I'm thinking that Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies should be renamed to exclude non-opaque lodging. It could be named something like Opaque Booking Services (Hotwire, Priceline, etc.). Then maybe there should be a separate new forum for Online Air Travel Agencies (Orbitz, etc.).
Hotels.com discussion would move to Lodging Services with AirBnB et al.
AFAICT, Hotels.com's inventory is basically a subset of Expedia's prepaid hotel selection. With all the mergers recently, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia now all basically pull from the same inventory. If we move Hotels.com somewhere, why wouldn't we also move Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, and then also Priceline's and Hotwire's non-opaque services over to that same place? Splitting that discussion doesn't make sense.
There is admittedly a bit of a fine line to figure out when it comes to something like Booking.com, which is a pseudo-OTA-but-not-really; they don't (AFAIK) tap into any GDSes but rather have direct merchant relationships with the properties they list, even if they are major chain hotels (which they do list a lot of). OTOH, it seems that now every other OTA either supplements their GDS listings with or relies wholly on direct merchant agreements, too, so there really isn't much of a technical difference between the way Booking.com works and the way Hotels.com or even Expedia.com or Priceline.com works...and for that matter, between the way that any of those work and the way that AirBnB works.
Really, the difference is in the markets they aim at. Expedia/Orbitz/Priceline/Hotels.com etc.
generally list larger, established properties that are properly registered with the authorities as legitimate lodging options. AirBnB and its ilk tend to list a lot more "guerilla" properties--places like spare bedrooms and unused apartments that aren't registered as paid lodging places but are offered as such in today's "sharing economy" (much the way that Uber allows people to chauffeur fares around without properly registering as a taxi/livery company). Booking.com mostly trends toward the former but can sometimes include properties that get close to that line and may be someone's home they're renting out. There's enough bleed-over between them all that it's tough enough to classify them with two forums...I don't think creating a third forum is a good move.
That said, despite the complexities, I support the new forum and am hopeful that this process of discussing it will help us to hash out the best way to implement it.