If I understand correctly, you are in Europe and the OP is in the US. A web search suggests that Booking Holdings overall revenue split is:
= ~60% of Booking Holdings revenues come from Europe where the brands have almost half the European reservations for short-term rental
= ~25% of Booking Holdings revenues come from Asia-Pacific, including the Agoda brand which is the most visited site in the region
= ~15% of Booking Holdings revenues come from the US, where the brands have ~8% of the short-term rentals
So there may be some of that background coming into the conversation. However, I agree with you that for parts of the world, they are my primary source to make hotel reservations.

I’ve used Booking numerous times in Europe and Asia.
Completely happy. Even cancellations/refunds have gone through with no hassle.

I've never had a problem with Booking.
But, truthfully, I use them to see what hotels/rooms are available in my price range and location then usually try to book directly with the property.
With hundreds of third party sites offering cheap prices, the property owners have to compete with prices and cancellation policies

That policy would be my fault. I stayed there and used their curtains to clean my chain. It had a lot of old sludge on it and really needed cleaning. JK!!

You joke, but..,.

A long time ago our club had a weekend of riding based out of a motel. A couple of people who rode to the place got caught in some rain and decided to clean their bikes with the towels in their room. The club was not allowed back the following year.

I like using booking.com for European travel. I can read the lodging description in English, and see the price in USD. I've booked three extended trips so far, with a couple of cancelations and date changes. Those have all gone smoothly.

For US travel, I prefer going right to the lodging website.

I have a EU trip coming up next month. Via Booking dot com I was able to message all the hotels I have reserved a room in and inquire about their safe bike storage. Consequently I was able to easily cancel one reservation when the hotel in question tried to assure me the bicycle parking outside their premises is completely safe and I was not allowed to bring the bike inside. Yeah nah!

And through booking I found a replacement hotel which has an indoor bicycle storage included breakfast AND dinner! How exciting!

You make an excellent point. I had a situation in a very small town in Portugal where the operator was remote and they provided an access code to enter the establishment as well as the room. The in operator did not speak English, and I could not communicate in Portuguese, which caused a major problem. I reached out to Booking.com. They Found a Portuguese English translator and assisted us with the interaction as there were technical problems with the Remote access device.

Some of the recent posts reminded me of an experience I had over a decade ago (2012).

All of the places I wanted to reserve a motel room at were either full or quite expensive. This was in Whitefish Montana, a lot of tourism business in that area. But I managed with internet searches to find a lower cost motel that did not pay the larger booking agencies to list them, thus you would not find them with Expedia or Booking or anyone else.

I called them to make a reservation. Was quite affordable.

I was taking Amtrak to get there, the train was running quite late. I called them in the afternoon and said I expected to arrive after midnight. They said they were a small family run motel, did not staff the office after 11 pm, so they offered to leave my key in an envelope that I could find upon my arrival. I got there at 2am, the key was in an envelope with my name on it where I expected to find it.

Sometimes those small places that are not listed on the booking agent websites are the best option, if you can find them.

I just did an internet search for them, they appear to have closed six years ago.

What happens these days when you don’t play. The reason these booking sites are so popular is two fold it’s a very convenient service for the consumer and it is a huge value add for the hotel operator. It’s not just exposure, It’s also assured payment, and most importantly, pricing guidance. Hotels are now able to constantly vary pricing based on demand conditions. Consumers can benefit from advantageous pricing during slow periods, but correspondingly pay the price during times of high demand.

I highly doubt it closed due to lack of business these days. Glacier is very busy. If you are entering by car after 6 am you need to reserve a pass ahead of time. Perhaps the pandemic killed them off. Or maybe the owners simply retired and the property was converted to another use, such as long-term rentals.

In any event, I like places like that. In 2011 the GF and I went to the motel in Wisdom, MT on the Trans Am. The owners had left a note on the door explaining that they were at a family function. Also attached to the door were envelopes with a key for each room. You were told to pick a room and “settle up” later.

I made my reservations almost a half year in advance. A few months before I went out there, I called to see if I could add a day or two. Nope, they were fully booked for the summer.

The guy that posted that booking sites are "a huge value add for the hotel operator" apparently does not realize how much motels have to pay the booking companies. I agree with you, a lot of small independent motel operators in touristy areas can do quite well if they do not use the booking companies. They get enough business just by being there, people look for them and find them.

Travel agents used to be able to make a middle class income, but they have been replaced by the big internet booking companies. But that does not mean that the travel costs have gone down any.

Another alternative for some of these small operators is a variation of a timed lock box. AirBnB places do this, but in my 2023 travels I found several places listing themselves as motels as well.
- Examples would be in Duchesne Utah and Glenns Ferry Idaho.
- In both places I booked something listed as motel but instead was sent a passcode to a timed lock.
- After the check-in time was reached, the code would be valid and I could sign in to receive a key to the room.
- There was an attendant who came on their timeframe as well as a contract company who did cleaning.
However, it wasn't a fully staffed place.

I've had family and friends in the motel business and it can be pretty constraining, particularly in a place like near Glacier National Park. The summer season is short but intense so it can be tough to get away at all (particularly if staffing isn't always reliable) so you are busy all the time. These other places with a timed lock were more small places with a limited number of rooms, e.g. 6-8.

