
How Booking.com manipulates users - bogomipz
https://ro-che.info/articles/2017-09-17-booking-com-manipulation
======
edejong
This is what A/B testing does to a popular site. You test for immediate
customer engagement but cannot (easily) test long-term customer loyalty. This
is why booking.com has become the largest online hotel booking site in several
continents. Nevertheless, I think it will eventually be their downfall.

~~~
sturgill
"Frankly, I don’t think I am going to stop using Booking.com. I am not aware
of any other service with a comparable number of properties and reviews."

It's hard to quantify negative impact of future dealings, but it's even harder
to say Booking.com should change their methods when the people aware enough to
be annoyed continue to give them money. It's like complaining about Google
following you around the web and using GMail.

Either the alternatives just aren't good enough or the negative externalities
not severe enough to change consumer behavior. Either of those considerations
could change, but until they do it's hard to argue Booking.com should reduce
current earnings. Not when people who book a room above a bar that plays music
into the early morning blame themselves for not reading the fine print...

~~~
bogomipz
>"It's hard to quantify negative impact of future dealings, but it's even
harder to say Booking.com should change their methods when the people aware
enough to be annoyed continue to give them money"

Please tell me how to avoid the duopoly that is Booking.com(Priceline Group)
and Expedia in Europe? Especially so when making new booking on short notice.
Booking.com has maintained close to 60% market share:

[http://www.hotrec.eu/newsroom/press-
releases-1714/dominant-o...](http://www.hotrec.eu/newsroom/press-
releases-1714/dominant-online-platforms-gaining-market-share-in-travel-trade-
no-signs-of-increased-competition-between-online-travel-agents-unveils-
european-hotel-distribution-study.aspx)

~~~
what_ever
Why not use TripAdvisor? Not owned by Priceline or Expedia (yet!), nowhere as
manipulative as Priceline, and you can actually compare between Priceline and
Expedia offerings on the same page. The reviews are much better, rating system
is not complicated/hidden and you can sort of ranking/reviews and much better
UI with the new redesign.

Disclosure: Ex-Tripadvisor engineer.

~~~
bogomipz
Why? Trip Advisor is actually one of the biggest contributors to scourge the
fake reviews! Anyone can't post reviews on Tripadvisor you don't need to be a
verified guest.

'“The effects we find in our study are actually not that small. For example,
the mean hotel in our sample has thirty negative reviews. We find that a hotel
that is located next to an independent hotel owned by a small owner will have
six more fake negative Tripadvisor reviews compared to an isolated hotel.”'[1]

Here is PDF link to the report: "Promotional Reviews: An Empirical
Investigation of Online Review Manipulation", which is worth a read:

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w18340.pdf](http://www.nber.org/papers/w18340.pdf)

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/avaseave/2014/01/27/when-
online...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/avaseave/2014/01/27/when-online-
reviews-are-fake-researchers-identify-which-hotels-have-incentive-to-
manipulate/#3c71e36d710b)

------
smtpserver
Review scores are also a bit offset. I have tried to give the absolute lowest
to every metric booking.com gave me to rate and the resulting score was
2.5-ish. I was thinking about making a browser extension that rescales the
values accordingly but I just made a mental note that a score 7 hotel is in
fact a score 6. With this scaling the scores on the lower end gain more as a
3.3 score becomes a 5. Take this into account if you opt for the lower-middle
end.

~~~
SilasX
I remember a similar thing with Zocdoc. Something like, the appointment was on
time (5/5), but my experience was horrible (1/5), so my review "averages to
2.5".

Reminds me of the thing about "it either will happen, or it won't, so that's a
50/50 chance".

------
feelin_googley
What if the manpulation was easily avoidable?

The last time this website came up on HN (same issue), I conducted an
experiment. The annoyances and manipulation described by the blogger sounded
like it relied on Javascript and graphics. I wanted to see how far I could get
without using a graphical browser.

I was able to

1\. search hotels,

2\. return a list of properties in CSV/JSON/TXT,

3\. return prices and

4\. book.

It required only a shell script of 107 lines, 308 characters, 2934 bytes. This
could be further reduced.

I used only a command line http client, sed and tmux send-key (optional).
Further optional: Fully customized HTTP headers, including randomized User-
Agent if desired.

I had to store a session cookie for getting price or booking but no cookies
were required for searching.

I used no Javascript.

I was able to eliminate all the annoyances and manipulation cited by the
blogger.

Conclusion: At least for booking.com all these annoyances can easily be
avoided by _choosing the right browser_.

(I did occasionally see the "Only ___ rooms left" message as this is returned
in plain text. I did not however see the number change over repeated searches
for the same hotel. In any event, I just deleted that line in the output,
assuming it is untruthful.)

~~~
taytus
>It required only a shell script of 107 lines, 308 characters, 2934 bytes.
This could be further reduced.

Yeah, totally common for average people to do this.

