking thru. Evidently, some hotels reserve a few rooms for the 3rd party players.

 

[Plantman]

I also like to use the hot price feature on hotwire. Many times it will tell you which hotel the last person got. I then check TripAdvisor and if I like what I see I book it! I have always gotten the same hotel as the last person got. This method greatly reduces the opaqueness.

 

[Chuckanut]

Reading the posts here sounds more like a New York problem than a third party booking problem.

I tend to agree. My worst experiences were are pricey NY hotels that didn't give a hoot about their customers. We were in on in May during a hot spell with temps pushing 90. The A/C did not work. When we inquired about it we were told that they turn A/C on June 1 and not before. Funny, though, the AC in the hotel restaurant was working just fine.

Needless to say we did not spend a dime more than we had to at that hotel. No meals in their restaurant, no goodies from the vending machines, etc. etc. etc.