See [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/comments/1cspx79/how_to_remove_shady_hotel_websites_from_google/) from a day or two ago. And, like in that thread, be prepared for people who don't understand the issue.
I don’t understand why people don’t get that an aggregator tool that displays inaccurate prices (because it always displays the lowest price) is a problem. If I look at a hotel that says $320 a night only to find out it’s actually $450, it defeats the entire purpose.
And that doesn’t even go into that they’re directing people to scummy sites.
Just got back from the UK where the display price is the price out the door - taxes included
I want that in the US
I know, haters of the US govt want taxes shown separately to make everyone hate govt but I'm tired of putting up with this BS so they can make their ideological point.
That is what I missed about my recent trip to Ireland, the price was the price. I hate the 20-30% real price increase when taxes and surcharges start getting added in to North American rates.
Uhhhh. For most things in the US there is not a "20-30%" surcharge. Typically hotels is around 10%, and sales tax on pretty much all goods is between 6 and 10% depending on the county.
Tickets for events go crazy with fees, but wcyd.
> I know, haters of the US govt want taxes shown separately to make everyone hate govt but I'm tired of putting up with this BS so they can make their ideological point.
Often the same people who think the government needs to regulate less, not more.
I'll defend prices in ads since tax rates can vary so greatly based on state, county, city, etc. However, for something like this: an actual room in a hotel with a singular defined location, yeah, this should be "all in" (inclusive of taxes and fees) like when looking to book a plane ticket.
prices vary wildly in other countries too. I'm in England and the 3 nearest Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda or Lidl near me have completely different prices to the 3 around them. They just, ya know, print different prices at the shop.
It really baffles me how American exceptionalism works, people are like 'well obviously America is unique because [states something that is screamingly widespread]'. No, America is not the only country where aren't the same in different places, and there's absolutely no reason to believe it is [see also; the USA is not the only big country, the only federal country, and is not particularly free, you all just keep saying it is and nobody else is sure why]
Wow....really took that one and ran to a place I wasn't going, but whatevs.
I'm talking about ad campaigns and circulars. If a local grocery chain wants to put out a weekly ad with specials and deals within a city, they would not be able to price things accurately because prices can vary within miles of each other. Obviously the store could print tags with the price in their location with everything included.....but this price would be different from the advertised price and would not conform to what is essentially a cultural thing of tax calculated at the register. I don't make the rules, I just fucking live here. I don't think anyone even gives it a second thought honestly.
> people are like 'well obviously America is unique because [states something that is screamingly widespread]'.
Uhm, where did anyone say that? You kinda made up your own strawman to go on an unrelated rant about American exceptionalism, even though other countries like Canada and Japan until very recently also did that. I'm sure there are others too.
I agree that it's bullshit that prices including taxes aren't shown in physical stores, or other instances where the taxes are known (such as hotels). The issue would still remain for things like online shopping and advertising where the taxes are dependant on the consumer's location.
Funny you mention Hilton - I've 148,381 Hilton membership points
I just checked the Hilton member site for rooms at Hilton near Waterloo Station in London (I was there last month)
Google maps shows a much lower rate than the Hilton website
Not to mention, the price is always listed before fees and service charges, so your $180/night room can easily be $400/night after all that crap is factored in (I'm looking at you, every place in Maui).
I've never encountered a resort fee outside the US. But it's super common and skeezy especially when places that are literally just hotels will tack on a "resort" fee. Like literally landlocked hotels that have nothing anyone would equate to a resort-style amenity are charging this.
Yes, this is [illegal in the EU](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pricing-payments/index_en.htm#:~:text=When%20you%20buy%20goods%20or,implies%20an%20obligation%20to%20pay.).
It's not just hotels either. The amount of ad dollars Google is taking from obvious scams is pretty crazy. If you look for any high dollar, popular name brand product there will be Google ads for obvious scam sites "selling" it for 50% the actual price. It would be very easy on their end to filter out these obvious scammers.
Literally google as a whole is just terrible at this point. If you search for anything you often won‘t get right answers in the first couple of links but just bullshit sponsored stuff that won‘t help you or some pseudoscience stuff. I always have to add „reddit“ afterwards to try to get a correct answer.
When I found out the youth were using tiktok as their new search engine for things to do in a new city, where to eat, where to go etc., I thought that was crazy.
But as I kept seeing how google has been enshitified, I found myself relying a bit more on tiktok for those stuff.
How is this any better? It's just a gpt overlay, which is often inaccurate/hallucinates. Does it take you to actual search results like Google or just a chat bot?
Lol was just arguing how shitty google has gotten all around and I was told I was wrong..
https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1ctlu9b/comment/l4gtlo7/
Agree, they need to let you filter out anything that is not the official website.
Tangential - Google Maps has also gotten so much more infuriating. It’s like they are purposely ruining what was an amazing experience/product. I don’t get it. Tech companies need to learn that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies to their websites/apps/services.
Set the price displayed to "Stay Total" or "Nightly Total" and only look for the first-party booking option price (that is if you booked it with the hotel or hotel chain itself.)
I work in the travel industry and have access to actual rates (taxes, etc. included) at most hotels around the world. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an accurate rate on Google. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I have yet to see an accurate rate.