------
etairaz
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+ has problems. You just need to figure out what
the problems are, and those will appear in the reviews section. Don't be lazy
- you need to read dozens of reviews. The good news is that you can skip the
good reviews - they won't contain what you're looking for. If you book any
hotel that has a less than 9 average, make sure you understand what people
didn't like about it. If it's over 9, everyone liked it, and you will too.

~~~
puranjay
Despite knowing all about dark patterns, I let myself be manipulated into
paying $120/night for a room (expensive by Sri Lanka standards). Because of
the repeated "only 1 room left!" messages and I didn't want to mess up my
anniversary holiday

A few days later, I checked again and the room was going for $50

I mailed them about it. They agreed to refund me $50, so that was nice of them

~~~
etairaz
That's actually nice of them... Do not take part in the race :)

------
Osmium
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
Booking.com's reviews, and stop trusting their brand._ It will only take a few
bad experiences to go elsewhere.

~~~
eh78ssxv2f
> Just ask TicketMaster.

TM has been doing pretty well in terms of stock price (not the user happiness)
-- probably the metric that they care about. So, I am not sure if that's the
best example.

Source:
[https://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chd...](https://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1505957358832&chddm=991185&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NYSE:LYV&ntsp=1&ei=6RXDWcD2F4260QSUgpjgAg)

~~~
vmarsy
I don't know if they will keep doing well in terms of stock price If/When
Amazon release their ticket master competitor[1]

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-
ticketing/excl...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-
ticketing/exclusive-amazon-in-talks-to-offer-event-ticketing-in-u-s-sources-
idUSKBN1AQ2DB?il=0)

~~~
skrebbel
Wait, because Amazon is known to do better than others on UX and lack of dark
patterns?

------
bkohlmann
One of the most useful business school classes I took was entitled "Consumer
Behavior" which was a deep dive into behavioral psychology and all the
techniques used by marketers / websites to grab our attention. Booking.com
rather overtly hits on all the techniques we discussed in detail.

I used to think these techniques were "dirty." But humanity evolved to be
responsive to this type of manipulation. It seems the web has accelerated this
process with the ability to A/B test on a massive scale. All the big websites
exploit cognitive biases to drive engagement - facebook, google, twitter,
instagram, netflix, youtube.

This is one of the reasons I'm convinced knowledge of behavioral economics is
one of the most critical pieces of knowledge to have in the early 21st century
- not only can you use it to drive engagement on your own platforms, but you
can learn what tell-tales you are biased to react to, and resist accordingly.

~~~
arkitaip
Not sure I understand your logic. Are you saying that these tactics aren't
"dirty" because as human beings we are very susceptible to them? One would
argue they are unethical precisely because of this. Or do you mean it's ok
because everyone else does it?

~~~
bkohlmann
As someone who stove to be "rational" in everything I did, and dismissed the
power of emotions in human decision making, coming face to face with the
effectiveness of persuasion made me realize that winning friends and
influencing people was about speaking a language that resonated with actual
humans. The way people behave and respond has been studied for generations -
and the best salespeople in all realms either intuitively or deliberately have
discovered what makes people lean one way or another. It's a huge mistake to
dismiss the biases that define us, but rather we should embrace and understand
their impact.

------
LeonM
I tried scraping booking.com once, it quickly became obvious that they use
many 'dark patterns' in tricking visitors into booking quickly. Not using
cookies was the most efficient method in discovering the 'real' price of an
accomodation.

But is not just booking.com, 99% of airline ticket sites use the same
techniques.

Basically what they do is raising the price on each subsequent visit,
sometimes also lowering the amount of 'available' tickets. This creates a
sense of urgency.

My advise is always: shop for the hotel/ticket/whatever you like, then open
that URL in a new private/incognito tab, so you get a lower price.

~~~
devdas
Nah, hotels are now manipulating prices like airlines, with computers
responding in near real-time to perceived demand. As demand increases, so does
price. Multiple searches show a rise in demand, so the price goes up, even if
there really was just one person searching.

------
colmvp
I noticed Udemy also manipulates users by saying that x course is 80-90% off
but only for one more day!!!!... until you realize it's been that exact same
price for weeks/months.

I understand it's not new to have the retail price be higher than the 'sale'
price (for example, clothes and furniture), but even at clearance outlets, the
price difference while large is rarely as dramatic nor as prolonged.

~~~
zodPod
Udemy is also huge for having a "One time $10/$15 coupon!" that "expires in 3
days" and will immediately be replaced by another one. All you really have to
do is google "Udemy coupon" to get any class on the site for $10 or $15
depending on what the current coupon is.

This also works for the craft store chain Michael's but to a lesser extent.
They almost ALWAYS have a 40-50% off coupon in their weekly ad. So if you find
something that you want but it's expensive, you can usually get it for half
off. It's pretty awesome!

~~~
sturgill
Hi/Lo pricing is great that way. Harbor Freight always sends 20% off coupons.
It's a wonderful technique for running price discrimination.

The frequency of running offers, and which offers to run, are just business
details that can be tested and optimized. Some firms are a lot better at it
than others. But at its core it's not fundamentally different than coupon
mailers or rebate offers.

If you ever buy furniture for sticker price you're doing something wrong...

------
drstewart
Airbnb does this too. No matter where or when you search for, you'll see a
notification saying something like:

"Only 13% of listings are left for these dates. We recommend booking a place
soon."

As a random example, apparently Kamloops, BC is filling up fast for Dec 3-6
(midweek in the middle of winter). And so is Flint, MI on Feb 19th, a Tuesday.

~~~
tsycho
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.

