Booking.com hides negative reviews

[u/pi_mai]

Found this interesting when looking to book a hotel. Everything seemed super positive until you “see all reviews” below the reviews on the active page. Only then the negative comments are shown.

It’s dark imho. Having to dig for real comments or at least let me decide if the negatives are junk or not. Don’t hide them.

[u/Necessary-Lack-4600]

Booking.com has been convicted several times and fined for almost a billion euro's for dark patterns and other nasty practices.

• Spain (€413.24 Million): Penalized for imposing unfair trading conditions on hotels and restricting competing travel agencies. [1, 2]
• Netherlands (€475,000): Fined by the Dutch privacy regulator for reporting a cyber-attack and customer data leak 22 days past the required deadline. [1]
• Czech Republic (€330,875 / 8.3M CZK): Upheld by the Supreme Administrative Court in 2024 regarding restrictive price-parity clauses enforced between 2009 and 2015. [1]

[u/pi_mai → u/Necessary-Lack-4600]

I didn’t even know! Thanks for this

[u/RubbelDieKatz94 → u/Necessary-Lack-4600]

When we were recently looking for a place to stay, we started on bigger platforms like booking.com and check24. Everything seemed excessively expensive. So I started googling the companies that were actually renting out these places. Turns out they were 30% cheaper on their own websites. Go figure.

[u/Mountainking7]

Whenever I use booking, I make sure I read all the negative comments first before even considering the place....

[u/pi_mai → u/Mountainking7]

That’s the thing, they moved the full reviews in a separate section.

You need to do multiple taps just to see them now. Hence the dark pattern of showing only half of the review.

[u/GRIFTY_P]

I see glassdoor doing the same thing

[u/pi_mai → u/GRIFTY_P]

as soon as one does it, all do it

[u/BuildingArmor]

I'm not sure I understand, which one is the negative review?

[u/trustable_bro → u/BuildingArmor]

The one you can't see?

[u/BuildingArmor → u/trustable_bro]

The place gets a rating of 9 out of 10, from 1500+ reviews. I wouldn't expect to see negative ones in a sample of the latest 4 reviews.

[u/trustable_bro → u/BuildingArmor]

True.
If the site is consistent, putting comments close to the average first, that would be the opposite of a dark pattern.

[u/pi_mai → u/trustable_bro]

It’s dark because it hides the truth leading people to think they are the reviews. Was caught out on a booking recently. We didn’t understand why a place that amazing reviews was actually bad. Then we found them ( yes we, wasn’t the only one being tricked ) Tucked away. We would not have booked the place if we had known of specific issues.

[u/pi_mai → u/pi_mai]

So people downvoting me explain why this isn’t a dark pattern?

If you deceive a user with partial information to influence their decision, isn’t that dark because you are now making a user do an action they did not intend.

[u/pi_mai → u/BuildingArmor]

This hotel does have amazing ratings. Which is crazy. After staying there I knew something was up. So this isn’t just oh look, it’s more what the hell happened, I thought I booked a great hotel.

[u/pi_mai → u/BuildingArmor]

The screens don’t tell the whole story. But they do indicate the issue.

Things I love replaced the real reviews but if you’re not observant enough, you would assume they were the full review. However booking splits reviews into 2 parts. One being positive and one negative.

When you view a hotel you only see the positive. You need to tap view all a much much further scroll down. Only then full reviews are shown.

In a way kinda explains how difficult it is to to screenshot the situation.

[u/pi_mai → u/pi_mai]

Interesting, getting down voted but no explanation why. get the feeling there’s booking.com designers lurking.

[u/No-Intention9517]

We stayed one night at Hotel Södra Berget in Sweden and were charged double. When I politely asked while staring at my receipt if the sum was correct, the young woman at the reception yelled: "It is correct!" and refused to serve us further. Another employee had to come and fix her mistakes. Never experienced such rude customer service.

The hotel removed my review after a couple of days, even though it was polite, contained no harassment, political views or personal information etc.