Should we book hotels through price comparison websites?
Should we book hotels through price comparison websites? Many of us use price comparison websites (PCWs hereafter) to book flights and hotel rooms. They are convenient, don’t charge you a fee, and apparently get you the best possible deal. I am not a cynic, but you’ll agree that anything that sounds too good to be true, is seldom, if ever, true. Especially in the case of hotels, it bothers me that we are being nudged into believing that the original booking websites (Expedia, Hotels.com, Booking.com, etc.) weren’t good enough to get us the “best deals”, and we need another set of samaritans (Trivago, TripAdvisor) to help us negotiate better. To compound my unease, I realized that most of the booking websites and the PCWs are owned by just two companies (Expedia Group and Booking Holdings)! So it seemed timely and appropriate during the holidays, to see if PCWs do indeed help one get the best possible hotel deals. I set out to see if using the PCW Trivago was the optimal way to id...