Most of my flying is long haul, so I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to booking short haul.

I'm confused HBO fares, never having booked one myself. The BA site is clear enough when it offers a HBO fare, but I can't see any way to recognise a HBO fare from a travel agent/independent site, and I need to avoid booking one in error.

As I understand it there's no specific fare class - HBO discount can be applied by BA to different fare classes?

Having said all this, when looking at my specific flight I've not found a price on any other website to match the BA website HBO fare. Does this mean HBO is only sold direct by BA?