~~~
4ad
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.

~~~
Frank2312
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).

------
aembleton
I just block a lot of this booking.com noise with uBlock. These are my filters
so far:

    
    
      www.booking.com##.sr_rooms_left_wrap.only_x_left
      www.booking.com##.sr-booked-x-times.clearfix.lbsr
      www.booking.com##.soldout_property

~~~
bdemirkir
Here's a little bit more:

    
    
      www.booking.com##.soldout_property
      www.booking.com##.sr_rooms_left_wrap.only_x_left
      www.booking.com##.lastbooking
      www.booking.com##.sr--x-times-booked
      www.booking.com##.in-high-demand-not-scarce
      www.booking.com##.top_scarcity
      www.booking.com##.hp-rt-just-booked
      www.booking.com##.cheapest_banner_content > *
      www.booking.com##.hp-social_proof
      www.booking.com##.fe_banner__red.fe_banner__w-icon.fe_banner__scale_small.fe_banner
      www.booking.com##.urgency_message_x_people.urgency_message_red
      www.booking.com##.rackrate
      www.booking.com##.urgency_message_red.altHotels_most_recent_booking
      www.booking.com##.fe_banner__w-icon-large.fe_banner__w-icon.fe_banner
      www.booking.com##.smaller-low-av-msg_wrapper
      www.booking.com##.small_warning.wxp-sr-banner.js-wxp-sr-banner

------
kristianc
Wow - the New Union. I live in Manchester and the place is literally right at
the top end of one of Manchester's main clubbing districts (the gay village).
"Lively and central" is an understatement. It has a ropey reputation locally
as a pub, but you couldn't pay me to stay there. I can see why he's pissed.

I will caveat that I've had some excellent experiences with Booking, but
always with very careful cross-referencing with other sites.

------
WA
Oh it's not only booking.com

The newest scam is: flight comparison websites show you a low price, but only
if you pay with a VISA. Switch to MasterCard and it's an additional 20-30€.
But then you invested in the whole booking process already.

Amazon Prime: Try to cancel it. They make it sound as if you lose Prime right
away. There's an option "remind me 3 days before next payment" that suggests
you should think more about your decision. Only after you cancelled, they tell
you that you lose your benefits only after your Prime subscription expires.

~~~
zmb_
I booked with AMOMA (another hotel site) and now they email me a "10% off"
voucher every week. The only thing is that to claim it I need to follow a link
in the email. When I follow the link, the prices of all the rooms increase,
and the room price I already had open in another tab suddenly becomes
"unavailable". I've also clicked the link to remove me from their mailing list
half a dozen times, but they never remove me.

------
muse900
I was a vast user of Booking.com (as I travel a lot).

My advice: go to booking.com, find the hotel you want to stay at. Search their
phone number or email, contact the hotel directly and you'll get a much better
price (15% is booking.com fee).

Downside to this is if you are not booking standard 5 star hotels etc that are
meant to have some level of professionalism etc, you might end up getting
treated worse just because smaller hotels etc do care a lot about their
booking.com rating so they tend to treat booking.com customers better than
others (my wife owns 3 hotels, 2 of them happen to be of a smaller size and in
reality when they have a booking from booking.com they tend to do anything to
please them as opposed to bookings directly from their website).

------
beefsack
Some airline ticket booking sites still track you and increase the ticket
price on return visits, optimised to certain intervals. Many in the industry
call it "dynamic pricing."

It made the news a few years back[1] but you can still see it sometimes in a
few different industries. You can get into arguments with people about whether
marketing as a whole is an enterprise built on manipulation, but this is quite
clearly manipulative.

[1]:
[https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2010/aug/07/computer-...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2010/aug/07/computer-
cookies-booking-online)

~~~
isolli
It's interesting that Amazon tried this in its very first years, but had to
give up due to customer backlash. I wonder why the practice survives in travel
services.

------
mitul_45
Well, I am joining Booking.com as frontend engineer this November and this
makes me a bit worried. The only reason I chose to join Booking was Amsterdam
(I wanted to live/work outside India for a couple of years).

I have also heard the tech stack is kind of old and so learning-wise it might
be an issue. Any tips on surviving and keeping the learning curve straight
from a current/former employee?

~~~
akdumbagdum
Congrats first of all. However did you tell Booking about your motivation to
join them - "The only reason I chose to join Booking was Amsterdam (I wanted
to live/work outside India for a couple of years)". Its pretty standard for
companies to ask that question.

~~~
mitul_45
Nah. That's one of the major reasons. Others being - working with a diverse
culture, working on a big scale such as theirs, and building things based on
data rather than opinions.

------
TeeWEE
Booking.com 's website is awful. They are still stick in 1995. They do product
development solely based on A/B tests. That's how the product is so crap.

But they have a Monopoly (almost). So that's why people keep using them.

------
warrenm
IOW - how more or less every e-commerce (especially aggregation services) site
tries to get you to spend your money _there_

~~~
bogomipz
Using Amazon as an example of an e-commerce company - when buying an item on
Amazon neither the gaming of ratings and reviews or the annoying and
manufactured "sense of urgency" as stated in the post, seem to be part of the
experience.

The booking.com experience feels like doing business with a sleazy used car
salesman.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Yes, Amazon may get flak for other reasons but I have found the experience of
shopping on them to be very clean and pleasant. To be clear, I am talking
about the experience of finding a product and proceeding to checkout and
payment, not about any potential issues about fake products and such.

