Expedia, Orbitz and Kayak, oh my!

No recent post as people have been mostly behaving of late. But, alas, all good things must come to an end.

Our town is in the midst of it's first big summer festival. This, coupled with two weddings in tonight, tells me that summer is now in full swing in our little tourist town.

I currently have four boys who are apparently going to spend their evening in my lobby. Why? No idea. The lobby is possibly the most happenin' place in town. I often have groups of people sit down here and chat all night. My favorite is the arguing couple who comes down here to escape the people in their room. They always start off quietly whispering to each other in an attempt to be polite and so that I don't hear them. Shortly, inevitably, they are loud enough I want to put on headphones or join the conversation.

But with the coming of summer comes a topic I feel we must discuss, dear readers. This is the topic of....The Third Party Reservation! Dun Dun Dun!!!!

No, seriously. It needs horror music.

Okay, so here's the skinny. When you purchase from any third party - Hotels.com, Orbitz, Priceline, Hotwire, Expedia, and so on and so forth - you are purchasing a hotel room from them. They have bought rooms from us. It's a triangle. They are reselling you our rooms, so you don't have a reservation with us. Expedia does in your name.

The bonus is the fact you can get a great room at a cheap price. The reason that it works is because places like Expedia can get them cheaper from us than you can. They buy so many rooms throughout the year, it's like they get prefered customer prices. And, well, you don't. So they can, in turn, resell it to you cheaper than we can. I know, it's odd, but there you have it.

The negatives include the fact that if you have a problem with your reservation, I can't help you. Seriously. Everything on my end is blocked, and you have to deal straight with them. Also, you are putting in a request for a room. You can ask for a non smoking room with a king sized bed. However, that isn't what they have to give you. Normally, you do receive it. But trust me, having that guest show up at 11pm only for me to tell them that they are in a smoking room or the bed type is wrong gets real ugly. And it isn't up to us. It's whatver room Expedia and friends decides to put your name on.

So basically, you trade customer service for price. If you are flexible with you're stay, it's a great way to go. If you need something specific, cough up the few extra bucks and go through the hotel.

And if you don't, and it's wrong, I don't want to hear about it.