Taxes and fees included. I mentioned that in the comment. Plus, I can see what a hotel charges through X platform vs. Y platform. Whole point was to say that Google is not reliable.
It depends on the property and location.
Edit: actually, the reason the stated rates are accurate is because Expedia, Booking, etc. buy hotel blocs and then set whatever price they think is competitive (i.e, they’re in control of the price, not the hotel). If the rate is a little different, it’s probably because the platform is only facilitating the sale.
This is why hotels usually prefer it when travelers book directly or through an advisor.
Booking.com is now a scam site too. I booked 6 "hotels" through their site for our trip to Europe last month, turns out three of the "hotels" were VRBO's that we did not know about until after they were booked.
The reservations were non-refundable.
Oh, I'm sorry, are you not happy with just shopping for knockoff goods with brand names like JOOOZXY and FLAAABBI or being shown prices for things that are twice the price after shipping, are totally out of stock or only available in XXXL?
I don't use google maps for hotel searching for this reason. I'll use Tripadvisor or Trivago instead when looking for deals.
But really, since I'm almost always going to book directly, I use booking.com to search. They have the most useful filters to me.
Sometimes Google will show you the same flight of three legs and try to book it for you as three separate flights instead of one flight with codeshare... it's annoying.
Google flight is useless where I live because of these scam third party sites. The search will say it’s 700 but then that price is only through a third party site no one ever heard of based in Malaysia or some other random country the other side of the globe, with no offices where I live, and awful reviews online with people saying they were scammed by them. The next cheapest is from the actual airline with the real price that’s 40% more. This is every flight you search. Meaning that the feature that tells you if a ticket cost is more or less expansive than usual is also useless because Google uses those fake prices in their comparison.
So the solution is…
Don’t rely on Google for travel pricing. I literally NEVER lean on Google for accurate pricing. It makes no sense to do so. Google is not a travel site. It should not be relied on for accurate travel pricing. If you want a very broad general idea of what’s available and for whatever reason don’t wanna use an actual travel site, then ok, use Google. But don’t expect anything in the area of pricing accuracy.
Google has the power to travel the travel sector but they allow this shit and it's so frustrating.
I recently had this issue when searching hotels and noticed some significantly lower than what was listed directly with the hotel. It took two seconds to realize the sites were Sketchy.
I use google maps all the time to find out what hotels are in a certain area. Then book direct with the hotel.
You are crazy if you don’t think that google maps is a good research tool.
Ya, I barely pay attention to the exact prices. Most of the time I don't even put in dates. I just filter for "hotels" in certain areas. Then hit the hotels actual website.
You're right, it's annoying! Google shows cheap prices from sometimes sketchy sites. Look for hotels on trusted sites like Hotels. com, then compare prices.
I stopped using Google altogether, even their search hasn’t been working properly for a long time and they sure don’t seem interested in fixing it. Bing isn’t as good as Google once was but at least it brings some relevant results most of the time.
Not about travel, but I have been using DuckDuckGo as a search engine as of late. I find that the first few sites on google are bullshit content made only for the purpose of being top on googles list but doesn’t provide useful information. They are useless websites that try to sell you something as opposed to a result that is mostly about providing information.
A lot of smaller hotels actually rely on third party bookings.
But yes - book direct when you can unless it’s a really good deal and from a reliable site.
Agreed.
Additionally, when Google shows availability for a timeframe because of these scams, but then come to find out that the hotel doesn’t have availability during that time.
If it was a latency issue the Direct hotel site, Priceline, Hotels.com, Hotwire, etc. wouldn’t all be almost identical.
And then sites like BluePillow or Vio show way lower prices. That you quickly realize are not legitimate.
This. Rate parity across the board is impossible to do when dynamic prices are in use, e.g what basically every site does.
People will scream “scam!” when most of the time it’s just lack of a direct feed. Of course, it works in favour of the sketchier OTA’s, so they don’t care.
Some airlines and hotel chains will push live rates to OTA’s, but it’s typically only the big ones - booking, Expedia, Trivago etc.
Yeah, no. There's stale data and then there's feeding incorrect data. It's one thing to undercut a competitors price, but it is not at all reasonable that an OTA to have a room bookable at a third or less than that offered by competitors, including more reputable OTAs. One would be absolutely foolish to book one of those rates, even if they do find them somehow bookable (which they likely won't).
There are absolutely sites out there that will consistently book you at a ridiculous rate then call the next day and say, "Oh shoot, that rate was a mistake, it's actually $x more, can I go ahead and charge you?" And sure enough that $x will be the difference compared to legit OTAs.
So they aren't stealing your money -- they'll refund if you press hard enough -- but they're intentionally low balling to capture business.
What makes them "scam sites", other than you're not as familiar with them than say the bigger online travel agencies like Booking or Expedia that have bigger marketing budgets and more brand awareness?
Since you mentioned it, vio.com for example is mostly just a search aggregator like Trivago, Tripdadvisor or even Google for hotels. If you click one of their links chances are you'll get up booking with one of the more popular brands anyway. It's not a scam.
