[petesergeant]

I’ve stayed at a few places where when I went to the front desk to extend my stay, they discretely told me to book via Booking.com rather than with them, because I’d get a better rate that way, and they were right. Like flight pricing, hotel room and channel pricing is complicated.

Booking.com have a price guarantee, and a good one, so you will rarely get a better price from the hotel _unless you’re a member of their loyalty programme_ … so for the big hotel chains, sign up to those and book via their apps

[netsharc]

I guess the front desk has no discretion to give discounts, in smaller places the owner can give you the booking.com price because it means they don't have to give a cut (is it 30%?) to the bastards from Amsterdam.

I remember walking into a hotel at around 10 PM (I was road-tripping around Iceland and could've slept in the car too) and asking if they'd give me a discount (1 room more to sell), and the front desk person clicked around on a lot on his computer and when a colleague asked him, he said "I'll just give him the agency rate.".

[fwlr]

I believe commissions are pretty standardized at 10-12% by now; OTAs have been competing on commission in the fight to sign up hotels.

The most likely reason you might get a better rate from a third-party booking site than from the hotel direct is if the hotel allows the site to do variable pricing to try to capture more willingness-to-pay; sometimes that variable pricing will work out in your favour.

[splonk]

I wonder if commissions have dropped a lot in the past ~5 years, or if your hotel just has a better rate. I remember hearing that average commission back then was in the 20% range (less for major chains with negotiating power), and I know that Booking/Expedia would be happy to kick down 8-12% for any traffic people referred to them. Any startup with zero volume could sign up for an affiliate account to get access to Expedia's availability and booking APIs and get 8% for each booking, and larger customers could negotiate that upwards. I think I saw 14% for one supplier, but I don't remember if that was Booking or Expedia or a smaller company.

[smueller1234]

That's incorrect. It's never been as high as 20%. That's a claim that I've seen frequently over the years on HN, but it was never the case, at least at Booking.com.

They have a few mechanisms to try and drive up commission from the usual 12%, though. They have a preferred program which boosts search results but costs 3%> They would have loved to drop it to better tune search, but they were addicted to the incremental revenue.

At various times there were also dynamic ranking boost efforts, where a hotel could increase boost their ranking (with a preview) by increasing the commission percentage. IIRC that went as high as 18%.

Both of those applied to the default search results order ONLY. If you clicked "order by price" or similar then you simply got that.

(Worked for booking until end of 2017.)

[rootsudo]

That's interesting info - Thanks! But the standard for booking.com is for sure 20% for any new operator.

[smueller1234]

Wow really? When did that change? It was 12% as recently (hah) as 2018.

[fwlr]

I have only recent direct experience (OTAs all being 10-12%), but I do know one recent change is that “AirBnB model” listings are turning up on Booking.com a lot more now (renting out your holiday home as if it were a hotel with one unit). I know AirBnB charges 20% commission (I think they call it a service fee), perhaps for these cases Booking.com is offering those operators 20% as well.