Hostel Booking (The Internet Scam)

I just had my first encounter with the price differences between Hostel
booking websites today and it just put me in a furry.

• The first reason I was so angry was obviously because I paid more than the
  person next to me for the same service, which in MY mind is wrong but seems to
  be quite normal in this day and age.
• The second and even more important reason is because I just figured out just how naive and stupid I am to think that things are fair. It is difficult to be confronted to our own stupidity... as I seem to learn everyday since the beginning of this trip. I guess I owe one to the hostel manager for this lesson in life. Lets just say that this experience just removed my last illusion of living in a fair world. I guess, in that perspective it was a positive experience as I will now be on my guard in one more sphere of my life.

Here's what happened...

I booked into a hostel in Maastritch, Holland yesterday around lunch from an Tourist information center. I used the hostel's own website to book my room and they were offering a price of 27€ per night which is a little bit more than usual but it was a brand new hostel with nice surroundings, close to center town so I thought that was why it was more expensive. Last night, I was discussing with some people in my room and I happened to learn that they paid 18€ for the same shared room and the same services. I enquiried to the staff and they explained that the prices were adjusted for each day according to current bookings and availabilities. So basically, if there are beds free, the prices go down to fill them up.
I asked to speak to the manager about it and we had a relatively heated discussion about it. What he calls a strategy, I called a scam because that is what I think it is. But at the same time, he pointed out that airlines, other hotels and probably other lines of business do the same thing and as much as I wanted this to be wrong, I knew it was right. It does not make the whole thing any better or fairer though... and here's why I think it's wrong.

• The first reason is that it takes into account that clients do not discuss prices with others; and that is true, it turns our need for privacy into a pricing tool. How many times have you asked another client in an airplane or a hotel how much they paid for it ? The wongness of this edges on two elements.
• One: We do not usually discuss our personal venues when comes time to get a service.
• Two: We do not like to "share" our deals, and who gave them to us. These reflexes being in place, it is easy for all those businesses to "scam" some of us with less knowledge of the "system" by charging them more because they are unaware of the avenues available to get the same service. We do the same thing at work... discussing salaries is a worldwide taboo because it is so private but at the same time subjective to too many factors. As a whole, taking for granted that your customers will not "talk" amongst themselves is a serious lack of ethics because it completely removes the openness in the dealings because nothing is "clear". You do not set your prices, boundaries and limits beforehand, you set them up as you go depending on your whim of the moment and the only moment when a price is fixed is when it appears on a bill.
• The second reason is that it basically treats some people like "second grade" customers who are paying more just because they were not at the right place at the right time and in this time and age of Internet, it can be a few milliseconds too early or too late.
• The last reason is because it leaves a very bitter aftertaste to my experience with hostel chains in general because looking at my older bookings, it seems like I overpaid 50% of the time, when I dealt with the chains or hostels directly. It leaves a bitter taste not only because it cost me more than other customers for the same service, but because I stupidly thought that when hostels adjusted prices, they did it everywhere not just on the major booking sites. I also naively thought that If I a hostel chain has a website and that they take the time to put up booking infrastructure, they will update their rate at the same time as the "general, multi purpose" websites because the value their customers but that does not seem to be the case.

But what about those people who just walk by and like the place, walk in and ask for a room and get to pay the full 27€ price ? Keeping in mind the "old" way of doing business; where you pay more when you're a bad customer... What exaclty did they do wrong to be treated so ? They helped the manager fill up one more bed, full pop and they will probably use other services provided by the hostel, providing even more revenues to the business. Well according to this new strategy, they did not do anything wrong, they get charged more just for being there at that moment.

Overall, it brings a serious question about our loyalties, between ourselves, buying customers and in the client-customers relationship. Traditionnally, there was a price on an item and that price was changed when you had good customers, you would reward them by giving them a discount on the items so they would feel cherished and appreciated but you had reasons to change the price like they bought more than 200$ this month or something. Now this principle seems to have gone down the drain with so many others...

These days, the new marketing seems to be to give discounts to anybody as long as they "log-in" at the right time. It also brings in the questions of our loyalties to one another and to the companies we deal with. It also bings in question the trust that we put in them. I guess we are in this age where trust and loyalty are just not important anymore.

Lastly, I wish to talk about the fact that this is facilitated now with the Internet. I believe that 20 years ago, this kind of behaviour would have been really difficult because the only way to book hostels would have been by walking in, calling or maybe faxing. Now with Internet, hundreds of people log-in to those booking sites every minute, checking prices (which are updated every few minutes) and booking the cheapest hostels whose prices are dynamically readjusted to take into account bookings, reservations and availabilities.

One thing is for sure, I will go to Bookings.com and at least 2-3 other general purpose booking websites to get my hostels and will stop trusting the hostel's sites and you should do the same.