~~~
bogomipz
Agreed, that's pretty much what I meant.

Although even the few times when I received questionable products the issue
was resolved pretty quickly and painlessly with either the merchant or
Amazon.com

Contrast that with booking.com where all communications between you and the
merchant(hotel) have to filter through booking.com and take 24 hours at a
minimum to get a response.

------
superasn
They similarly totally lie about matching the lowest price. Had the misfortune
of booking through them once, then I found the same hotel for a much lower
price on another site (makemytrip) so I sent a screenshot to the support.

After a day they outright DENIED to honor this "Lowest Price Guarantee" with
some lame excuse. When I told them that I'll go to the small claims court I
never heard back from them. Don't believe a word on this site.

~~~
nradov
Did you pay for the room with a credit card charge to Booking.com? If so it
would be easier to dispute part of the charge with your card issuer instead of
going to small claims court.

~~~
superasn
Yes i did pay with a credit card. Unfortunately unlike US, disputing a cc
charge here isn't that easy either. At that time the policy was to take a
printout and then go to the bank and submit it there in person (same reason i
never went to small claims court too). Seemed like too much hassle.

I instead wowed to never book another hotel on their site (using agoda ever
since) and telling friends and posting on forums (it was on the frontpage on
reddit india for 1 day) about how they cheated me. I think that must have
costed them more money than they cheated me out by not honoring their
guarantee.

------
erikb
Being a little disillusioned about the world these days I would assume this
has a purpose.

My guess is this: Booking.com already knows that they are fighting a losing
battle against AirBnB. So instead of trying to win it seriously, they go to
make the biggest profit they can out of their situation by strongly focussing
on the idiots. With idiots you have two advantages:

(a) they stay anyways no matter how shitty you treat them. They have different
reasons but one of them is that they are simply used to your service and don't
want to learn a new one.

(b) they believe at least some of the stuff you put on these websites.

(c) in exchange for not feeling like a total loser for a moment they are
willing to pay more.

For an observant booker this website is really less and less useful. For once
you can try the alternative and get a much better experience, and on the other
you can often just book a room on-site after you arrive. When Booking.com just
hands out a reserveration without prepayment don't think the hotel wouldn't
give your room to someone else if enough customers arrive at their desk first.
Money now is better than (maybe) money later. The only exception may be when
you go to the big fair of your industry and the whole town is booked out.

~~~
flexie
In Europe, I would say the opposite is happening. AirBnB is being pushed out
of or held down in many cities by local authorities. In the last two years I
have stayed 50 nights or so in rooms booked through Bookings.com or Hotels.com
and only 2 nights in rooms booked through AirBnB, and it's now almost two
years ago. I had a good stay in the ArBnB booked apartment but the only reason
I used AirBnB in the first place was that I couldn't find a hotel in the city
since all hotels were booked. Most people I know have never or only once used
AirBnB.

AirBnB is fun to try but I wouldn't rely on someones apartment for my
vacation.

~~~
anouk_anca
This has not been my experience living in Amsterdam. Airbnb seems to be
growing despite all the regulations that the municipality is trying to put in
place [0]. And at least in my social group, Airbnb is vastly preferred to
hotels, because of the more personal experience and getting to live in a real
neighborhood.

[0] [http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/08/amsterdam-
airb...](http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/08/amsterdam-airbnb-rules-
widely-flouted-agency-use-widespread/)

------
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 :)

------
hw
I've always wondered if some of these tactics are kosher and legal. Especially
the ones that say 'someone just booked this' or the notifications on ecommerce
sites that say 'X bought this in the last hour'. Most of the ecommerce ones
are just fake data meant to entice the shopper into buying into urgency.

~~~
troydavis
Here's the FTC's "truth in advertising" guide, which has links to the primary-
source documents: [https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/adv...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/advertising-faqs-guide-small-business)

The most questionable mainstream ad I've seen recently is by Amazon.com, which
somehow manages to convince employees that it's "Earth's most customer-centric
company" while concurrently using some of the sleaziest dark patterns of any
merchant, small or large. Spot the $99/year recurring fee on this page:
[https://twitter.com/troyd/status/902673505157648384](https://twitter.com/troyd/status/902673505157648384)

~~~
zodPod
If that legitimately violates the FTC's rules then I've seen a lot of sites in
worse violation. Because honestly that $99/yr is pretty obvious in that
screenshot. It definitely doesn't make it obvious but it is in plain text on
that site.

~~~
troydavis
Quoting from the FTC page that I linked to:

> Nor can advertisers use fine print to contradict other statements in an ad
> or to clear up misimpressions that the ad would leave otherwise. For
> example, if an ad for a diet product claims "Lose 10 pounds in one week
> without dieting," the fine-print statement "Diet and exercise required" is
> insufficient to remedy the deceptive claim in the ad.

> …

> Most importantly, if you are concerned that a disclaimer or disclosure may
> be necessary to clarify a claim, evaluate your ad copy and substantiation
> carefully to ensure that you are not misleading consumers.

Obviously it's subjective whether this ad violates any FTC laws (and
presumably, Amazon's legal counsel reviewed it and deemed it worth the risk),
but presence of a statement in fine print (or as you stated, that "it is in
plain text") isn't the deciding factor.

------
dawnerd
I've just been booking directly from hotels I trust because of this. Used to
use hotels.com but they've gotten really bad recently. Can costs a bit more
from the hotel but most of the time price is on par. End up getting more room
upgrades when booking directly anyways - at least with hilton.

