[davidverhasselt]

As an end-user, booking.com gives me so much added value I don't mind paying 10% more than I could maybe, possibly negotiate with the hotel on the phone. When I hear hotels complaining about booking.com fees, I believe they're ignorant of the end-user's plight. They're also free to not be listed on booking.com, but obviously the discovery is worth it to them.

Off the top of my head, a short list of advantages I like:

- someone that will take my side in disputes

- being able to book multiple hotels on one account, in the same place

- cards in wallet in my iphone

- knowing exactly what I'll get

- avoiding misunderstandings that might arise when having to book orally (i.e. wrong number of rooms, wrong number of people, ...)

And that's beyond the superpowerful search, which is kind of immoral to use without giving them the referral fee.

[greggman]

Booking.com has started taking Airbnb like listings for which there was no indication on booking.com that I noticed.

I recently booked a room in stockholm that looked nice on booking.com. It was only after I booked that I was contacted by the owner and told how to meet up and get the key etc . I was pretty upset it wasn't an actual hotel but it was arguably too late to change things. It turned out to just be someone's apartment.

I have no idea if booking.com knew that. I do know I would not have booked if I had know for this particular trip.

[bkor]

Ah right, I had one bad experience. If on booking.com, I expect an apartment to be an apartment building (meaning: loads of apartments and a reception). It seems difficult to see the difference on booking.com. I booked an apartment where it was really like an Airbnb. Meaning: call this local number. Fortunately they had whatsapp as well. This in Europe, were finally I can call to my own country from elsewhere in Europe, but calling to the local country is still crazy expensive (special rate for mobile phones -- which small companies often use).

Unlike Airbnb the apartment did want me to pay the tourist tax. Strangely, I paid a bit less than what booking.com said I should've. I mentioned it but the guy ignored it (oh well).

Usually I do check around (see if I can find a cheaper rate by booking directly).

[wccrawford]

I don't think it was booking.com, but I had something similar happen to me in Japan. My wife picked out a nice-looking hotel on one of those aggregate sites, and I went to one of the sites that had the listing for it. I even double-checked the address to be sure.

After booking, my wife noted that the email they sent referenced an apartment instead of the hotel. Sure enough, it was different... It was across the street!

I got instructions to go to the other side of Akihabara, up a few floors, and get a key from some office there.

In the end, we chose to pay for the first day of the "hotel room" and cancel the booking, going to a real hotel instead.

[mslot]

I think it's pretty clearly specified which ones are apartments. I travel very frequently and have had various bad experiences with AirBnB. Nowadays I almost always book an apartment via booking.com. It's nice to have an actual customer service who takes care of issues, not always having to pay absurd cancellation fees, not having to wait for approval, and hosts not cancelling at the last moment.

[sireat]

Similar observation.

I was on a recent trip to Poland.

Accommodations for one city was on Airbnn(zealously over-finished apartment but nice), one city was on booking.com.

Turns out booking.com accommodations were just an unsold apartment in a half sold building being used as a half hotel in the middle of an unfinished development.

It was a hotel like experience (hotel tax included) but I would have been upset to actually buy an apartment in this building.

[tangue]

[Disclaimer I work for an hotel chain] - Booking transmit your credit card number and CVV unencrypted to the hotel. I don't understand how could anyone use this site.

[davidverhasselt]

Probably not much less secure than calling and giving your CC to a person jotting it down or emailing with the same details. Most of the hotel custom booking forms look like '90s HTML3 pages so the alternative is usually not better anyway.

[tangue]

It's unfair to compare Booking.com which is the largest adwords buyer in the world to small indie hotels. Let's contrast this with Expedia which have a single use virtual card for each customer. Why can't Booking do the same ?

[ryanlol]

I don't understand why people pretend that this matters.

[ryuker16]

At which point? Through the website?

[tangue]

The number is transmitted to the hotel's software through an API but anyone with access to the software can see the number in clear.