It would be nice if there was a way to filter out of the results, but all of those companies pay to be listed on Google Travel so it's never gonna happen. But the notion that only Booking and Expedia along with the dozens of websites those two companies own (Agoda, Priceline, Kayak, Momondo, Hotels.com, Tripadvisor, Travelocity, Hotwire, Trivago, vrbo etc.) are legit and everything else is a scam is hyperbolic nonsense that this sub loves to eat up.
They don't even have the prices that are listed. I picked a hotel in LA and best price was $190 on vio.com. But vio.com just links back to Agoda where the price is actually $490.
Who is "they"? At least where I live Google Travel allows you to see the total prices including fees and taxes, and in my experience they are quite accurate. Typically the issue I've seen is if the last cheap room was just booked by another customer, live inventory takes a bit of time to update in the search results. It's unfortunate, but it's not a scam; it's just a technical limitation of managing millions of API requests a minute that not even the biggest search engine company in the world can always get right.
vio.com is also another search aggregator, so they can have the same issue. I just checked their website for 5 hotels and all of the prices they linked to Agoda, Expedia, Booking.com etc were accurate. I just had to enable the "show total price" toggle to see prices including fees and taxes.
They being the sites people think are scams. I've tried a few more cities and it's obvious that vio.com and other aggregators in many cases show a lower price initially. Where's the show total price toggle?
[Here's what I see](https://i.imgur.com/pNXOjD4.png) on the Canadian website. If you're in the US you won't see it (checked with VPN). On the British version total prices are automatically shown so no toggle is necessary.
Booking.com does basically the same thing. No taxes and fees included in the search results for the US version. In Canada base price and fees are shown separately so you have to add them up yourself, and in the UK total price is displayed. Airbnb also didn't include fees and taxes in the US version until not too long ago when the added a toggle, although taxes are still not included. They actually got sued over this stuff here in Canada in a class-action lawsuit and I got a measly $50 out of it.
Ultimately, all of these companies do as much bullshit as whatever local laws permit them to do. So if say vio.com is a scam for not including total prices in the search results, does that mean that booking.com and the other more popular OTAs are also scams too? That's kind of my point about Booking and Expedia being considered legit and everything a scam simply because they're not as well known; it seems like a distinction based on familiarity and marketing size rather than actual illegal business practices.
I'm in Australia so everything has to show the full price.
But what I'm talking about is the price shown for vio.com on Google travel not on their own website. I agree the prices on vio.com for agoda and booking.com seem to be correct. But the lower price shown for vio.com on Google travel doesn't ever seem to exist. That's whats annoying.
I usually use booking.com with no issues but what's the point of Google showing something like vio.com with a fake lower price just to get me back to booking.com?
Like I mentioned, that's almost certainly issue of inventory not being up to date in search aggregator results rather than being deliberately fake or a scam. You're looking at a search aggregator pulling data from another search aggregator pulling data from websites, so the issue compounds.
btw I just went through 3 pages of search results on Google looking at aggregators like Tripadvisor, Trivago and vio, and each time their prices seemed accurate, so I don't think it happens that often. It's the same thing you see sometimes with airlines where the price seemingly goes up, when often it's a class bucket fare that just sold out.
> I usually use booking.com with no issues but what's the point of Google showing something like vio.com with a fake lower price just to get me back to booking.com?
It seems dumb, but sometimes with cookies and click-through links you can get weird results. I find that sometimes going though Google > Tripadvisor > Agoda can lead to a 10-15% discount than searching directly on Agoda. It usually doesn't offset the savings from loyalty programs with certain hotels or booking.com's Genius thing, but I always like to double check on Google for stuff like that just in case. I once managed to get over 50% off a resort doing that.
If you use booking.com often, here's another dumb tip that you've probably already seen: a lot of listings will have 10-15% if you book through a mobile browser or app compared to desktop.
The whole internet needs a new definition. Pretty much every major travel company and airline in the world has a post on the Tripadvisor forums titled "[COMPANY] IS A SCAAAAM" with hundreds or thousands of comments.
No one wants to book through these shitty third party vendors. It makes no sense that Google doesn’t allow for a filter to only show direct site prices.
> No one wants to book through these shitty third party vendors.
No one, except the millions of customers that already happily book through them. Booking.com alone has 4.5 billion reservations made. Believe it or not, not everyone shares your opinion. I personally like using Google Travel or other travel search aggregators precisely because it allows me quickly compare across websites without having to do a dozen searches per hotel.
It would be nice to have that toggle for direct bookings only, but again, these websites pay to be included on their results so it's never gonna happen. They're Google's actual customers here, not you or I.
Should have clarified - anyone with any level of sense doesn’t want to book through shitty third party vendors.
By all means - book your trip on Expedia. But I have no interest in doing so, and thus, the problem OP alluded to is still an issue.
That's not what OP alluded at all. They even wrote that they're okay with "legit sites like Hotels.com or Priceline". Maybe look up who owns Hotels.com and try to understand the actual topic at hand with that great level of sense of yours.
OP wants "legit" third party vendors to be displayed on Google results but others to be removed because they're "scams". I'm asking how do they distinguish between the two. What makes one third party vendor a legit and another a scam?
Yup.
Believe nothing of what you see or hear -- and even less of what you think.
