Cheaper price on Booking.com than with the resort direct - is there a likely catch?

[HanaLou]

It is a significant saving but will that mean less of a service, the worst apartment, poor view etc.
Or does it not matter who the reservation us made with?

Thanks.

It's sometimes cheaper to book directly with the hotel. One I booked recently in Barcelona was £150 cheaper than booking.com. I'm not sure about whether you'll get a worse room but you can request a pool/ city view etc on booking.com, but it's never guaranteed.

My one and only experience of booking a hotel room through booking.com where it was much cheaper than booking direct with the hotel, I ended up with a crappy room where the air conditioner was blowing air but not cooling the room and the window could not be opened to let in fresh air. It was an awful nights sleep. I only stayed one night so I don’t know if the hotel would have remedied the situation if I was staying additional nights.

I personally would be wary. However, it may have been more of a reflection of that particular hotel and not a reflection of booking.com.

Hopefully you get a general consensus from more posters giving their experiences.

I haven’t had experiences like that. Hotels etc sell a certain amount of places to booking for com and have to honour the price in the website.

We used booking.com for a multi-destination UK holiday, it was the best way to co-ordinate the bookings

We were very happy with 3 rooms. The 4th was awful, but when we complained we were moved to a good room.
The 5th was the hotel from hell.

We were told that they always gave the best rooms to "their own guests".

There were no lifts in the place, & no mentiont that the tall building had none.
They refused to move us from a 3rd floor room - despite my obvious disability & the fact there were other rooms available.

I'd never use them again.

Agree with this. You get what you pay for with booking.com, which can be pretty basic to meet the description, whereas booking with hotel is more likely to upgrade or have complimentary items included.

I found this yesterday and phoned the hotel directly and they price-matched to the booking.com rate 🙂

I always used booking.com and never had an issue. You do need to read the fine print tho (eg look at the different rooms which show the square footage). I don't always book the cheapest. And I will check on the hotel website as well.

Really useful, thank you.

Booking.com is £700 cheaper - but I don't want to end up with a ‘car park’ view. 🤔😆

I’ve tried to get hotels to price match booking dot com and they’ve pretty much always refused. I usually expect a bigger discount than what booking dot com says if I’m booking directly, because hotels pay a huge cut.

Plus on booking dot com I get thousands of airmiles for hotels I book

I always book direct. I think you get better service. I have sat in reception and listened to people checking in. Demanding guests coming in and requesting upgrades, but also being told that direct paying guests get priority.

The hotel we regularly go to, now doesn't even do booking sites, as they are more trouble than they are worth.

I always check the price on Booking.com and the price if you book direct and it’s often cheaper on Booking.com but not always. I just book the category of room I want and haven’t noticed any difference in quality either way tbh.

OP it probably varies from place to place and might be more of a factor if it is a beach/pool type of holiday where you are spending a lot of time at the hotel rather than a city break where you are just in the hotel for sleeping.

My main reason for using booking sites is to get free cancellation. I’ve definitely had one good upgrade from a booking.com booking. Whether I’ve had the worst rooms in the hotel at other times I can’t say - but I’ve never had a reason to complain.

I went to a hotel in camden a couple of years ago and when they told me the price, it was significantly more than it was on booking.com.
When i told the receptionist, he suggested i just book it on the app, as he couldn't match the price. I did that and saved myself about £50