Originally Posted by
tth6133
My understanding is that trip/ctrip, along with Agoda, instead of acting purely as agent, buys outright remaining inventory of rooms of particular type at some hotels/resorts more often than other OTAs, in order to offer more competitive rates at these hotels/resorts. When they offer significantly lower rates than competing OTAs, that's probably the reason. In such cases, price matching probably wouldn't work.
My understanding this that, less so in the case of Agoda, they negotiate directly with hotels in top markets where their customer base gives them pricing power.
Regardless, price match guarantees are worthless if the brands reliably find loopholes which they exploit in order to deny claims. The price match thread in the Hilton forum explains this part fairly clearly (i.e. you need an EXACT match). Apparently, if you're not logged in and ensure that all variables are completely aligned, it's possible to win, but sometimes you actually need to put down money at Hilton/Marriott/Hyatt first in order to start the match process...or else match two fully refundable rates (this at least removes the refundability element from the equation).