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Like any pop music connoisseur, I’m a huge fan of Olivia Rodrigo.
It goes deeper than thinking that “driver’s license” is kind of attractive – sour It dominated Spotify Wrapped last year. I own a bucket hat that says “It’s tough in here”; There is an “OR” label on my HydroFlask. I watched my season High School Musical: The Musical: Series. I recently started calling her “Liv” in a conversation, as if we were friends based on a pseudonym.
But when tickets for her next tour sold out in December, they sold out before I got one. As I write this, the cheapest seat on StubHub to show in New York City on April 27th is over $400. before Outlay.
It would be cheaper for me to buy a ticket to an out-of-state show, and travel there And Get a hotel room for a night more than you would see in NYC.
So, naturally, I was looking into doing that. While doing my research – anything for my Liv girl – I found myself visiting sites like Expedia, Hotwire, and Travelocity. I realized, however, that I don’t know much about how they actually work…or the deals they are likely to offer.
Should I use travel booking sites to plan my trips?
Tim Levell, author Cheapest destinations in the world, agreed to help me address the pros and cons of these one-stop shops. He says the value of the sites depends on what kind of vacation I take and how much hard work I’m willing to do.
“If you don’t have the time or desire to track down individual parts of your trip, this is a good way to work in one place,” says Level.
The sites are often called online travel agencies or online travel agencies. Leffel says online travel agencies can be especially useful if I’m bundling services, such as flights, hotel room, car rentals, and excursions into a destination city. They can also work well with guys like me who haven’t taken a lot of business trips or have established themselves with a loyalty program that rewards repeat stays with a certain chain.
Sometimes OTA rates are slightly different from hotel sites rates because they are not synced.
However, travel analyst Mark Murphy says the rates that a site like Expedia will show me are generally very close to what I’d get if I went to Hilton.com, for example. This is because hotel chains don’t want me to see much cheaper rates on Expedia. They want me to book through them.
In fact, most hotels have a best rate policy, which means they will honor any discounts I find elsewhere. For example, Wyndham’s website says, “If you book directly on our site or by phone and then find a lower publicly available rate elsewhere, we’ll match the lower rate. Plus, we’ll give you an additional 3,000 Wyndham Rewards points.”
The exception to this is opaque booking sites like Hotwire. With opaque OTAs, I don’t see what to book until I actually confirm the order. There are no names in the lists; I browse by location, price and hotel star level (if applicable) and close the reservation without knowing the details.
Leffel says hotels and rental car companies use opaque sites to move unsold inventory — “if there are hotels with only 30% occupancy and you want to raise it without publicly lowering their prices,” they will team up with a Hotwire-type service.
Results? Prices are too cheap for me, the consumer.
Aside from opaque sites, the downsides of using OTAs often outweigh the benefits.
First of all, there isn’t as much competition as I think. Expedia Group owns Hotels.com, Travelocity, Hotwire, Orbitz, ebookers, CheapTickets, and Trivago, among others. Competition generally drives down prices as outlets cut prices to sign up customers, so the fact that they’re all under one umbrella reduces my chance of finding a great deal. (This also means that it will probably be a waste of time to check each one of the OTAs individually.)
But perhaps the biggest drawback is the pricing mechanisms. Murphy says when I book direct at a hotel, the hotel gets 100% of my money back. When I book via OTA, the site takes a commission.
This means, “In the eyes of the hotel, you’re a lower return traveler — you get less priority,” he says.
This can translate to smaller rooms in worse locations (aka elevator, garbage view, etc.). It can also have repercussions on customer service. Hotel staff may be less likely to offer perks or bend the rules for me if they see on their computer screen that I have used an OTA.
And if something goes wrong with my flight – say a pandemic, I need to change plans or cancel flights – it can be difficult to contact customer service for a refund.
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With a few exceptions, travel booking sites – or online travel agencies – generally don’t offer much better deals than booking direct because of the way they pricing. This is especially true if I’m looking for a lot of wiggle room and/or upgrades, because entities like hotels are less inclined to cater to my whims if a third party is cutting my payments.
However, Leffel says it never hurts to take 15 minutes and check prices in different ways using different sites.
“As always, the advice is to shop and see,” he says. “It’s not cut and dried. You never know.”
More money:
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Dollar Researcher Asks: Why Are Car Rentals So High Right Now?