~~~
nlh
Me too -- this is a very important point. Often the hotel's direct rate will
be the same as advertised on hotels.com. Of course you lose the ~10% rebate by
not getting rewards points, but since the hotel is effectively earning 30%
more from you, they're much more likely to give you a complimentary or
discounted upgrade.

So if that sort of thing matters to you, I can also strongly suggest booking
direct.

(Note: You do generally have to ask, but I've had good experiences. Do it on-
site @ checkin, and I basically say the above -- "Hey I booked direct so you
earned 30% more from me. Can you offer me an upgrade to an un-used room since
I'm here now?")

------
myoffe
I absolutely loath Booking.com's UX.

Whenever it's possible, I use something else, like HostelWorld. Their
interface is clean, to the point, and the reviews and ratings can actually be
trusted.

I'm happy someone did this website. I just came back from a long trip and
every time somebody asked me why I hate Booking.com, I pointed exactly to some
of the points that were made there. The fake sense of urgency, the cluttered
UI. And the cherry on top: The fact they display the "total cost of all
nights" in the results, instead of the per-night cost. That's not a misleading
UX, it's just a bad UX decision.

But because of it's popularity amongst accommodation owners and travelers, its
fall is unlikely.

~~~
waf
> The fact they display the "total cost of all nights" in the results, instead
> of the per-night cost. That's not a misleading UX, it's just a bad UX
> decision.

I prefer the total cost in the results, since that's what I'll ultimately pay.
Why do you prefer per night? Doesn't that make you do the multiplication in
your head?

~~~
lucaspiller
I agree it’s better to display the “total cost of stay” in the search results,
however that isn’t what Booking.com displays. As OP said they display the
“total cost of all nights” which excludes taxes and cleaning/service fees.

A few weeks ago I stayed in an apartment in Austria which was €49 for one
night, with a €45 cleaning fee... I thought that seemed a bit crazy (ok there
were 7 of us, so still pretty good), but clicking through other results I saw
all the properties in this area had similar fees. One had the same price per
night and a €70 cleaning fee! I guess it’s a way to avoid taxes or such.

~~~
icebraining
45€ doesn't sound like much. For a complete apartment cleanup, including bed
linen and etc, you need at least three or four hours, so that's around
11-15€/hour. Seems quite reasonable for Austria.

~~~
lucaspiller
Yeah for Austria it doesn't seem like a bad price, it's just weird that the
price is nearly the same as the accomodation fee. And as a Brit the idea of
any kind of service fee is pretty foreign in the first place (why not just
include it in the advertised price?).

~~~
icebraining
It's a fixed cost, so they use a fixed fee. If they just added a percentage to
the price per night, people who stayed more days would be paying more despite
not requiring more cleaning.

------
uladzislau
I don't get it why people complain all the time and still use it? Even their
parent company Priceline UX is much better, then there's Expedia and other
sites. I would never book anything on Booking because it's plain ugly and
keeps design from 1998, even Craigslist looks modern in comparison.

Their hiring and interview process, at least in product management - it looked
like they are fishing for fresh ideas on what to A/B test on their website.
All the talk was focused around it. Answering the questions they didn't give a
single direct answer only extremely vague ones. Red flags all around.

------
toomanybeersies
Briscoes (a homeware shop in New Zealand
[http://www.briscoes.co.nz/](http://www.briscoes.co.nz/)), does this. Just
looking at their website today, everything in store is 30-60% off sticker
price.

Seems great, until you realise that literally almost every day, they have a
similar sale. There's always massive discounts for something in store. I have
literally never paid full price, or anything close to it.

------
ckastner
I look at a number of sites when researching hotels, but the final straw for
me was when the prices on Booking.com's page were actually _higher_ than the
prices offered by the hotels directly.

I repeatedly verified this on numerous dates, with numerous hotels --
Booking.com's super-exceptional "deals" were occasionally up to 20% more
expensive than a direct booking with the hotel, for the exact same room type.

Has anybody else seen this?

------
SOLAR_FIELDS
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 Origin)

~~~
bogomipz
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.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13312629)

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

------
eugenijusr
Also a couple of years ago we discovered that Booking shows different prices
from different locations and different devices. Prices are higher at some
hotels for Mac/iPhone users and Western Europe/US customers. Not sure if
they're still doing it, but it's easily testable if someone wants to
investigate.

~~~
welcomebrand
Showed me the same results (price wise, order was different) in Chrome
Incognito on Win 10 desktop and Android.

~~~
eugenijusr
They're still doing it.

Screenshots taken literally seconds apart refreshed multiple times to make
sure it's still the same:

[http://eugene.lt/booking/1.png](http://eugene.lt/booking/1.png) macOS on a
MacBook Pro from New York, NY (via a DigitalOcean droplet VPN)

[http://eugene.lt/booking/2.png](http://eugene.lt/booking/2.png) Fresh Windows
10 VM from Vilnius, Lithuania

~~~
daemin
I think you've got the links the wrong way around.

But this is basic market segmentation, just based on the person buying and not
on the product being sold. Hence why it seems more scummy.

