Status: 06/19/2023 12:50 p.m
Travel portals offer the opportunity to compare holiday offers. But fluctuating prices, fake reviews or extra flat rates are often an obstacle. What should consumers pay attention to?
On flight booking portals such as fluege.de, Swoodoo or Skyscanner, hundreds of prices for a specific flight route can be compared at the same time. Nevertheless, users should not rashly choose the first offer that comes along, but also research the websites of the specified airlines themselves. The flight prices there are sometimes cheaper than on the comparison portals.
Discounts often only for premium subscriptions
In addition, many flight booking portals lure with supposed discounts: However, the price printed in bold often only applies if users take out a premium subscription with an annual membership fee. If the contract is not terminated in time, it will be automatically extended. Consumer advice centers also criticize booking portals that aggressively offer customers additional services such as baggage insurance or travel cancellation insurance. In most cases, this expensive insurance is superfluous or can be booked much cheaper with insurance agencies, according to the Lower Saxony consumer advice center.
Inadmissible service flat rates?
Price traps are also lurking on flight booking portals during the payment process: Fluege.de, for example, charges a service fee of up to 50 euros for all common payment methods. Only payment with the hotel’s own credit card is free of charge. The consumer center classifies this circumstance as legally inadmissible. As early as 2017, the Federal Court of Justice ruled that flight booking portals must always offer customers another free payment method. The consumer center is therefore currently preparing a class action lawsuit. Those affected can contact the local consumer advice centers directly. In addition to fluege.de, the portals flug.de, Billigfluege.de and airline-direct also belong to one and the same company.
“Dynamic Pricing”: Travel prices can fluctuate
With so-called dynamic pricing, travel companies and airlines react in real time to current demand and the situation on the market. The prices for hotels or flights are automatically created by algorithms, so they can fluctuate greatly within a very short time. For example, factors such as the time of day, the day of the week or the weather can affect the displayed travel prices.
Surfing behavior can influence the price
When searching for a specific flight or hotel, the price often increases with each new visit to the website. Booking portals thus simulate increased demand and put customers under pressure. The personal user data that we leave behind as a result of our surfing behavior can also influence the price. With every search query via the browser, a large amount of data is transmitted and stored. Portals “recognize” whether someone is interested in a particular trip or flight. Since May 2022, according to an EU directive, all booking portals and online shops have had to state if prices are individualized using personal data. To avoid digital traces, consumers should pay attention to the following:
The browser history and above all delete cookies and empty the cache regularly. If possible, do not log in, but as a guest surf the website. Once logged in, the search history can be tracked accurately. Travel Deals on different end devices check. Even if a study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Justice comes to the conclusion that the choice of technical device has little influence on pricing, it happens again and again that the prices of PCs, tablets and mobile phones differ for the same offer.Use of one VPN service: A VPN (Virtual Private Network) encrypts the Internet connection. The IP address can be hidden or changed in this way.
Booking portals sometimes more expensive
Thanks to countless booking portals, finding the right hotel room has never been easier than it is today. However, the order in which the hotels are listed in the search result depends on numerous criteria – and by no means all of them are objective. When ranking the results, preference is often given to hotels that bring in high sales or pay the portals the most commission. In addition, the prices on the booking portals are sometimes more expensive than on the hotel websites themselves, according to a study by the Leibniz Center for European Economic Research.
Portals such as booking.com or expedia.de would punish this behavior: If a hotel offers a better price on its website than on the booking portal, the result is a poorer placement in the recommended search results. Consumer advocates advise always using the existing filters and sorting the search results according to personally relevant criteria – for example the cheapest price, number of bookings or the best ratings.
Fake reviews of hotels are becoming more and more professional
For many consumers, positive reviews are the most important decision criterion for a hotel booking. Many a hotel owner therefore succumbs to the temptation to improve their average rating by buying good reviews. Such services can be easily commissioned online from companies who, if interested, can even write several hundred fake reviews for a hotel.
Rating portals such as Holidaycheck declare on their homepage that they will use all available means to combat rating fraud. With new technical possibilities and artificial intelligence, these protective mechanisms can often be circumvented. Since German criminal law does not yet classify the writing of fake reviews as a fraud, the authors get away with it with impunity.
Identify fake reviews
In order not to fall for fake reviews, consumers should pay attention to the following:
Not just the overall average look: If many holidaymakers rate a hotel poorly, a few extremely good fake ratings are enough to raise the overall average. If a hotel has existed for a long time and has compared to before within a very short time a striking number of good reviewsyou should look closely.Also extremely long texts, exuberant formulations and many Superlative can indicate a fake review. Consumers should also check who wrote the reviews and how many reviews the author has yet written. With travel portals, for example, it is unlikely that a user has stayed in 20 hotels around the world in a short period of time.
Further information
Flight, holiday home or package tour: There are many fake travel sites on the Internet. How do they differ from serious ones? more
If a flight is delayed or even canceled, travelers are entitled to alternative transportation and, in some cases, compensation. more
When looking for the best price, comparison portals offer orientation. But the overview is often incomplete. more
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The Tricks | 06/19/2023 | 9:00 p.m