[shiroiuma]

>Booking.com has lots of annoying patterns like telling you how many people looked at a listing and that there's only two rooms (currently) available for those dates

Assuming they're not making up the data, why is this bad? If a hotel is very popular and almost sold-out, isn't that something useful to know when you're making reservations? Sure, it does feel a little high-pressure, but if it's truthful (normal "high pressure sales" tactics aren't, they create a false sense of urgency when in fact there's no shortage at all), it can be useful if you're trying to book a room at a popular place or during a peak time.

[notahacker]

In practice I think it's usually inaccurate for medium sized hotels not because Booking.com makes up the data, but because the hotel doesn't release all its inventory to Booking.com at once. Otherwise it's not bad per se, but in combination with the "two people looked at this listing recently" in similarly red letters and all the book now pay later stuff, it does feel a bit like booking with someone shouting at you to hurry up