Mark Fox

The big players in the travel world want to limit your access to their marketable and profitable resources. It’s unfair to small lodge owners, and people just wanting to plan a holiday. MARK FOX reports on a basic ‘bait and switch’ scam 

One of the travel industry’s biggest problems is the effect huge, cyber-corporations have on smaller, brick and mortar establishments. Take Bulungula, an eco-resort on the breathtaking Wild Coast, near Coffee Bay.

The community that own and manage Bulungula

Owned and managed by a vibrant, traditional Nqileni community, this backpacker lodge offers a slice of African paradise.

This Eco-friendly backpacker lodge invites intrepid travellers to experience a slice of African paradise.

During our visit to Bulungula last year, we were shocked to discover that a large group of French surfers had changed their itinerary because they learnt online that Bulungula was fully booked. In fact, Bulungula had plenty of availability, so who was telling the French surfers there was none?

The eco resort, Bulungula, is situated on the Wild Coast, near the surfer’s paradise of Coffee Bay

Booking.com’s listing for Bulungula implied that online booking was available, but when you selected specific travel dates, the displayed message suggested Bulungula was not available for the chosen dates. Naturally other lodges were. This functionality was replicated on Google (and elsewhere). This is not an isolated case.

The owners of Luna Blue Hotel, experienced the same thing. After falling in love with Mexico’s Caribbean coast, the couple (who prefer to remain nameless) sank their life savings into an 18-roomed hotel in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, which they turned into a successful backpackers’ lodge. They won some awards, received great reviews, and filled their rooms, but then they signed up with Expedia.Inc, in the hope of generating more business.

Despite providing Expedia with details about rooms, amenities, and availability, requests to update the listings fell on deaf ears, and guests would arrive to find that their room did not correspond to what they thought had been booked online. Some guests would roll with the punches, others would complain, which in turn affected the hotel’s reputation.Things went from bad to worse. Luna Blue rooms and availability began to disappear from Expedia.

Finally, bookings came to a halt. Pages and links were broken; images and descriptions disappeared. Potential guests could not find any information, so they quickly moved on and reserved at other hotels.After repeated complaints, the page was fixed and bookings started streaming in again, but then Expedia mysteriously cancelled multiple reservations due to ‘no available rooms’. Anyone looking for Luna Blue Hotel on Expedia, Hotels.com or Venere.com, would find a message saying there was no availability for the requested dates, followed by suggestions for other more expensive hotels.

You don’t have to be a travel expert to see how damaging and unfair this is. In 2011 a French court ordered Expedia to pay major fines for “misleading marketing practices” – ergo, claiming a hotel had no availability to get them to book with more expensive properties – ­­after the French national union of hoteliers, Synhorcat, and two hotels, complained about Expedia and subsidiaries TripAdvisor and Hotels.com.

Some guests, refusing to accept that Luna Blue was never available, called Expedia and were told the lodge was going out of business. Expedia did not acknowledge calls or e-mails from the owners and when a journalist contacted Expedia to hear their side of the story, they responded that they no longer did business with the Luna Blue Hotel.

A drawn-out legal battle resulted in a functioning Expedia page for Luna Blue but such corporate Goliaths have too much power to be worried about small business owners. So as a holiday maker or small lodge owner what can you do to protect yourself?

• Avoid Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Venere.com or any of their affiliated websites because IAC/InterActiveCorp http://www.expediainc.com/ owns over 50 other websites and businesses. Many of these have a reputation for bad customer service. Just Google “Expedia bad customer service” and see.
• Claimed discounted rates are often bogus. Expedia usually offers the hotel room at the same price as the property. Expedia gets a large percentage of that price. Why would they give it to you cheaper? And why would a hotel offer a lower price on Expedia when they are already paying them a 25% commission? Hotels save when you book directly with them, so why would they encourage you to book through a middleman by discounting their own prices on those sites?
• Pulling customers in with low-cost rooms which are ‘unavailable’ only to steer them to more expensive rooms, is classic ‘bait and switch’ activity.
• Expedia and other travel websites offer a limited number of hotels and rooms.Not all hotels list with Expedia, and those that do rarely list all their available rooms on Expedia site.
• For the best availability, best prices and service, always book directly with a hotel or through a reputable travel agent.
• Rather deal with (a proudly SA) a reputable travel agency who will take care of all logistics and potential hassles. The money you might save by booking with a travel mega-site is not worth the headache of dealing with them should you encounter a problem. A good travel agent can actually save time and money
• When you book an airline or hotel direct, you have ONE point of contact for any problems. When there are two or more points of contact, there’s often finger-pointing and buck passing when problems arise. If you book direct with the hotel, there’s no commission involved so the hotel is more likely to treat you like the valued customer you are.
• With a third-party website, there’s a good chance the information is not up to date.