> So no, it doesn’t pay to use a travel aggregator. It’s great for discovery or maybe a quick last minute purchase, but generally it’s better to book directly with the hotel.
> All the major hotel chains IHG, Hilton, Marriott, and Wyndham, which collectively account for over 98% of hotel properties across their various brands, now offer best price guarantees.
These best price guarantees are all garbage, though.
They'll say that the room type offered on the OTA is different than the room type booked direct - even if it's the same room.
I stayed at the Kimpton Epic Miami. Paid almost $150/nt less through Priceline. Tried to use IHG's Best Price Guarantee and they said it's a different class of room.
Certainly not all garbage, though IHG (and Hilton) are two of the worst. Marriott[1] and Hyatt[2] seem to be much more dependable, per literally thousands of posts on their Flyertalk threads.
BUT, the practical consequence is that seeing drastically cheaper rates on OTAs than direct booking is much rarer than it used to be.
Marriott did the same thing for me with the New Orleans Ritz. In their case, they said the OTA room isn't guaranteed, direct is, therefore, different class of room.
Do you actually have any experience with these best price guarantees? Because I've only tried a handful of times and every time I end up booking through the OTA.
Look how fast you walked back your initial claim:
> Every major hotel chain and many independent properties have "Best Price Guarantees" that, well, guarantee you'll get the best price with them.
> Certainly not all garbage, though IHG (and Hilton) are two of the worst.
Thank you Mr. Varenc and Mr. Code, Yes, that's what's left of what used to be my Amazon Klein bottle listing. Note that what used to be Klein Bottle by Cliff Stoll is now Amvoom Klein Bottle.
Although I created the listing 4 or 5 years ago, I'm now unable to edit or change the listing. I've bumped up my price sufficiently high, in hopes that nobody will buy from there.
> Decisions to cast Tilda Swinton as a 'celtic' incarnation of the Ancient One, typically a Tibetan character, alongside the choice to move Stephen Strange's place of spiritual enlightenment and training from Tibet to Nepal, have created significant controversy online from those who argue that Marvel Studios is whitewashing Strange's backstory to better appeal to the Chinese government.
Propaganda doesn't have to look like a commercial from a tourism board.
Then what you said has nothing to do with what I was commenting on, which was not a claim that Hollywood will do what it has to do to access the Chinese market, but a claim that "they" own stakes in media companies to push pro-Chinese propaganda to the American public.
Imagine Germany successfully putting pressure on American movie makers to make Jewish figures in their stories be no longer Jewish, because in it's official German policy that Jews do not exist, they've always been just Germans or something else.
You can split hairs and say that's technically not pro-German, but anti-Jewish or whatever, and put "they" in quotes all you want; nobody who cares about the actual individual people and not just sophistry in a vacuum will be moved by it.