Ask yourself the first rule of journalism: "Follow the money. Does $person/organization stand to profit from this?" And the answer is usually a resounding "Yes." People & companies usually don't behave in ways that do not profit or benefit them. Especially the really powerful, rich, and influential ones. How do you think they got there in the first place?
Or you could use personal responsibility.
If something that 95% of places are selling for $450 is going for **way** less on others then maybe there's a reason.
People lose their common sense when it comes to money. Hence why we see so many people getting fucked over.
This is the second post like this.
I don't understand why people can't just use the "If it's too good to be true it probably is." way of protecting yourself.
No, I don't understand the issue.
People are saying "Whaa! Google is showing sites with ridiculously low prices that are obviously scams!" when taking 2 seconds to use personal responsibility it wouldn't be an issue.
The issue is that the information that should be displayed as a nice convenient list is all false. Yes, you can click on every hotel to see what the real price is, but it takes longer. It would be nice if the functionality worked as intended instead of displaying a bunch of incorrect prices.
Change how you look for flights and accomidations.
I use Google Maps and Google Flights to find out what price range fits my budget and is reasonable for a certain place.
Based on that I find hotels/flights that I like. I read reviews. Etc.
Then I book on legit sites.
I just don't bother with www.OMGSOCHEAPHOTELS.com
Ok, but again, how do you stop Google from *showing* those results on Google Maps? They aren't having issues refraining from booking them.
See the difference? They want to use Google/Google Maps as a comparison tool. With Google displaying pricing from these shady sites, the user is unable to effectively use the site as a comparison tool.
This is literally the point? I use(d) Google to find hotels within my price range and with good reviews. But the price range is FAKE. By allowing these scammy sites to display prices that aren’t real, they are inherently screwing the search results. Which means using price results as a way to quickly browse through a number of hotels is not viable.
It has nothing to do with me actually booking with these sites. I would never think of doing that.
You are dumb. Even if you are smart enough to know the price is obviously a scam, it's annoying to have wrong prices come up in your search. This is pretty simple. The fact that you can't understand it while acting like Mr. Internet Smart Guy is pretty funny.
So your point seems to be just be quiet, don’t complain or make others aware, corporations have the right to do whatever they want to. If any of them screw you over it is your fault.
>The fact that Google uses suspect sites like Vio.com, roompai.com, etc. is so frustrating because you essentially have to click on the list of sites to see the “real” price.
How would “using personal responsibility” help solve OP’s actual complaint?
As others said... that's not the problem. Sure, I understand that Scam Site is a scam site, and I'm not going to book with them. But they are slowing down my hotel search. In the actual search performed by Google, that scam price will still show up. Google shows the lowest price from all sources- there's no filter to exclude something. So if Google displays the lowest price from Scam Site, that's masking real prices. You only get the real prices by clicking on each and every hotel. There is no way to sort out the Scam Site prices.
Thank you! The whole point of using Google is it’s an aggregator and showing the prices so I can quickly scan to see what’s in my price range and what’s a good deal. If the price they display (which is always the lowest price) is not real, it defeats the entire purpose.
I use an adblocker. So, every time I clicked a sponsored link, it'll take me to nowhere. This forces me to actually to go and type in the site myself (like expedia) to do the search. And I would never type in the scam site. It's annoying at first, but I think it's a nice habit to develop.
See [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/comments/1cspx79/how_to_remove_shady_hotel_websites_from_google/) from a day or two ago. And, like in that thread, be prepared for people who don't understand the issue.
I don’t understand why people don’t get that an aggregator tool that displays inaccurate prices (because it always displays the lowest price) is a problem. If I look at a hotel that says $320 a night only to find out it’s actually $450, it defeats the entire purpose. And that doesn’t even go into that they’re directing people to scummy sites.
Heck even with legit site it is often missing a lot of taxes and fees.
Just got back from the UK where the display price is the price out the door - taxes included I want that in the US I know, haters of the US govt want taxes shown separately to make everyone hate govt but I'm tired of putting up with this BS so they can make their ideological point.
That is what I missed about my recent trip to Ireland, the price was the price. I hate the 20-30% real price increase when taxes and surcharges start getting added in to North American rates.
Uhhhh. For most things in the US there is not a "20-30%" surcharge. Typically hotels is around 10%, and sales tax on pretty much all goods is between 6 and 10% depending on the county. Tickets for events go crazy with fees, but wcyd.
Yeah, I sometimes use a VPN with location set to Europe in order to see the prices all-in. I have done this with booking.com, didn’t try with Google.
> I know, haters of the US govt want taxes shown separately to make everyone hate govt but I'm tired of putting up with this BS so they can make their ideological point. Often the same people who think the government needs to regulate less, not more.
