Hotel booking site reviews

Travel
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We tell you which is the best hotel booking site in our latest review, and show you which sites have the best prices and range of rooms in our hotel booking site buying guide.

At the time of writing this post, there are ongoing ACCC investigations into alleged anti-competitive behaviour in the hotel booking services industry and so we don’t actually recommend any of these services. However, if planning a holiday you’ll probably come across these sites, so we chose to assess their performance and usability.

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It would be handy to have a who owns what graphic at the top of the article to understand the interrelationships and whether that had an effect on the relative scores.

Could this be expanded to be a ‘best accommodation booking sites’ review in the future by including P2P booking such as airbnb, stayz etc.?

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Thanks for the suggestions @meltam, I’ll see what we can do to include these requests in the future.

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Interesting to me has been a current advertising campaign run by HotelsCombined in which they compare their price to what I can only consider is a fictitious business that has higher pricing (called Mr. Convincing). I can’t find a comparison business called Mr. Convincing so any figure HotelsCombined uses for this other business is totally fictional and in my opinion is false or misleading advertising.

https://adgile.media/Content/Search.aspx?BrandName=HotelsCombined

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It is called Advertising puffery. These are exaggerated subjective claims which can neither be proved or disproved.

If they used a real business to make exaggerated claims it may be false advertising and illegal, but I don’t believe it is illegal to fabricate one in this context.

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It comes to notice that the booking sites are only reported for their ‘booking experience’ rather than the overall experience. It seems to reflect the website design and functionality rather than the end product being purchased.

It would be interesting to know if any or how many people arrived at their destination only to have problems - the place was not as advertised or claimed, they had no record of the booking, the place tried to charge more than the booking, and so on. A ‘voice’ questionnaire or trolling through tripadvisor and similar?

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@BrendanMays

It may also be useful in future to also compare some of the dedicated hotel chain sites. Eg Accor, Starwood etc

Do you get better room offers/deals and value as a free or paid member of a chain loyalty program? Perhaps consider only the best discounted room rate, as loyalty bonus really only benefit frequent travellers? My previous experience with the Accor chain web site (several years ago) would rate it poorly, mainly due to how it displays currency. Or rather does not! The self service web sites have similar attributes comparable with Agoda or Expedia etc.

In the actual rating methodology Choice chose travel sites in Europe (France, Germany) and Australia (Melbourne, Broken Hill). Is five star the typical booking scenario? It might be the rating deserved by Choice staff. I suspect it is not the norm for nearly all of us.

Is there value when assessing each service in looking at popular tourist destinations in Australia where there may be greater competitiveness? Eg Cairns, Alice, Gold Coast, Noosa etc? My suggestion is not all of these, perhaps one or two?
They might also offer more complexity in options too?

Is there any reason for not testing the providers services for a location/s in Asia? Business in Asia is done a little differently to Australia and Europe. When we look a little deeper, sometimes you get more details of the hotel, sometimes it is in another language, sometimes you get no more detail and recycle to generic marketing screens. In these instances the actual hotel web site may be a better option, assuming you have your personal translator handy? Ours only does Japanese and Italian.

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Thinking as if I were a staffer, at what point is information too much information and results in confusion and bewilderment and even second guessing one’s choices (no pun) as a result. How is all that multi-faceted data selected, collected and analysed for a meaningful comparison? The diversity of our interests and Choice’s approach is to target the most common denominator. eg the products tested are chosen because of what ‘we’ are buying, and sometimes a few ‘they’ are selling get included for some ‘spice’, but. Ooops, spent my budget already. :wink:

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Thanks. We’ll take a look at these suggestions for the next review.

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Yes you’re right, the general aim is to target what most people are doing, most of the time, with regard to any specific product.

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I thought I’d share this interesting case from our CHOICE Help service. In April this year, CHOICE member Janet booked weekend accommodation at Complete Hudson Host Apartments through Booking.com. But she quickly became alarmed at the amount of personal information Booking.com wanted from her.

Janet had already paid for the apartment in full by credit card (with an extra $250 security bond to be charged the day before she arrived), as well as entering her email address and mobile number. But then Booking.com asked for her age and photo ID in the form of a passport or driving licence. Sceptical that she was obliged to upload such sensitive information, Janet contacted CHOICE.

On Janet’s behalf, we asked Booking.com for a response. They told us they’d look into the matter and get in touch with Janet. In the meantime, Janet received a text and email from Booking.com, saying that her credit card was “invalid” and that she’d need to use a new one within 24 hours to guarantee her stay. Janet emailed Hudson Host directly, who told her that her credit card details were fine.

Janet explained all this to Booking.com’s Igor Vakharevich when he called her from Washington State in the US. According to Janet, he said he too would feel “uncomfortable” uploading photo ID, and told her all she needed to do was show her ID in person when she checked in at Hudson Host.

Yet he also intimated that Booking.com’s policy was still evolving, and that they would be requiring photo ID at the time of booking in the future. Although Janet reached a compromise, the picture remains mixed. “We’ve won the battle but not the war,” says Janet. “Thank you, CHOICE, for your support.”

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Although covering only a subset of the worlds hotel chains, we’ve found roomkey.com useful. Particularly for North America. “Roomkey is a hotel booking site founded by six of the world’s leading hotel companies”

It has an Australian site roomkey.com.au When you select, you are taken to the hotel company’s site to complete the booking. In some dozens of searching, only once has booking.com done better.

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Has anyone checked the very many bad reviews for Four Star accommodation on booking.com. I have complained to the company in Netherlands to no avail. Four Star, Luxury?? I don’t think so! The latest poor establishment offered me a refund if I would remove the bad, honest review.