I have noticed that some booking sites such as Expedia have enough of a network effect that if a place isn't listed in Expedia it often isn't a viable motel anymore e.g. repurposed to mostly long term residents and similar. There is still a site motelguide.com (http not https) that lists some of these. Two examples that come to mind in New Mexico are in Corona NM (filled with construction workers) and Tatum NM (no owner but fellow residents could take your money and give you access to the room - but one of the beds had been slept in, towels were used and middle of the night someone barged in because there wasn't a lock on the door - so they were lending it to others as well).

My bike tours, I usually start well before the tourist season, and I am doing camping 90 percent of the time. Thus, I almost never need to make reservations. I almost always can show up and find a campground that has room. Or if I am looking for a motel, if it is a Mon thru Thur there aways is a room available.

But my 2024 tour, one bad day, campground on the map had gone out of business. Decided to head to a motel that was in my planned direction of travel. Got to the location, asked the gas station manager where the motel was. He said it closed, was torn down, the gas station was on the same property that used to be the motel. So, aimed for the next motel on my map. Photo below:



This ended up being a 14+ hour day, that included one border crossing, two ferries, 85+ miles of riding. Made camp after sunset.

I am sure someone here will tell me it as all my fault for not using a booking/travel agent service.

Quite the opposite! The whole plan every detail and book every stop thing would take part of the adventure out of it for me.
Days like the one you wrote about build character! 😅

Thanks.

It seems that there is one day per tour where everything goes wrong. But the good news is that weather forecasting gets slightly better every year, I am old enough that I can remember forecasts that were less accurate than a roll of the dice.

You ain't kidding.

We are all individuals who build our lives around our own preferences. Your extensive experience and the way you embrace the adventures you construct are beyond the judgment of others. Whether some plan extensively while others fly by the seat of their pants—and every style in between—it is all a matter of choice; one approach is no better than the other.

This thread suggested that Booking.com is a poor company and, by implication, dishonest. My point is that they are an integral part of the accommodation industry and a clear market leader. They have achieved this level of success by providing excellent service to both customers and vendors. While I’m sure outliers still exist and provide some value, they are exactly that—"outliers"—and not a reliable or scalable alternative.

I also mentioned the old wives' tale that contacting a property directly will reliably provide savings and benefits. This is simply no longer the case, as accommodations gain substantial value from Booking.com in exchange for the fees charged. Booking.com would not be so universally accepted by vendors if the advantages didn't clearly outweigh the costs.

In hindsight, I agree that the service is legit and usually reliable. I have no idea why I could not book a room online but instead had to call a toll-free phone number to use their service. I think this was an outlier and "something fishy" was definitely going on.
I'm using windows (10 or 11, it's old) and Spectrum is my ISP. The very first search result on Bing is Booking dot com. I went to the same Motel where we stayed and went through the motions of getting a room. In bold red letters is the FREE CANCELATION policy. The Booking dot com price is $52 per night more than we paid by calling the office directly. It is a small operation, not a big national chain.
No big deal, it's only money and we had a nice time.

I've used Booking.com for so long that I don't even remember when I first started. I've always had great service. Here is an example. My wife and had a room in Nuremberg, Germany which I booked on their website. When we checked in we received a room right next a section of the hotel that was undergoing reconstruction. Our room was simply too noisy. I asked the front desk for another room, but they said none was available. I called the Booking.com phone number and got connected to somone in the UK. I explained the situation to the representative who said he would look into it. About thirty minutes later I received a call from Booking.com telling me that the situation had been addressed and that I should see the desk clerk. I did, and we had a new room. Pretty impressive service I thought.

Not saying it happened here, but one thing I am on the lookout for is scam sites pretending to be familiar sites. So I am careful with those types of links. For example, I won't click on a link that says it is my bank - instead I have the URL and go direct.

At the point at which it tells me booking.com but the link doesn't seem to go there... before I called, I probably would have gone directly to booking.com (or expedia.com or airbnb.com, etc). This is because I've used these sites enough that it is really bizarre if a link to them doesn't seem to work. Having an older windows shouldn't matter other than virus protection getting out of date (including the browser).

Actually, probably "something phishy". Having to call toll free makes little if any sense. What would you think if you were asked to complete a transaction on Amazon by calling in?

Unfortunately scams like these are on the rise. Typo squatters purchase look-a-like domains and wait for a user to land. They feed real time info during the search process and then process payment, or in the case you report, use alternative modes.

Perhaps contact your card operator asking if it could have been a fraudulent transaction.

BTW - I'd suggest that you search for Expedia (and actually for any property) on the comments site you used in your OP. Scores are systematically low. My understanding is that they're not aggregators, but they collect their own data. I suppose that few satisfied customers will go there to vouch for a service/brand

This a poor post. It’s a strong claim with absolutely no information to back it up.

“Show don’t tell.”

I use Booking.com with generally good results, I know exactly where I am going to stay that night although on a couple of occasions they have denied having my reservation but Booking.com have arranged somewhere else pretty quickly. If I am staying for several nights I book one or two then deal direct with the hotel/guesthouse usually splitting the difference between us and I find the reviews to be quite accurate and helpful.

The company was a major sponsor of one of the NBA playoff games over the weekend. Its name appeared on the court, at least while watching the game on TV.

I have to wonder if the OP visited the wrong website.