Miss reporting of accommodation availability

EmmieHa

Has anyone else experienced booking UK accommodation for a staycation and feeling pressured to buy it as only 1 left then find out via a telephone conversation there is more than 1! Then to top it of move pitch (the move was for a lesser/cheaper style) to be charged more as they report availability have reduced yet they are still showing 1 accommodation type on the ‘Live’ website they you have just booked?! How can 1 still be available if you’ve booked it?! 

I fear this area is not policed so can pressure people into booking. 

jon81uk

Report to adverstising standards as they are making misleading claims on their website.
Make a complaint - ASA | CAP

[Deleted User]

'Buy it now' techniques are common across all areas, not just holidays. Sites are often not reporting real-time data.

TBagpuss

It also depends on what and where you are booking. For instnace, I recently booked a short brek.I was looking at holiday lets and many of them were advertised on more than one website, so it's entirely possible that that there might be only one left / limited availability through the site you look at,but not elsewhere. You get it with hotel rooms too - if you look on somwhere like booking dot com they may only have a few rooms left but if you look on the hotels own website they may have more / different availability. 

Brie

Some hotels will keep back rooms to ensure that their own website has some available at full price rather than at the discounts that might be allowed via other sites.

unforeseen

Also the various booking sites tend to get a number allocated 
So you could find that E.g. booking.com report all sold out but hotels.com still have rooms available. 

Grumpy_chap

EmmieHa said:

Has anyone else experienced booking UK accommodation for a staycation and feeling pressured to buy it as only 1 left then find out via a telephone conversation there is more than 1! Then to top it of move pitch (the move was for a lesser/cheaper style) to be charged more as they report availability have reduced yet they are still showing 1 accommodation type on the ‘Live’ website they you have just booked?! How can 1 still be available if you’ve booked it?! 

I fear this area is not policed so can pressure people into booking. 

This can be dynamic and availability can very between platforms even for the same thing.

I recently booked a hotel for a Friday and Saturday night. 
The hotel direct were showing availability for the Saturday only while another platform showed availability for the Friday only, so I called the hotel who advised to place the two separate bookings and then e-mail to get them linked.
Obviously, the rooms that are pre-sold / allocated to the external platform for the Friday night were not showing on the hotel as available and the external platform was sold out for the Saturday but the hotel still had availability.

This is also dynamic.
For the sake of interest, I just checked the external platform and they still have Friday but not Saturday.
The hotel direct, when I booked the Saturday, showed only 2 rooms (of which I booked 1 and the availability dropped).  Today, the hotel direct shows three rooms for the Saturday.  The hotel also shows availability for the Friday now, which was not there when I booked.

When I spoke with the hotel to do the booking, they stated that because of wedding block-reservations, they had not released any Saturday night bookings to the external platforms.  I suspect the increase in availability is that the Weddings groups have released rooms back. 
Possibly the new direct availability for the Friday is that the external platforms are releasing rooms back - could be hard for them to sell Friday night without Saturday night.

TELLIT01

Was it booked directly with the accommodation owners or a 3rd party site?  It's common for accommodation owners only to put a proportion of their rooms/units with 3rd parties so "Only 1 left at this price" can be accurate on the 3rd party site.

Upsidedownandaround

Without specific examples and the sites you are referring to it’s impossible to say whether it is misreporting or not.

Large hotel searches websites had been previously criticised under EU regulations and told to bring their practices in to line with regulations when they were saying things such as “only 1 room available” or “last room available”. 

They have to make it clear that this is applying to their platform only.

Ath_Wat

They can also, of course, only release rooms to the likes of booking.com one at a time, so there is always "only one available on this site".  You booking that room will trigger an automatic process that releases another (assuming the hotel does have any more).  

CKhalvashi

[Deleted User] said:

'Buy it now' techniques are common across all areas, not just holidays. Sites are often not reporting real-time data.

The problem comes when sites claim to do so in both e-mails and recorded telephone calls.

I'm not putting this to any one site specifically, but that is the claim that is often made.

'One left at this price' is different to 'one available'. Often contacting the accommodation directly can get something that isn't availalble on one of the websites of the booking company at either the same or a slightly lower price, and I will admit to having done that in the past..