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Comment by twiss

12 hours ago

It's interesting to claim that tourism in Europe won't be "durable" at a moment when tourism in the US is sharply declining..

Anyway, Booking.com is a European company and has many more customers than AirBnB.

9 comments

twiss

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pclowes  12 hours ago

I don't understand what you are trying to claim. 1. Booking.com is owned by Booking Holdings which is an American parent company. 2. US GDP growth has been massively outperforming the EU since 2008.

I am saying tourism is not something governments should want to heavily optimize an economy for. No amount of taking money from people on vacation will translate into building a more competitive or innovative economy.

  • twiss  12 hours ago

    Apparently Priceline.com Inc. took over Booking.com (founded in the Netherlands) for € 110 million, and then changed its name to Booking Holdings to reflect the fact that Booking.com was much bigger than Priceline.com. Indeed a great example of "American innovation" :)

legitster  12 hours ago

Apples and Oranges. Booking.com is an aggregator.

Also, Booking.com is unbelievably exploitative and rife with dark patterns.

  • twiss  12 hours ago

    How so? At least Booking.com shows me the total price for an accommodation up front, without any additional fees or surprises coming up later in the booking process.

    The same cannot be said for AirBnB: if I go to the home page right now it lists a bunch of bookings for e.g. "€ 80 for 2 nights", while when I click through the total price is €160. So apparently what they meant is "€80 per night". I'd call that much more of a dark pattern than anything I've seen Booking do.

    • legitster  12 hours ago

      Bookings.com runs some incredibly evil tactics. Generally they take about 20% of the booking fees. But they will do things like delist you if you have lower prices anywhere else, and then undercut your prices on their website.

      My parents ran a small motel - the only hotel for miles around. But on top of the fees, if they weren't paying for additional promotions Booking would find unrelated distant hotels even when searching in the area. People would sometimes mistakenly book for a motel states away.

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  • TremendousJudge  12 hours ago

    > Also, Booking.com is unbelievably exploitative and rife with dark patterns.

    So it seems that Europeans have no issue doing the same thing as American tech companies?