Those of you living in the US should be familiar with Priceline, which is one of my favorite platforms. I remember consistently finding better prices than elsewhere. However, with the rise of hotel credit cards in recent years, I haven't used it much. This time, I needed to book hotels for the team, so I used it again, only to discover it had been acquired by Booking.com. Not only has the user experience significantly declined, but the hotel discounts aren't as substantial as before.

Since that's the case, I might as well use booking.com. After all, it's a platform I used frequently before, and I remember it always performing very consistently. However, this experience has changed my impression of it.

Event Summary

Our group consists of 25 people and we need 5 king-size rooms and 7 double rooms. Due to the importance of our trip, we booked three months in advance. From initial inquiry to booking, everything went smoothly.

On the afternoon of my check-in day, around 3 PM, I received a call from the hotel. They asked if I had made a reservation, and after verifying my identity, informed me that there were no rooms available. After confirming several times, I believed them. I told them I had booked through Booking.com and needed to contact them. They seemed reluctant for me to contact Booking.com, but ultimately agreed.

So, I began a four-hour-long Booking.com process. I found their customer service number online (yes, their customer service number is hard to find), entered the confirmation number, waited in line for a few minutes, explained the situation to the customer service representative, and then they told me to hold—they needed to call the hotel to confirm the situation. About ten minutes later, a call came in from Singapore (the previous one was still on hold), so I had to answer… It was an Indian-speaking customer service representative who said they saw the case, told me the hotel had no rooms for the next day, and asked if I considered moving out the next day…blablabla. I asked what happened, and the answer I got was that the other party kept saying the hotel was overbooked, but they never directly answered my question.

• I booked three months in advance, why did they tell me there were no rooms available on the day of check-in?
• If it was overbooked, why wasn't we notified in advance? Even a week's notice would have given us time to make amends. What does it mean to be notified on the day of check-in?

While we were arguing incoherently, another call came in from Paris. I thought it might be the same customer service representative from before, so I answered. Sure enough, it was him. He told me he had contacted the hotel, but there were no rooms available. I explained that someone else had contacted me earlier with the same explanation, and then asked me to give them 30 minutes to find another hotel to fill the gap.

I waited and waited, but the phone didn't come. Instead, I received two emails from three motels, the kind (I had booked the 0 one). So I called them again... I entered the confirmation number and waited a few minutes... Then I explained the situation again... They started processing it, and thankfully this time they knew the situation and skipped to the next step—if I couldn't accept it, they would look for another one and I should wait a little longer. So I hung up again and began the endless wait, not knowing if they would ever call back.

During this time, due to the urgency of the situation—everyone was on their way—I started searching on my own and found two suitable options. Hoping for the best, I called them.

I entered the confirmation number and waited a few minutes, then explained the situation again... Then I told him I had found a hotel myself and asked if I could switch. After checking, they told me the price difference was too large (only more per room). I said, "Of course it's big! Booking three months ago is different from booking on the day of booking!" I went on and on, and they said they needed to discuss it with the manager... Then they hung up and told me to wait...

Time ticked by, and I couldn't wait any longer, so I called again... I entered the confirmation number, waited a few minutes, and explained the situation again...

This time, the other party directly said they needed to hold the call and check the notes... So they held it for a while... and then hung up on me... (probably by accident).

Then... I called again... I entered the confirmation number, waited a few minutes, and explained the situation again...

I encountered a very good customer service representative this time. They said they would immediately apply to the manager... A few minutes later, they said the manager had approved it, and I could hang up and wait for the email link to place the order directly.

A few minutes later, I received an email... which revealed that it was only half of what I ordered; they gave me seven double rooms, which were completely unusable.

So... I... called again... entered the confirmation number, waited a few minutes, and explained the situation again...

(I can already recite the confirmation number and the description.)

I told them bluntly that they had approved the hotel reservation, but the number of rooms was incorrect. They said they would have to reapply with the manager for all the rooms. OK... fine... A few minutes later, they told me the manager had agreed, but the rooms were no longer available... Hahahaha.

In 5 hours, I made almost ten calls to Booking.com, and I had to repeat myself every time. They didn't treat my order as an urgent one at all.

Summarize the reasons

The whole thing is actually very simple. The booking on booking.com went perfectly smoothly and even reached the hotel. Whether the hotel was poorly managed or intentionally didn't want to accept cheap bookings, they simply didn't process the request. When problems arose, they didn't want to take responsibility. Booking.com had no contingency plan for this kind of situation and could only follow the normal procedures, which led to this whole mess.

This is primarily the hotel's responsibility. If they didn't want to accept a cheaper booking, they should have informed the customer in advance, not on the day of the incident. However, Booking's customer service made me dislike them. As a Booking customer, I experienced such a significant problem, and instead of offering compensation, they didn't address it promptly, leading to a decrease in available rooms (especially since it was Friday), ultimately forcing me to accept the worst possible option. This makes it seem like Booking doesn't want to bear the cost of changing hotels. They don't care about their customers and are extremely unreliable.

La Quinta by Wyndham

Let's talk about it again.La Quinta by WyndhamI've put this hotel in bold for everyone:

La Quinta by Wyndham

Although it is a chain hotel, its management is very chaotic. I called them many times to ask if the hotel reservation was successful, and the answers they gave were always vague. They would either say that they saw the reservation or that they would transfer the call to someone else, and then hang up the phone when the other person did not answer.

Another time, I wanted to call and ask about the availability of a meeting room so I could rent one, but I was transferred to the sales department, who didn't answer or reply to my message.

I called again, and they told me they would check and call me back, but I still couldn't get through to them.

With such management, it's not hard to understand why pre-booked orders wouldn't be recorded in the system. I gave them a bad review for this, and their response remained irresponsible.

Translation: We apologize because 27 orders were under the same name and we have changed our booking system.

So... your system change caused such a huge problem, is it the customer's fault?