MSE News: Booking.com offers the same hotel as both a three and four-star

The difference isn't £5 because the hotel's currency is US$.

There's no need to book through Booking.com just use this website to find the hotel you want and then book direct and note the advantages of doing so.

Star ratings are a marketing con generally, so carry on ignoring them.

Yes, star rating are meaningless. Look at the facilities you want and read reviews. This sort of thing is done everywhere, supermarkets who want to compete with cheaper rivals, instead of just cutting prices they introduce "economy" ranges of their product which are basically the same as the standard version just in cheaper looking packaging. So they can have their cake and eat it - compete on price with budget supermarkets while taking advantage of the snobs who never buy anything "economy".

You may have guessed by the username, that I am a hotel owner (in the UK).

The first piece of advice I can offer everyone is to find a price for your stay using one of the comparison websites (though these are mostly owned by booking.com and expedia).

Once you have the price, find the contact details for the actual hotel and call them.

Explain that you have a price quoted by X and would like to know what discount and/or incentive they can offer if you book direct with the hotel.

ALL hotels pay a minimum of 15% commission to these online travel agents; in very busy areas where there are 100s of hotels, some will pay up to 28% in commission to appear toward the top of the results page.

If a hotel isnt able to offer you a 10% discount, free breakfast or other such perk then consider booking with a different hotel - direct.

My hotel has been on booking.com for several years now and I can tell you that their advertising / promotion is incredibly frustrating for hotels. Booking.com will do just about anything to get a booking (ie their commission).

I personally have reported them twice to the ASA in the Netherlands, via our own ASA.

Expedia are (in my opinion) a far more ethical online travel agent.

These OTAs have got so big that hotels find it impossible to promote their own business and are now reliant on them. YOU can help to rebalance things by booking direct with the hotel.

I could go on to explain in detail the many issues with booking.com but I have to be careful as they may remove our account - we have a gagging order which forbids us from negatively using their name.

The high commission paid to booking.com etc is why they occasionally have good offers and also pay cashback via certain websites.

Until last year, hotels in the UK were forced to offer "Rate Parity" in order to advertise on these OTAs (online travel agents) - that meant that we could advertise on booking.com and expedia etc BUT had to have the exact same rates on all of them.

Now, we are allowed to offer different prices on each website - and because we want our customers to book with Expedia, we will show lower rates on there than we do on Booking.com

Don't think for a second that the price comparison sites are offering you any discounts as they are only showing the rates the hotel send to them - and thats why you will see most sites all with the same prices.

IF you see a price promotion it will have been setup by the Hotel, hardly ever the OTAs.

The OTA will ask hotels to take part in a campaign but in order to do so, the hotel must reduce rates being offered via that OTA or offer an even higher commission. Yes, the hotel gets some more exposure but it will cost them a lot more money for it.

The other trick used by booking.com is to be a "Prefered Partner". You would think that this is something booking.com have set-up for customers to know which hotels are the best. WRONG. To be a prefered partner, all you have to do is give them a higher commission % (and keep your review score above a certain level which is set so low that just about any hotel can achieve it).

Of course, these OTAs are acting on your behalf and will step in if there is a problem - WRONG again. If you search out their T&Cs you will see a disclaimer which states they only act as an introducer and that the hotel is 100% responsible for everything displayed on their platform.

You've probably guessed that Im not a huge fan of these OTAs - yes, they serve a purpose but they have far too much power now.

That Boom 25 site mention is almost certainly spam/scam - The poster concerned has already had posts deleted as spam and their banal posts on other threads looks very like a spammer postcount-building so they post links.