Hotels.com is no better. I was on the road in Italy recently and there was no way I could sign into the app. I needed to cancel a hotel and in the end calling the hotel and depending on their goodwill got me sorted out. Ended up doing probably too many password resets, so no matter what I do I am locked out. Of course, the app is the only way to avoid the €6 (or whatever it is now) extra surcharge for booking on the website. Also, there are often codes for collecting double stamps and there was one which was valid until midnight tonight (20 November). There was no way I could use it because I could not get into the app. Went onto chat and there was nothing they could do, but the raised the issue with their technical team and I will have to wait 4-5 days for a response.

Looking at Flyertalk and other respectable blogs like Head for Points, it seems to me that many many people have abandoned hotels.com, some saying that their prices are far too high compared to other channels. Personally, I quite like the rewards programme because of its simplicity. So what else is out there? I really don't like booking.com because they behaved so abysmally during the Covid crisis. I don't want to give them any money whatsoever, although they are hard to avoid globally. HRS is just a sliyjghe2sjyg here in Europe, customer service is ZERO, so that's out. I am thinking about just booking directly with the hotels going forward. With the little independent places I can often wrangle a better price on the phone (can you imagine hotels.com letting us use a phone? They would probably charge 60 Euros extra for it).