[at_a_remove]

The problem is that hotel rooms only appear fungible: a space that is a rectangular solid, with a bed. Sounds easy.

However, in reality, people want more than a place to lay immobile for roughly eight hours. These are not commodities. Check-in time. Check-out time. Type of bed. Bathroom? Bathroom with tub? Bathroom with waterjet tub? Pets? Dogs? View. Floor. Proximity to whatever. Bedbugs. Television, microwave, refrigerator, coffee pot, hair dryer. Free wifi? Breakfast? "Continental" breakfast?

If "hotel room" were some kind of spec, it might take years to hammer it out. And then hotels may or may not be honest about their rooms, or even understand the spec. Then there's the periodic keeping the listings up to date. "We had to take the TV out last week, it was on the fritz." "This room was upgraded." When was the last bedbug check? Finally, who is the system of record for any given room? And then the discount policies, wowza.

Looks fungible, really isn't. These aren't pork bellies.

[prepend]

I really don’t care about any of the things you mention. I literally only want a room with a bed and a bathroom. And maybe I’ll sort my three stars and up or something.

There’s a lot of variability, but it’s also pretty impossible to know at a non-commodity level unless I’ve stayed there before or do a ton of research.

I’m not going to trust anything online for the latest bedbug check. Id like to know, but let me know how they factors into your decision making process.

[scarface_74]

That’s the great thing about booking directly especially with a chain hotel. If you don’t like it, you can cancel the rest of your reservation and only pay for the time you are there. With travel portals it’s much harder.

Even if you’re not happy with the response from the hotel - and I’ve never had a problem with a chain hotel making things right, I can call corporate customer service.

[danpalmer]

These are all the reasons I said "largely" fungible.

You're right there's certainly no formal spec here and everyone is going to have the things they care about that others may not, but for any given person there are going to be many places that satisfy their needs, basically interchangeably.