We are used to Booking.com’s inventory appearing re-distributed in endless places. The surprising thing is when we come across the opposite finding which, up until now, has gone unnoticed in the industry media: rooms on Booking.com provided by third parties. This is called Booking.basic and we do not currently know its current scope. For now, we have come across it intermittently in accommodations in Asia, provided by Agoda or CTrip. With this novelty, Booking.com has crossed a threshold with potentially enormous consequences.
In all cases, what we have found is a non-refundable prepaid rate at a lower price than the one offered directly by Booking.com.
Since March, Booking.com refers to it in its Privacy Policy, which therefore recognises this novelty and makes it official:
Booking.basic: You may be able to make a Booking.basic reservation. Booking.basic reservations are facilitated by third party business partners. During the reservation process, we are required to share some relevant personal information for that reservation with the third party business partner. Please review the information provided in the book process or the reservation confirmation for more information about the third party business partner and how they further process your personal data.
We made a few bookings to check out how it works. You book it on Booking.com and it does not allow changes, requests or comments, it has limited customer service and confirmation is not immediate. A subsequent email from Booking.com confirms our booking for definite, and informs us of the partner supplier, in this case CTrip:
The confirmation email also indicates that, for the hotel, the booking has to be identified as made by CTrip, not Booking.com.
CTrip, on its website, offers the accommodation from our booking for the same price of 57€ we saw on the Booking.basic site:
