"Showrooming" with OTA's
 

I believe the term is used when people pop into Best Buy to get their hands on actual merchandise before purchasing it cheaper online - often at Amazon.

Similarly, I often peruse OTA's such as Hotels.com and Orbitz.com before actually booking at the merchant's own site. It's rare that I book at the OTA's site - unless it is offering an amazing deal that simply can't be replicated elsewhere.

Am I in the minority or do many of you do the same thing?

I find it helpful as a search engine...

A lot of times the OTAs like Orbitz have 10-15% off deals going that make the cheaper than the hotel sites. It's worth checking both.

This wiki is worth knowing about

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hotel...elzoo-etc.html

I do this frequently. :)

I always use Kayak, which aggregates nearly everything the other programs list individually all in one place. I never have, and I'm not sure you can, book at the Kayak site itself for most of what it shows. I use my corporate travel engine for most bookings, but for personal travel I think selecting the flight on Kayak just takes me right to the airline, hotel, etc.'s site to book.

Wouldn't these all qualify for the hotel chains' best price guarantee - they match the price, plus some incentive/bonus? That's what happened when I found a cheaper flight at Orbitz, via a Kayak search, on Frontier. They matched the price and gave me a $100 credit per ticket for a future flight.

Even better, as long as you have the time to futz around with that.^

The couple of times I tried that, it didn't work for me. It was with Hotels.com and it was a "one day only" sale. Of course, the hotel chain took more than a day to verify so the rate was gone.

When I'm travelling to a desination where I'm not sure of the best airline service, I often use an OTA to check what flights/airlines are available and what the most efficient choice is. Once I decide, I usually book it on that airline's web site. It works fairly well. I avoid booking through an OTA because if something goes wrong, try getting it fixed through the OTA. That doesn't work.

Yeah, I've found them to be more PITA than they are worth, too.

Pretty much the same here, except that for biz travel, I have to buy through my company TA, but I always check out Orbitz and/or Kayak first to see the options. I also check with WN separately, since they don't show up on Orbitz or Kayak.

I usually use kayak to look through hotels in an area because I like the feature where I can filter by brands. I don't know of another OTA that lets you do that as easily.

Yes, I think you are in the minority.
Never seen an hotel room cheaper on the official site than the OTAs.

For hotels, I book them on OTAs frequently with some type of discount code or another.
As for the air tickets, the only time I'll use OTAs are when I book FD tickets. ;)

Never, ever?

In theory they would almost always be the same, given almost every hotel has a price match policy. So you may never find them cheaper, but how often do you find them more expensive?


For me, between AAA, client, and work code, it's always cheaper on the hotel's web site.

I always use sites like hotels.com and then look at real photos on tripadvisor. After I find the right hotel I book on the hotel's website. Booked a hotel once on a third party site and found out that no points were given. Since then I will only book a hotel on their own website.