typically when you book thru 3rd party/OTA, you pay the OTA

OTA then faxes/emails the actual hotel, with the reservation details, along with a temporary/virtual CC number owned by OTA with a max $ amount

everything here is automated. that's why OTAs have low overhead

if hotel doesn't monitor the faxes/emails, OTA doesn't know if there's a problem. even if hotel's fax machine rejects the fax, OTA might not have proper exception handling, and keeps retrying/assumes things are fine. if no one booked the hotel before you, OTA won't know that hotel is under renovation

takeaways: always look at the hotel main page before booking and do some research on google/tripadvisor. sometimes, hotel is cheaper (or willing to price match OTA). sometimes, you'll see the closure/renovation messaegs