Originally Posted by
Super Mario
Purely for my own curiosity and future bookings, is there any reason why you are drawing a line in the sand against the 5% portal bookings? 5% for anything is return I generally at least look into. When partnered with CSR, we can call that return roughly 7.5%. I doubt I will not book all of my travel that way. However, this appears to open up avenues of a 7.5% return that may have not previously existed. If it's the best offer, I'm taking it.
There are many reasons. Mia hit on one of them in his reply. There are also some pre-covid nightmare stories about lost hotel room bookings. In addition, hotel chains will typically not offer any status benefits when you book through OTAs. There's also the better travel insurance on the CSR. Simply put, unless I'm redeeming points, I'd rather just book direct. I'm willing to lose the extra 2 UR per $1 over CSR by doing so.