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Welcome to the Community @LeahD

I moved your question into this exiting topic about booking sites.

During my own travels I learned that what may be 4 star in Australia might be 3 elsewhere, or 5 yet somewhere else, and there are differing groups that ‘award’ stars, diamonds, or whatever symbols they use, including some sites that allow ‘self certification’, and there are no consistent criteria or weightings used.

Having a look at the reviews on the booking sites augmented by those on sites such as Tripadvisor more often than not focus on the reality of any particular accommodation.

There have been posts about some dreadful experiences with variable responses from the respective booking sites. A refund seems as good as it has gotten for complaints, and not so much any better ‘policing’ of the locations claims.

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Thankyou. This Was my first contribution. Thought it might be in the wrong category. I left the review as written. Booking.com wouldn’t let me remove my review, only alter it! It was for a one night stay at Hotel Blue in Katoomba, truly an awful place.

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The only information I can find is the star rating for this property 3.5 stars. Review scores are closer to 4 stars.

Years ago, organisations like Automobile Clubs rated properties based on the services, facilities and amenities they provided. The ratings were 1 to 5 star. The same approach was adopted internationally with similar rating systems, albeit with different levels of services, facilities and amenities to each star rating level…as different countries and customs have differing requirements.

In Australia there are now 6 stars and overseas up to 8 stars. Are these better than the old 5 stars? Obviously the hotels which rate themselves with these scores think so…maybe it is a marketing tool than reality.

One shouldn’t also confuse booking website star ratings to whether a hotel is a X star hotel. The booking websites are based on the aggregation of reviews for a property and a score a guest gives a property. Not all guests review/score properties and with our own, maybe 1/3 do. It is possible the 1/3 aren’t representative of every guests stay as factors outside an accommodation control often affect such reviews/ratings…(weather, if it rains the whole time for a beach holiday, it could be a spoiler which may affect one’s view on the accommodation they stayed in…blackouts in developing countries caused by inadequate infrastructure causing things not to work or be unavailable…a booking mistake by a gueet and/hotel/booking website…flights cancelled or missed…the general mood of the guest such as having a relationship breakdown with travelling companions/hung over and the list goes on). Also human nature is one is more likely to complain than throw praise…even tge community suffers from this behaviour.

While scores may be of interest, often the comments attached to the review mean a lot more as there can be hints to why a score was given or if it was the review biased by something.

It is best to read comments from a range of reviews. If and how the accommodation addresses any feedback through a review is also important. Also see what services, facilities and amenities the accommodation provides (I have seen reviews complaining that accommodation didn’t have a gym, pool etc even though the property didn’t indicate they had one…if they said they had one and a guest said they didn’t, this would be misleading).

This is a criticism of most booking sites as once a review is made, it is near impossible to get the platform to remove it. They won’t remove if it can be proved is vexatious, misleading or fraudulent. They use the argument that every guest has a different experience and impression, and therefore a review is taken as being genuine as the guest stayed at the property.

Likewise, they don’t remove guest reviews which are in err or for other reasons.

I suspect that at some stage legal action will taken against a platform to create a precedence…which may affect how reviews should be handled. Until such time the status quo will remain.

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Have you ever tried dealing with booking issues with Booking.com which is also headquartered in Amsterdam? That can also be fun, must be a big tax break for them, and hard to get answers out of them as well.

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Isn’t booking.com now just another subsidiary or brand owned by the USA giant Booking Holdings Inc? Previously known by The Priceline Group Inc.
It’s actually an American travel technology company incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law and based in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Together with Expedia and Trip Advisor the three combined own most of the other brands out there. Expedia Group Inc, is registered in Seattle, Washington State. Trip Advisor Inc, is registered in Needham, Massachusetts.

How each operates it’s brands varies for each brand. EG Booking Holdings owns Agoda which is based in Singapore, Expedia has Expedia Australia Pty Ltd established as a foreign owned entity if booking in Australia.

It is important for some consumers to use the web to identify the extent to which the travel product provider has an Australian entity, and to look carefully at the booking details and T&Cs to identify how your booking is being managed. I’ve booked on occasion through Expedia, Trip Advisor, Agoda and others for domestic and OS. It can take some time to cover all the details.

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You are correct. Booking.com B.V. (the company behind Booking.com™) is registered and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In relation to tax…

For Australian businesses, invoices it issues come from its Netherlands office. This being:

Booking.com B.V.
Herengracht 597
1017 CE Amsterdam
Netherlands

Currently these invoices don’t include GST.

This suggests that any payment made in Australia also goes through the Netherlands. It is registered for VAT in the Netherlands. If this is where it is based financially, then one would assume that it would be subject to VAT and corporate tax in the Netherland. Saying this, many multinational businesses have financial structures to minimise tax.

It also has resolution call centres in the Netherlands as well. It does have an Australian phone number which is +61 (0) 2 9255 9200. I haven’t contacted Booking.com as a booker, but, if they are like some other booking platforms (such as Agoda which they also own), they might divert calls to a manned call centre which can be anywhere in the world. Call centres may only be manned during normal business hours which is why diversions occur particularly outside Australian business hours.

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Sometimes everyone can be correct.

Booking.com B.V. is indeed a Dutch company, yet Booking.com B.V. appears to be a subsidiary corporate entity controlled by Booking Holdings Inc (USA).

https://opencorporates.com/statements/1199052618

and the web site, booking.com, is referenced in Booking Holdings annual reports (search the pdf).

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