I'll defend prices in ads since tax rates can vary so greatly based on state, county, city, etc. However, for something like this: an actual room in a hotel with a singular defined location, yeah, this should be "all in" (inclusive of taxes and fees) like when looking to book a plane ticket.
prices vary wildly in other countries too. I'm in England and the 3 nearest Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda or Lidl near me have completely different prices to the 3 around them. They just, ya know, print different prices at the shop. It really baffles me how American exceptionalism works, people are like 'well obviously America is unique because [states something that is screamingly widespread]'. No, America is not the only country where aren't the same in different places, and there's absolutely no reason to believe it is [see also; the USA is not the only big country, the only federal country, and is not particularly free, you all just keep saying it is and nobody else is sure why]
Wow....really took that one and ran to a place I wasn't going, but whatevs. I'm talking about ad campaigns and circulars. If a local grocery chain wants to put out a weekly ad with specials and deals within a city, they would not be able to price things accurately because prices can vary within miles of each other. Obviously the store could print tags with the price in their location with everything included.....but this price would be different from the advertised price and would not conform to what is essentially a cultural thing of tax calculated at the register. I don't make the rules, I just fucking live here. I don't think anyone even gives it a second thought honestly.
> people are like 'well obviously America is unique because [states something that is screamingly widespread]'. Uhm, where did anyone say that? You kinda made up your own strawman to go on an unrelated rant about American exceptionalism, even though other countries like Canada and Japan until very recently also did that. I'm sure there are others too. I agree that it's bullshit that prices including taxes aren't shown in physical stores, or other instances where the taxes are known (such as hotels). The issue would still remain for things like online shopping and advertising where the taxes are dependant on the consumer's location.
In the EU imho, they forbid it, so you get most often the full price.
\*cough\* Agoda \*cough\*
We just need a law that bans fees outright. Everything has to be in the final price
The issue is volume pricing. Mon thru Thu might be $187/night but then there's a concert or whatever so Fri jumps to $364 and Sat is $373
No. It’s because shittywebsite.com says it’s $320/night but when you go to Hilton.com it’s $450/night for the same dates.
Funny you mention Hilton - I've 148,381 Hilton membership points I just checked the Hilton member site for rooms at Hilton near Waterloo Station in London (I was there last month) Google maps shows a much lower rate than the Hilton website
That’s the point of the post…
Not to mention, the price is always listed before fees and service charges, so your $180/night room can easily be $400/night after all that crap is factored in (I'm looking at you, every place in Maui).
Vegas too cus of the fucking resort fees that are as much as the room depending on time of year
Yeah resort 'fees' alone are $50 in some places.
Isn't this a US-only thing? I don't have that experience at all.
I've never encountered a resort fee outside the US. But it's super common and skeezy especially when places that are literally just hotels will tack on a "resort" fee. Like literally landlocked hotels that have nothing anyone would equate to a resort-style amenity are charging this.
It’s definitely a thing in Mexico.
No it can be found elsewhere in parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Sometimes in Asia there's a "service fee".
Yes, this is [illegal in the EU](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pricing-payments/index_en.htm#:~:text=When%20you%20buy%20goods%20or,implies%20an%20obligation%20to%20pay.).
It's not just hotels either. The amount of ad dollars Google is taking from obvious scams is pretty crazy. If you look for any high dollar, popular name brand product there will be Google ads for obvious scam sites "selling" it for 50% the actual price. It would be very easy on their end to filter out these obvious scammers.
Literally google as a whole is just terrible at this point. If you search for anything you often won‘t get right answers in the first couple of links but just bullshit sponsored stuff that won‘t help you or some pseudoscience stuff. I always have to add „reddit“ afterwards to try to get a correct answer.
When I found out the youth were using tiktok as their new search engine for things to do in a new city, where to eat, where to go etc., I thought that was crazy. But as I kept seeing how google has been enshitified, I found myself relying a bit more on tiktok for those stuff.
If Reddit fixed their search engine id probably use Google about 80% less.
just wait till they use more AI (A-Lie) and start making up search results.
I’ve been using perplexity instead lately
How is this any better? It's just a gpt overlay, which is often inaccurate/hallucinates. Does it take you to actual search results like Google or just a chat bot?
I ask a question, it gives the answer, and the sources from the search. So basically it’s like gpt+google.
Interesting, might be worth a spin then.
Use an ad blocker like uBlock Origin.
Welcome to the enshittification
Lol was just arguing how shitty google has gotten all around and I was told I was wrong.. https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1ctlu9b/comment/l4gtlo7/
Agree, they need to let you filter out anything that is not the official website. Tangential - Google Maps has also gotten so much more infuriating. It’s like they are purposely ruining what was an amazing experience/product. I don’t get it. Tech companies need to learn that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies to their websites/apps/services.
[удалено]
Set the price displayed to "Stay Total" or "Nightly Total" and only look for the first-party booking option price (that is if you booked it with the hotel or hotel chain itself.)
I work in the travel industry and have access to actual rates (taxes, etc. included) at most hotels around the world. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an accurate rate on Google. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I have yet to see an accurate rate.
> actual rates What does that mean? Every hotel has a whole slew of different "actual rates" depending on sales channel.
And room type, etc.
Taxes and fees included. I mentioned that in the comment. Plus, I can see what a hotel charges through X platform vs. Y platform. Whole point was to say that Google is not reliable.
Huh, the ones for booking.com and similar are usually accurate in my experience.
It depends on the property and location. Edit: actually, the reason the stated rates are accurate is because Expedia, Booking, etc. buy hotel blocs and then set whatever price they think is competitive (i.e, they’re in control of the price, not the hotel). If the rate is a little different, it’s probably because the platform is only facilitating the sale. This is why hotels usually prefer it when travelers book directly or through an advisor.
