Originally Posted by
Concerto
In Moscow recently, I booked 2 rooms for 2 nights in the same hotel, one using the German version of hotels.com, the other using the English version (because of a Book 2 Nights get an Extra Free Nights Credit promotion). All night credits turned up promptly and the stay was a good one. The first cost EUR120, the second cost GBP135. At check out, I was issued with 2 credit card receipts, one for RUB 7.392,00, the other for RUB 9.240,00. These are worth EUR94.65 (instead of EUR120) and GBP105.02 (instead of GBP135), but my cards were charged with the EUR120 and GBP135 amounts. So is this the difference between what the hotel charges and the profit that hotels.com makes?
1) You should always check multiple booking channels including the hotel's own website if possible. Like
vandykes44 says sometimes hotels.com is cheaper than the hotel's own website, but then again sometimes it isn't, even after subtracting cashback and the 9.09% for hotels.com rewards.
If you can be bothered to make a phone call or email (± know the relevant language) you can often negotiate a significantly lower price, due to my next point.
2) I believe hotels.com takes a commission of 15-20% from subscribing hotels', which is how they fund their voucher program and cashback plus all the "secret discounts" they like to spam us with.
This commission is probably similar for booking.com/expedia etc and it may even be that high for booking "direct" with a hotel chain (this funds your points and benefits) as opposed to actually booking direct with the hotel.
3) There seem to be several options for hotels to be paid when they join up with hotels.com. Firstly most hotels have refundable and non-refundable rates.
For non-refundable rates, sometimes you pay hotels.com and sometimes they just forward your card details to the hotel, which charges you directly. If you pay hotels.com then Amex is always accepted even if the hotel doesn't, since I assume hotels.com just pays the hotel by bank transfer periodically. The latter is rare, only seen it twice, couldn't use Amex since the hotels didn't take it, and furthermore couldn't use hotels.com reward nights - I take this to mean these hotels don't have an agreement to be paid in bulk by hotels.com.
For refundable rates, you can of course pay the hotel on check-out, but most of the time there is also the option to pay hotels.com at the time of booking. Doing this has currency advantages as in the next point. Though again, sometimes you can only pay the hotel directly when you actually turn up.
4) I hope you either have EUR and GBP cards or your card has no currency conversion fees, because there is no need to pay in euros with the German site nor in pounds with the UK site.
Hotels.com doesn't scam you on currency exchange and they are able to charge cards in any of the currencies they list at the top, at a rate which is close enough to the rate that you'd get with a 0% forex fee visa/mc/amex.
When I search on hotels.com, once I have a short-list I always change the currency to the hotel's local one, in order to compare with the hotel's own website. But when it comes to paying hotels.com I often change it to a third currency and pay using a card in that currency (or multi-currency cards like Revolut) which fixes the exchange rate (hopefully to my advantage), and avoids DCC or any other fees.
So which payment option was the case for your stay? Did you pay hotels.com or the hotel? What currency is shown for the original transaction on your card statement? Did you really get a credit card receipt for your card? If so the transactions should have shown up in rubles on your card and been converted to the card currency by your card issuer - yet the ruble hasn't dropped by 27% against EUR or GBP so it seems very odd.