Did you know that a whopping 72% of travellers believe that they get the best hotel deals by booking through a comparison site? As a self-confessed heavy-user of such sites, I started questioning my choices when I began to investigate whether hotel comparison sites were actually misleading thousands of travellers, including me!
No time to read? Check out the video I did where I show you exactly how you could be wasting hundreds, if not thousands of pounds! It’s a gooden!
Hotel comparison websites have come under fire recently for using false information to mislead and pressure buyers into making a quick decision. Ever come across the old “34 people are looking at this right now, confirm your room quickly!” or “Last chance! Only 1 room left!” Tactics like this get to all of us, making us feel rushed and stressed. Research conducted by the Intercontinental Hotels Group showed that almost half of those surveyed said they made an error in their hotel booking because they felt rushed and over a quarter even selected the wrong dates as they felt pressured into making a quick decision. Putting aside the questionable tactics of hotel comparison sites for a second, let’s get down to the real issue. Are you actually saving money and getting the best deal through these sites, or should you be booking directly with the hotel?
Firstly, I went onto a hotel comparison site and picked a random hotel in Tokyo to start off the investigation. A single room came out at £87 which seemed pretty reasonable for such an expensive city. However, after finding the same room directly on the hotels booking site, it was only £67. I was amazed. That’s a difference of £20 PER NIGHT. But then something caught my eye. The comparison site offered a breakfast option which you could add to your room for £20 which did seem excessive because it was! Booking the same room and adding breakfast on top directly through the hotel would have cost only £84 per night compared to a grand total of £107. Wow.
I thought perhaps I had found the anomaly and decided to look at another hotel in a different city. This time, Toronto, Canada. Booking.com listed a queen room at £185 per night. When I headed over to the hotel’s website, they had an offer that if you paid immediately it would cost only £157 (or the same as booking.com if you paid later). Another deal you would have missed.
OK, one more. Berlin. A bit more budget this time to see where the price jumps really lie. A single room came in at £53 when booking direct and £63 through the comparison site. When you are looking at the price difference on a per night basis, it starts quickly adding up to a lot of wasted money. Whilst perusing the hotel’s site for the other rooms they offer I wanted to check on their 2 bedroom apartment which was listed at £90 per night. You can guess what’s coming, right? Booking.com was selling the exact same listing at £116 per night. How? How on earth can the difference be this much? And also, how much money have I been wasting over the past 5 years through pure laziness?
Now don’t get me wrong, after all of this, I shall still continue to use hotel comparison sites, but not the way I did before. They are a great tool to get a list of possible hotels and a VERY rough price point. From there I will be heading straight to the hotel’s website to book direct. You cut out the middle man and by the looks of these results, save yourself maybe even hundreds during just one stay!
So, what about loyalty programmes? As I was searching through the hotels booking systems I noticed many offered programmes which allowed regular visitors of certain chains or multiple hotels to receive direct discounts and earn rewards by booking direct. I know most of us here hop around from here to there that you may not even consider signing up. But if it’s free to do so and you save a few bucks, I’d say it’s worth considering.
What would be a bit more suited to my travel style, in particular, is signing up for a loyalty programme with a hotel group which covers multiple different branches of hotels such as IHG. Their rewards club is free to join and gives you the satisfaction of collecting points to put towards your next stay for even more money off! Who doesn’t love collecting points?
Now I really want to hear your thoughts, have you been falling prey to the marketing schemes held by the big comparison websites, or have you always booked direct? Also, are you a part of any loyalty programmes? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
This is post was sponsored by the Intercontinental Hotels Group, go and check out their Rewards Club, It’s completely free! Thank you IHG for helping me with this travel deep-dive! All opinions and views expressed remain my own.