~~~
eugenijusr
Thanks, fixed it.

------
biztos
I'm not surprised that they use all manner of "hey! buy this now!" tactics,
like many other travel and shopping sites.

I _am_ surprised that people use a single website to choose where they're
going to stay. I never book an unknown hotel without checking reviews on a few
different sites (usually TripAdvisor, yay pics, and if in the US then Yelp,
yay complainers). And I always check prices at least on the hotel's own site
so I know what a discount is and what's not.

For me the likes of Booking, Hotels, and Kayak are for map-search and the
actual purchase experience. And for the latter I'm pretty happy with Booking,
I use them often.

If the message here is that the travel business gets sleazier the higher you
climb up the aggregation pyramid, then yes, true, and I can't remember it ever
not being thus.

------
fakalaka
Lots of complains, but people underestimate how much money, time and effort
the company spends on a customer service. It's a war out there, traveloka
raising half a billion dollars, "old" companies must fight back.

Not only their prices are usually the lowest, but they also offer matching
prices.

The room was not as advertised? Booking would at least offer a coupon for next
booking.

Hotel was overbooked? They would find you a room of no lower standard, in
similar location, and they cover the difference. It happens that if there's a
big event in the city, they might cover your 5* hotel if you booked a shitty
2* room.

Many small properties have shady businesses, booking.com protects you from
this.

They might not use the shiniest tech, but their customer service (which is
biggest portion of the work force) is top notch.

Source: shared bed with one of the cs agents

~~~
javabean22
Oh really? Good customer service? How about this:

[https://medium.com/@ilyadoroshin/bad-ux-how-booking-com-
dece...](https://medium.com/@ilyadoroshin/bad-ux-how-booking-com-deceives-
clients-5dc9e9485f32)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152155)

------
methodin
I thought the service was great at first - no hassle reservations with easy
cancellation. That is until they billed for me a hotel I never stayed at.
Ended up having to go through Amex and chargeback the charge since I had
clearly cancelled it months before. It's a shame.

------
jvannistelrooy
I travel regularly and Booking.com is my place to go for hotel reservations.
It had to "learn" how to use Booking.com in a comfortable way.

For example, I learned to ignore the continuous push for urgency, I sort
hotels based on user rating instead of Bookings choice, and I check
TripAdvisor for reviews instead of Booking.com itself.

So why would I even use Booking.com? Apart from it having one of the largest
offerings, it just love that the whole process of booking, paying, and
checking in is so simple and consistent, no matter where in the world I book a
hotel or for what purpose (business or leisure). That is what makes me come
back to Booking.com, and that's what I wish Booking.com would spend most of
their time on.

------
TheAceOfHearts
On the subject of fake reviews, I've recently started using Fakespot [0] with
Amazon and Yelp. Sometimes making a decision for which goods to buy can be
tricky, so it's really helpful to filter out a few shady options. Although,
honestly, I don't think it makes much difference in most cases.

Are there any trusted review services for travel locations? Something like
Consumer Report, but for travel. Although I don't know where their quality
levels stand nowadays, I know my parents used to swear by em 10 to 20 years
ago.

[0] [https://www.fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com)

~~~
bogomipz
On Amazon I usually just make sure they are a verified purchaser of the
product before considering a review. Does Fakepost offer something beyond that
for Amazon?

Yelp I understand though as I don't think there is anything like a "verified
diner."

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
It helps filter down the initial list of items you evaluate. For example, you
might see two items with 1000 reviews and similar scores, but one of the items
might have an inflated score due to review farming.

------
wyck
The downsides of A/B testing. Unless of course you have confidence in your
brand and decision making to not always trust users and the short term bottom
line.

------
jasonrhaas
viagogo.com is a great example of user manipulation. They take what
booking.com has done and 10x it. I've bought tickets on there (and got ripped
off because they told me the wrong pickup location), and its a total shit
show. They make it seem like there are all these real time updates going on,
and really pushing you to BUY NOW, but I'm pretty sure its all a scam to urge
you to buy as quickly as possible.

------
sklivvz1971
Seems more of a rant on marketing and dark patterns, but somehow blames
Booking.com for things that happens everywhere in the industry.

------
kbjrk
There is a counter-movement emerging. During the techfestival in Copenhagen
150 people (Charles Adler, Peter Sunde, Jerry Michalsky to name a few) got
together to formulate the Copenhagen Letter on Tech - read it here:
[https://copenhagenletter.org/](https://copenhagenletter.org/)

------
tmulc18
That's why you gotta use Expedia or Google

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Expedia does "n people booked this location" and "price of this flight
expected to rise by x%" ALL the time.

~~~
goialoq
neither one of those is misleading or harmful if true.

------
cooervo
I had a dev friend take a job at booking.com he hates it. I suppose the
company is shitty at all levels.

------
Yizahi
I recently discovered (literally) an apart hotel that had bed linen excluded
and could be added for 10 euro per bed. This was a first time on Booking with
this trick (common on Airbnb) and they did notify me about it in they dark
depths of popups and expand to see more.

~~~
jpl56
That what I hate most about Booking : you expect an hotel room with private
bathroom and they propose a rental flat or a bed in a dormitory.

I often visit the tourist-office website to find an hotel.

------
known
I regularly use booking.com and I think what they're doing is rational,not
manipulation.

