Pointed out that the hotel reservation site "Booking.com" is manipulating the user

Beyond YouTube's automatic playback feature, social media and websites are scattered with "tricks that guide developers' actions they want the user to take" tricks. "Used worldwide as reservation site of accommodation"Booking.comIs not an exception, it is a software developer who "is operating a user"Roman CheplyakaPointed out.

How Booking.com manipulates you
https://ro-che.info/articles/2017-09-17-booking-com-manipulation

◆ Price
If you are looking for an accommodation hotel on Booking.com, you will see a letter like "Featured! This is the cheapest price in the Paris accommodations I've searched so far!" Although this is not a lie, on the other hand it is also a fact that it can be replaced also with the sentence "This is the highest value among the accommodations in Paris that I have searched up to now!" It is because it is displayed in the plan that I saw for the first time when the person who is looking for the room specifies the schedule.

For example, if you are looking for a accommodation facility in Paris by specifying the day of stay, you have found rooms with "7613 yen" and "10 9972 yen". Even if you click on the room with the higher price ......


A sentence with an impression appears as if the room you are looking at is the lowest price. In fact there are other cheap rooms, but since it was the first room I saw, there is no lie in the content "the lowest price I've ever retrieved."


There are other sentences that make it possible for people looking for a room to feel "good dealings" as described above. In the image below the letter "genius" is attached because the accommodation cost of $ 189 (21,000 yen) is 158 dollars (about 18,000 yen). And if you hit the cursor "genius", "This discount is 30 days before and after you check in (15 days before check in, 15 days after check in: if the number of days until today and check in is 15 days It is adjusted based on the third highest price by the number of days after check-in so that the total number of days becomes 30 days.) In order to make a fair comparison, always the same reservation condition ( The meal plan, the cancellation policy, the room type, etc.) will be compared, which means that this fee means that you can reserve the room cheaply than another staying schedule of the same period " It will appear.


Many people should feel secure only by paying attention only to the last "that is, this rate can reserve the room cheaply than the other accommodation schedule of the same period". However, if you read it carefully, you will notice that it is written that "It is 30 days before and after the check in date is based on the third highest price". In other words, if there is only one room of the same type, the price indicated by "genius" will apply for 27 out of 30 days and 90% will be expressed as "good price".

◆ Urgency
On the accommodation page of Booking.com there is a display that informs the user "urgency" in various forms. Things such as "users currently being viewed ●● are browsing" as if rivals exist ...


"Last chance! Popular: Only one room available on our site!"


Of particular interest is that the pop-up saying "I just had a reservation" is displayed 1-2 seconds behind the moment the page opens. By making such a mechanism, it seems as if the reservation was made in real time. "The use of such a delayed display is nothing else because we are trying to hunt people who are watching," Cheplyaka says.


In addition, if you hover over the letters "There was a reservation now!", You will see how many minutes ago the reservation was made, but Cheplyaka says that few people will notice this movement.


Also, if the reservation was made 4 hours ago, the user feels "there is still time to decide before deciding", but if it was 5 minutes ago that the reservation was made on the other hand, "it is delayed There is no time! ", The user immediately takes out the credit card. At the same time, by visualizing that there are people who are reserving, it is also possible to make you feel secure about the accommodation you are about to book.

◆ Review
Also, Cheplyaka says that operations are being done on reviews. Cheplyaka stayed at a hotel called "New Union" but when you read the description of this hotel it looks like a very good condition hotel.


However, at the top of the page there is a tab called "Confirm beforehand!"


When I clicked on it, it says "In the guest room located at the top of the bar, some noise is expected while the bar is open." In the English version, it is "The fine print (prerequisite)" instead of "confirm in advance!" According to Cheplyaka, "a bit of noise" is an unobtrusive expression, in fact it is a banging sound that the room shakes and the bar was open all night till the morning, "Why this warning is not displayed in red letters It seems that he is feeling angry with him being hidden in the provisions.


However, rather than Booking.com, the hotel is responsible and it can be thought that the user should read the review firmly, but Cheplyaka read the review. However, Cheplyaka says that reviews that are displayed on the top page are picked up only with good ratings, and that other things could not be seen without moving the page. On the top page, highly rated reviews line up like this ......


When sorting from "Recommended order" to "New arrival order", reviews with low ratings will also appear.


◆ Evaluation
Also, unlike services that simply evaluate with the number of stars, such as movie sites and Amazon, user ratings at Booking.com are averaged for each rating for multiple items. That is, even if the user makes the lowest evaluation for one item, the average value as a whole tends to be high if the other evaluation is good. In addition, since the overall evaluation is given by further averaging the average evaluations given by each user, even hotels that are rated at seemingly evaluation, 7 to 8, may actually have problems Mr. Cheplyaka is spelling.


Cheplyaka says that he is not planning to quit using Booking.com, "ignoring expressions indicating urgency, disregarding prices erased by horizontal lines", "do not trust high evaluation, use it as a criterion of judgment" I'm preaching the necessity of "reading the picked-up reviews displayed on the main page, sorting in order of arrival, then reading".