
Hungary fines Booking.com operator 6.1M pounds for unfair practices - saithound
https://www.marketscreener.com/BOOKING-HOLDINGS-INC-41613106/news/Booking-Hungary-fines-Booking-com-operator-6-1-million-pounds-for-unfair-practices-30489010/
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dylz
> Everything on our website, including how we display prices and payment
> policies as well as the availability and popularity of specific properties,
> among other features relevant to the customer booking experience, is
> intended to help customers

Is this a joke? The last time I looked at their site I had a dozen different
types of modals saying ONE ROOM LEFT!! ALMOST OVER!!!, large-text prices with
fees and taxes (30-50%+) hidden, continuous streams of alert boxes on the
bottom saying "x just booked the room you were looking at! Only 3 left!"

This has been done for years[0][1][2]

[0] [https://ro-che.info/articles/2017-09-17-booking-com-
manipula...](https://ro-che.info/articles/2017-09-17-booking-com-manipulation)

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

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152439)

~~~
paranoidrobot
I've mentioned this before, but I worked at a competitor to booking.com which
had similar kinds of notices.

While I can't speak to booking.com's implementation - the code we were running
was actually legitimately implementing these things based on actual data
(views/bookings/inventory).

One person got particularly angry that we showed a "last room" tag for a
hotel, and then when calling the hotel was told there were plenty of rooms
available - and cheaper rooms, too. In that particular case it turns out that
hotel was restricting the availability of rooms/rates to us, but not
disclosing that.

As for the fees+taxes thing... that's always been a personal annoyance. I
forget all the details, but it's very much a market specific things whether
it's better to hide/show taxes/fees/etc.

Large portions of people from the US just assume that they are not included in
prices, and compare based on that assuming it'll be some percentage higher
when actually paying. Showing an all-in price gets you skipped over/ignored
for being too expensive.

~~~
jiveturkey
> hotel was restricting the availability of rooms/rates to us, but not
> disclosing that.

not disclosing to you, perhaps, but well known practice across all hotels.
clearly instigated by one of the first online hotel room marketplace sites.
"just feed us 3 rooms at a time ... we'll promote them as running out ... wink
wink". as a competitor to booking.com you should have known about this
practice.

you're going through some contortions to justify vile practices on behalf of
the online booking agents.

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joyj2nd
I don't understand the anger.

1\. Booking has the best hotel prices. Much better then, lets say google

2\. They always honoured their free cancellation policy when I used it.

3\. With Corona they also accepted a cancellation beyond cancellation date

Which site is better than Booking?

------
1cvmask
Booking.com will have no bookings in Hungary or most of the world for a while.
Makes more sense to close shop in Hungary than payout that fine.

Booking.com should be in survival mode like every player in the
travel/transportation ecosystem

~~~
lun4r
they've already been fined. They are a EU company based in Amsterdam so
there's no getting away from it simply by closing shop in the country where
they got fined...