------
jen729w
I just spent 3 weeks travelling the USA and we used Booking.com to see what
was around. But then we went directly to the hotel's site to make the booking
and you know what? Same price, if not slightly cheaper in some (not all)
instances.

~~~
aglavine
The hotel's site may well be a facade and you're still buying through
booking.com

~~~
jen729w
Reference?

------
Keloran
these rules apply to all PriceLine sites, its not just booking, but because
booking either applied them first (and booking is one of the most profitable
priceline companies) or they made the most money off them, all the others
follow suit and add them to theirs

I used to work for RentalCars and as soon as booking put the "someone just
booked" on the site, RentalCars had to follow suit even if the last car booked
was 3 days ago

~~~
isolli
I knew it, thanks for confirming. I use RentalCars a lot and I'm happy with
the service, but the "someone just booked" just felt fake. The weird part is
that, even though I was convinced it was fake, it still had an impact on me.

------
codermobile
TripAdvisor supports booking on hotels and they show all of the comments.
Plus, there are much more ratings and comments than anywhere else.

~~~
bogomipz
TripAdvisor also supports fake and unverified reviews:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/avaseave/2014/01/27/when-
online...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/avaseave/2014/01/27/when-online-
reviews-are-fake-researchers-identify-which-hotels-have-incentive-to-
manipulate/#3c71e36d710b)

~~~
philjohn
There are merits to both systems (reviews from anyone vs you have to have
booked through booking.com), the biggest one is that if you visited somewhere
but booked directly, or through another OTA, you can still leave your opinion.

More here:
[https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/vpages/review_mod_fraud_detect...](https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/vpages/review_mod_fraud_detect.html)

------
fatman13gg
Wonder if there is a potential block-chain based business opportunity for
reviewing stuff, where all information would be transparent.

------
andraganescu
Would anyone pay a monthly fee for some dev to maintain some chrome/ff/safari
ext that simply cleans up booking.com?

~~~
andraganescu
I am actually thinking of having an online directory of specific website
cleanup extensions which power users of said websites should be more than
happy to pay for :)

------
quadrangle
I can't imagine recognizing all that shit and then concluding with an
expectation to keep using a service like that. Wow

------
rgrieselhuber
This post has some decent points about reviews and the fine print, but the
rest comes off as a bit precious.

I travel a lot and have used Booking.com to save myself quite a bit of money
over the years. I still regularly compare their prices with other sites and
they are pretty consistently cheaper than competing sites.

The "hurry" parts of their site do induce a little anxiety but I tend to also
appreciate the real time information so I know I get the room I want.

~~~
lozenge
The real time information includes bookings made months away from your desired
dates.

------
odiroot
There should be some browser extension or set of filters for uBlock to hide
these shady parts of Booking.

------
synthecypher
Using this information you could probably make a browser extension to make the
website more honest.

------
yellowapple
"I am not aware of any other service with a comparable number of properties
and reviews."

Trivago?

------
FearNotDaniel
Guy books the cheapest hotel he can find, smack in the middle of the "vibrant
gay village". Unsuprisingly, it's noisy and he doesn't get any sleep. Blames
the UX of the booking website, because somehow the website forced him into
trying to sleep in the middle of a permanent Mardi Gras. Suck it up,
snowflake.

~~~
rovek
Does the author's motivation have any bearing on the facts of Booking.com's
website behaviour?

------
baybal2
>YouTube autoplays more videos to keep us from leaving.

The sole purpose of doing so is to get more ad shows. See, a person leaves his
computer with YT running or mutes it in the background, and returns half an
hour later while google already sold 10 or so ad shows. When autoplay is on,
yt tend to put shorter videos into your view que

------
quickben
Wow, things got shady at booking.com since I last visited the site last year.

------
soreq
Anyone have stats on their user-base/ geographic breakdown? Thanks.

------
jhgyukhjikoh
What good alternatives with prices as low?

------
once_upon
Greasemonkey This.

var count_removed = 0; var active = true;

var elements_that_suck = [ "sr--x-times-booked", "raf-promo-block",
"msg_low_avail_block", "sr_no_desc_users", "free-cancel-persuasion", "sr-
badges__row", "fe_banner__sr_soldout_property", "only_x_left", "in-high-
demand-not-scarce", "soldout_property", "sr_room_reinforcement", "sr-booked-x-
times",

    
    
      "b-form__booker-type",
      "mltt mlttd",
      "vpm_3rfte-container",
      "fe_banner",
      "ribbon",
      "save-percentage-wrapper",
    
      "urgency_message_red",
      "cheapest_banner_content",
      "sr_no_desc_users",
      "sr_compset",
      "payment-method-filter-banner",
      "b_tt_holder_4",
      "lbsr",
      "only_x_left",
    	
      "-scarcity_indicator-pss_scarcity_1_left",
      "hp-description--property-name-top-ranked",
      "thisRoomAvailabilityNew",
      "green_condition",
      "hp-rt-just-booked",
      "urgency_message_red",
    	"usp-hotelpage--chains",
    	"hp-blue-sans-rack-rate",
    	"crossedout-price-icon",
    	"-genius-full-logo",
    	"hp-description-sub-header",
    	"hp-availability-block-usp",
    	"hp_sidebar_usp_box",
    	"public_transport",
    	"non_refundable_nr_blue",
    	"genius_block_brand",
    	"hp-lists-reserve",
    	"js-hp-wl-sidebar",
    	"listticker",
    	"hp-social_proof-quote_author"