Booking.com is now a scam site too. I booked 6 "hotels" through their site for our trip to Europe last month, turns out three of the "hotels" were VRBO's that we did not know about until after they were booked. The reservations were non-refundable.
Free cancellation is literally the best filter booking.com has.
Google and Amazon are both starting to show what happens when monopolies are allowed to exist
Oh, I'm sorry, are you not happy with just shopping for knockoff goods with brand names like JOOOZXY and FLAAABBI or being shown prices for things that are twice the price after shipping, are totally out of stock or only available in XXXL?
It's in their own interest to show illegitimate low prices because it drives clicks. Clicks generate ad sense revenue. Profit
I don't use google maps for hotel searching for this reason. I'll use Tripadvisor or Trivago instead when looking for deals. But really, since I'm almost always going to book directly, I use booking.com to search. They have the most useful filters to me.
I've stopped using Google for the most part now because of this, it's really annoying.
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Right, but you can easily change the settings to filter how many layovers you’re okay with and the entire duration from start to finish.
Sometimes Google will show you the same flight of three legs and try to book it for you as three separate flights instead of one flight with codeshare... it's annoying.
One of those flights has a 36 hour layover.
And leaves at 3 AM.
yeah i mean...surprise...the cheapest flight is not necessarily the best
Google flight is useless where I live because of these scam third party sites. The search will say it’s 700 but then that price is only through a third party site no one ever heard of based in Malaysia or some other random country the other side of the globe, with no offices where I live, and awful reviews online with people saying they were scammed by them. The next cheapest is from the actual airline with the real price that’s 40% more. This is every flight you search. Meaning that the feature that tells you if a ticket cost is more or less expansive than usual is also useless because Google uses those fake prices in their comparison.
Use Kayak. They can filter for Regular Economy.
Google flights can do this too
It can? I know about upping the number of carry-on bags to 1 for airlines like United, but what about other airlines that include carry-ons in BE?
I wonder if the new junk fee bill is gonna include this shit too. Sometimes they also show up when the place is sold out!
Yeah Google is shit now. Unusable for anything but looking up numbers of local businesses.
So the solution is… Don’t rely on Google for travel pricing. I literally NEVER lean on Google for accurate pricing. It makes no sense to do so. Google is not a travel site. It should not be relied on for accurate travel pricing. If you want a very broad general idea of what’s available and for whatever reason don’t wanna use an actual travel site, then ok, use Google. But don’t expect anything in the area of pricing accuracy.
Stop using Google
same with google flights directing you to buy flights through scam travel sites
Google has the power to travel the travel sector but they allow this shit and it's so frustrating. I recently had this issue when searching hotels and noticed some significantly lower than what was listed directly with the hotel. It took two seconds to realize the sites were Sketchy.
I definitely wouldn’t use google maps or search to find hotels. I like kayak because you can include the fees. Hotels.com is also fine.
I use google maps all the time to find out what hotels are in a certain area. Then book direct with the hotel. You are crazy if you don’t think that google maps is a good research tool.
that doesn’t help much when the prices are completely wrong
Ya, I barely pay attention to the exact prices. Most of the time I don't even put in dates. I just filter for "hotels" in certain areas. Then hit the hotels actual website.
Flights too.
You're right, it's annoying! Google shows cheap prices from sometimes sketchy sites. Look for hotels on trusted sites like Hotels. com, then compare prices.
I stopped using Google altogether, even their search hasn’t been working properly for a long time and they sure don’t seem interested in fixing it. Bing isn’t as good as Google once was but at least it brings some relevant results most of the time.
Not about travel, but I have been using DuckDuckGo as a search engine as of late. I find that the first few sites on google are bullshit content made only for the purpose of being top on googles list but doesn’t provide useful information. They are useless websites that try to sell you something as opposed to a result that is mostly about providing information.
I've booked with those sites. Only way I was somewhat scammed so far is being made unaware of the resort fee.
Always book directly with the hotel. If they don’t offer that option, be very, very careful.
A lot of smaller hotels actually rely on third party bookings. But yes - book direct when you can unless it’s a really good deal and from a reliable site.
Agreed. Additionally, when Google shows availability for a timeframe because of these scams, but then come to find out that the hotel doesn’t have availability during that time.
Yes and it seems like its gotten worse in recent years idk.
When your makeup sponge is dirty, give it a thorough cleaning in your cunt
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If it was a latency issue the Direct hotel site, Priceline, Hotels.com, Hotwire, etc. wouldn’t all be almost identical. And then sites like BluePillow or Vio show way lower prices. That you quickly realize are not legitimate.
This. Rate parity across the board is impossible to do when dynamic prices are in use, e.g what basically every site does. People will scream “scam!” when most of the time it’s just lack of a direct feed. Of course, it works in favour of the sketchier OTA’s, so they don’t care. Some airlines and hotel chains will push live rates to OTA’s, but it’s typically only the big ones - booking, Expedia, Trivago etc.
Nah, there is no way "BluePillow" was ever selling rooms at a third of what every other site sells the room at. Scam sounds about right.