];

var index_page_elements = [ "specialsblock", "latest-reviews-stream", "sb-
searchbox__subtitle-text", "sh-postcard-content-title", "index-nav_container"
];

var genius_elements = [ "ge-search-first ge-search-first-www", "genius-sort-
icon", "ge-iconfont-extended", "genius_member_text" ];

var businessbookers_elements = [ "bbtool-index-teaser-banner" ];

var raf_elements = [ "raf-promo-banner", "js-raf-center-bar-link", "sidebar-
raf-widget__container" ];

var search_page_elements = [ "all-inclusive-ribbon", "preferred-program-icon",
"mouse_hover_general_rackrate", "-scarcity_indicator-pss_scarcity_1_left",
"-scarcity_indicator-pss_scarcity_2_left", "-scarcity_indicator-
pss_scarcity_3_left", "-scarcity_indicator-pss_scarcity_4_left",
"-scarcity_indicator-pss_scarcity_5_left", "-scarcity_indicator-
pss_scarcity_6_left", "-scarcity_indicator-pss_scarcity_7_left",
"vpm_nd_links", "similar_destination", "footerconstraint-inner",
"try_another_search_3", "cheaper-than-average", "district_link visited_link",
"pub_trans" ];

var hotel_page_elements = [ "d-deal__dod-countdown", "d-deal", "d-deal-b",
"hp-low_sidebar_to_content", "hp_cs_back_to_search", "althotels_fullwidth",
"recent_property_reviews_block", "hp_useful_links_header", "hp-description--
property-expectation", "hp-good-segment-facility-score",
"hp_facilities_score_hl", "bpg_logo", "pp_bpg_tooltip_holder", "wrap-
hotelpage-top__book top-book-form", "best-review-score" ];

var elements_to_remove = []; elements_to_remove.push( genius_elements );
elements_to_remove.push( raf_elements ); elements_to_remove.push(
elements_that_suck ); elements_to_remove.push( index_page_elements );
elements_to_remove.push( businessbookers_elements ); elements_to_remove.push(
search_page_elements ); elements_to_remove.push( hotel_page_elements );

setInterval( function() {

    
    
      if( active) {
    	  elements_to_remove.forEach( function( element_group, idx, arr) {
    	  	
    	  element_group.forEach( 
      			function (el, idx, arr) {
        		  	remove_elements_by_classname( el );
      		 	});
    
     	  });
    
      	}
    
      	console.log("Removed " + count_removed);
    	

}, 1000);

function remove_elements_by_classname( name ) {

    
    
      var elements_with_class = document.getElementsByClassName( name );
      count_removed += elements_with_class.length;
      
      for( var i=0; i<elements_with_class.length; i++ ) {
    	  elements_with_class[i].style.display = "none";
      }
      

}

var prices = document.getElementsByClassName("rooms-table-room-price");
for(var i=0; i<prices.length; i++){ prices[i].style.color = "deepskyblue"; }
prices = document.getElementsByClassName("red-actual-rack-rate"); for(var i=0;
i<prices.length; i++){ prices[i].style.color = "skyblue"; }

------
djsumdog
I thought about interviewing for them in Amsterdam. The recruiter put me in
touch with one of their people and she explained to me everything was in Perl,
there were little to no automated tests and developers often pushed straight
to production. I said I had only worked in perl shops that were migrating from
it to Scala or Python. She said, "Well we have no intention of moving."

Like I say with all recruiters, I said I was interested. I thought about it
and everything was a red flag. Sure I'd get to live in Amsterdam and stay in
Europe with my girlfriend, but ... that sounds like the ultimate shit job. I'd
have to endure that until I worked out whatever visa contract they'd have or
find someone else to sponsor me with a non-shit job.

So I just ignore the recruiter when he calls .. and ignore him .. and ignore
him. Dude calls every fucking day for like four weeks straight; after I had
already moved back to America. Most recruiters would take the hint after three
failed calls. I can't imagine how desperate they must be. Then I heard from a
former co-worker one of our other buddies, a Kiwi, had taken a job with them
.. leaving NZ to go work there. He's still there ... hope it's not shit.

~~~
EasyTiger_
How about being a grownup and actually take the damn call? Could you not just
tell him you weren’t interested rather than being so ignorant? For a whole
month I mean, really?

~~~
dvt
Part of being a grownup is doing whatever the hell you want. If you don't want
to pick up that phone (and have a potentially awkward conversation with some
sleazebag recruiter that's trying to sell you on a shit job you don't want),
_don 't_.

This reminds me of the people that think women (or men) that don't want to go
out with them owe them some kind of explanation. No, dude. Get some social
awareness and move the fuck on.

~~~
blahbap
> Part of being a grownup is doing whatever the hell you want

No, that's being a child. Being a grown up means not only thinking about
yourself

~~~
tempestn
My thoughts exactly. Unfortunately these days it's clear not everyone feels
that way.

------
madshiva
I only using these sites of booking for getting information. After I double
check on the website of the hotel, price, go to the location with Google map
to see what is nearby, never had a problem. Nice analyse I would like them
more.