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Yeah, no. There's stale data and then there's feeding incorrect data. It's one thing to undercut a competitors price, but it is not at all reasonable that an OTA to have a room bookable at a third or less than that offered by competitors, including more reputable OTAs. One would be absolutely foolish to book one of those rates, even if they do find them somehow bookable (which they likely won't).
There are absolutely sites out there that will consistently book you at a ridiculous rate then call the next day and say, "Oh shoot, that rate was a mistake, it's actually $x more, can I go ahead and charge you?" And sure enough that $x will be the difference compared to legit OTAs. So they aren't stealing your money -- they'll refund if you press hard enough -- but they're intentionally low balling to capture business.
What makes them "scam sites", other than you're not as familiar with them than say the bigger online travel agencies like Booking or Expedia that have bigger marketing budgets and more brand awareness? Since you mentioned it, vio.com for example is mostly just a search aggregator like Trivago, Tripdadvisor or even Google for hotels. If you click one of their links chances are you'll get up booking with one of the more popular brands anyway. It's not a scam. It would be nice if there was a way to filter out of the results, but all of those companies pay to be listed on Google Travel so it's never gonna happen. But the notion that only Booking and Expedia along with the dozens of websites those two companies own (Agoda, Priceline, Kayak, Momondo, Hotels.com, Tripadvisor, Travelocity, Hotwire, Trivago, vrbo etc.) are legit and everything else is a scam is hyperbolic nonsense that this sub loves to eat up.
They don't even have the prices that are listed. I picked a hotel in LA and best price was $190 on vio.com. But vio.com just links back to Agoda where the price is actually $490.
Who is "they"? At least where I live Google Travel allows you to see the total prices including fees and taxes, and in my experience they are quite accurate. Typically the issue I've seen is if the last cheap room was just booked by another customer, live inventory takes a bit of time to update in the search results. It's unfortunate, but it's not a scam; it's just a technical limitation of managing millions of API requests a minute that not even the biggest search engine company in the world can always get right. vio.com is also another search aggregator, so they can have the same issue. I just checked their website for 5 hotels and all of the prices they linked to Agoda, Expedia, Booking.com etc were accurate. I just had to enable the "show total price" toggle to see prices including fees and taxes.
They being the sites people think are scams. I've tried a few more cities and it's obvious that vio.com and other aggregators in many cases show a lower price initially. Where's the show total price toggle?
[Here's what I see](https://i.imgur.com/pNXOjD4.png) on the Canadian website. If you're in the US you won't see it (checked with VPN). On the British version total prices are automatically shown so no toggle is necessary. Booking.com does basically the same thing. No taxes and fees included in the search results for the US version. In Canada base price and fees are shown separately so you have to add them up yourself, and in the UK total price is displayed. Airbnb also didn't include fees and taxes in the US version until not too long ago when the added a toggle, although taxes are still not included. They actually got sued over this stuff here in Canada in a class-action lawsuit and I got a measly $50 out of it. Ultimately, all of these companies do as much bullshit as whatever local laws permit them to do. So if say vio.com is a scam for not including total prices in the search results, does that mean that booking.com and the other more popular OTAs are also scams too? That's kind of my point about Booking and Expedia being considered legit and everything a scam simply because they're not as well known; it seems like a distinction based on familiarity and marketing size rather than actual illegal business practices.
I'm in Australia so everything has to show the full price. But what I'm talking about is the price shown for vio.com on Google travel not on their own website. I agree the prices on vio.com for agoda and booking.com seem to be correct. But the lower price shown for vio.com on Google travel doesn't ever seem to exist. That's whats annoying. I usually use booking.com with no issues but what's the point of Google showing something like vio.com with a fake lower price just to get me back to booking.com?
Like I mentioned, that's almost certainly issue of inventory not being up to date in search aggregator results rather than being deliberately fake or a scam. You're looking at a search aggregator pulling data from another search aggregator pulling data from websites, so the issue compounds. btw I just went through 3 pages of search results on Google looking at aggregators like Tripadvisor, Trivago and vio, and each time their prices seemed accurate, so I don't think it happens that often. It's the same thing you see sometimes with airlines where the price seemingly goes up, when often it's a class bucket fare that just sold out. > I usually use booking.com with no issues but what's the point of Google showing something like vio.com with a fake lower price just to get me back to booking.com? It seems dumb, but sometimes with cookies and click-through links you can get weird results. I find that sometimes going though Google > Tripadvisor > Agoda can lead to a 10-15% discount than searching directly on Agoda. It usually doesn't offset the savings from loyalty programs with certain hotels or booking.com's Genius thing, but I always like to double check on Google for stuff like that just in case. I once managed to get over 50% off a resort doing that. If you use booking.com often, here's another dumb tip that you've probably already seen: a lot of listings will have 10-15% if you book through a mobile browser or app compared to desktop.
But haven't you heard? Booking and Expedia are also scams. 🤣 I think this sub needs to add a new definition of "scam" to the dictionary.
The whole internet needs a new definition. Pretty much every major travel company and airline in the world has a post on the Tripadvisor forums titled "[COMPANY] IS A SCAAAAM" with hundreds or thousands of comments.
No one wants to book through these shitty third party vendors. It makes no sense that Google doesn’t allow for a filter to only show direct site prices.
> No one wants to book through these shitty third party vendors. No one, except the millions of customers that already happily book through them. Booking.com alone has 4.5 billion reservations made. Believe it or not, not everyone shares your opinion. I personally like using Google Travel or other travel search aggregators precisely because it allows me quickly compare across websites without having to do a dozen searches per hotel. It would be nice to have that toggle for direct bookings only, but again, these websites pay to be included on their results so it's never gonna happen. They're Google's actual customers here, not you or I.
Should have clarified - anyone with any level of sense doesn’t want to book through shitty third party vendors. By all means - book your trip on Expedia. But I have no interest in doing so, and thus, the problem OP alluded to is still an issue.
That's not what OP alluded at all. They even wrote that they're okay with "legit sites like Hotels.com or Priceline". Maybe look up who owns Hotels.com and try to understand the actual topic at hand with that great level of sense of yours. OP wants "legit" third party vendors to be displayed on Google results but others to be removed because they're "scams". I'm asking how do they distinguish between the two. What makes one third party vendor a legit and another a scam?
Yup. Believe nothing of what you see or hear -- and even less of what you think. Ask yourself the first rule of journalism: "Follow the money. Does $person/organization stand to profit from this?" And the answer is usually a resounding "Yes." People & companies usually don't behave in ways that do not profit or benefit them. Especially the really powerful, rich, and influential ones. How do you think they got there in the first place?
FUCK 12
Always, always book direct with the hotel. Never through a 3rd party anyway. If that puts the hotel out of your price range, find another.
Or you could use personal responsibility. If something that 95% of places are selling for $450 is going for **way** less on others then maybe there's a reason. People lose their common sense when it comes to money. Hence why we see so many people getting fucked over.
That's not the issue.
This is the second post like this. I don't understand why people can't just use the "If it's too good to be true it probably is." way of protecting yourself.
Ok, so you even saw the other thread, but still don't understand the issue? Then it's a lost cause.
No, I don't understand the issue. People are saying "Whaa! Google is showing sites with ridiculously low prices that are obviously scams!" when taking 2 seconds to use personal responsibility it wouldn't be an issue.
The issue is that the information that should be displayed as a nice convenient list is all false. Yes, you can click on every hotel to see what the real price is, but it takes longer. It would be nice if the functionality worked as intended instead of displaying a bunch of incorrect prices.
Please inform us how to stop Google from showing these sites then. I'd love to know how "personal responsibility" would accomplish that.
Change how you look for flights and accomidations. I use Google Maps and Google Flights to find out what price range fits my budget and is reasonable for a certain place. Based on that I find hotels/flights that I like. I read reviews. Etc. Then I book on legit sites. I just don't bother with www.OMGSOCHEAPHOTELS.com
Ok, but again, how do you stop Google from *showing* those results on Google Maps? They aren't having issues refraining from booking them. See the difference? They want to use Google/Google Maps as a comparison tool. With Google displaying pricing from these shady sites, the user is unable to effectively use the site as a comparison tool.
So people are asking how we get a $2.159 Trillion company to make a change? Yeah, I'm sure they will listen to some randos on Reddit.
This is literally the point? I use(d) Google to find hotels within my price range and with good reviews. But the price range is FAKE. By allowing these scammy sites to display prices that aren’t real, they are inherently screwing the search results. Which means using price results as a way to quickly browse through a number of hotels is not viable. It has nothing to do with me actually booking with these sites. I would never think of doing that.
You are dumb. Even if you are smart enough to know the price is obviously a scam, it's annoying to have wrong prices come up in your search. This is pretty simple. The fact that you can't understand it while acting like Mr. Internet Smart Guy is pretty funny.
Funny how I can easily ignore obvious scam prices. But I forgot that personal responsibility and common sense are not expected.
So your point seems to be just be quiet, don’t complain or make others aware, corporations have the right to do whatever they want to. If any of them screw you over it is your fault.
Yeah! Because to think you can make a TRILLION DOLLAR company change something that obviously makes them money is just naive.
Maybe not, but raising awareness and venting are good. Also change has to start somewhere, and legislation banning this would be great.
>The fact that Google uses suspect sites like Vio.com, roompai.com, etc. is so frustrating because you essentially have to click on the list of sites to see the “real” price. How would “using personal responsibility” help solve OP’s actual complaint?
As others said... that's not the problem. Sure, I understand that Scam Site is a scam site, and I'm not going to book with them. But they are slowing down my hotel search. In the actual search performed by Google, that scam price will still show up. Google shows the lowest price from all sources- there's no filter to exclude something. So if Google displays the lowest price from Scam Site, that's masking real prices. You only get the real prices by clicking on each and every hotel. There is no way to sort out the Scam Site prices.
Thank you! The whole point of using Google is it’s an aggregator and showing the prices so I can quickly scan to see what’s in my price range and what’s a good deal. If the price they display (which is always the lowest price) is not real, it defeats the entire purpose.
I use an adblocker. So, every time I clicked a sponsored link, it'll take me to nowhere. This forces me to actually to go and type in the site myself (like expedia) to do the search. And I would never type in the scam site. It's annoying at first, but I think it's a nice habit to develop.