what you need to know about "hate selling"

Ever heard of “hate selling?” Probably not. It’s a term that’s recently taken hold among travel professionals to describe a certain type of marketing in the industry that targets consumers who are inclined to book online. If you’ve purchased a vacation package from a website, or purchased an air ticket, a hotel room or a rental car from an online consumer booking engine, you’re probably familiar with the anti-consumer techniques deployed by online booking sites. These tactics that place pressure on users to spend more money? That’s what’s known as “hate selling,”

Before we started our travel business, we’d seen this sort of thing while booking our own travel, and I’m sure you have, as well. You try to book travel online—a cruise, a hotel room, or a rental car, and the pricing is anything but transparent. The site claims that there are only two rooms available at this price! Or that you’ve missed out on booking the last room at another property that looks great! Or you click on the rate to find out that there are a load of hidden charges, fees and taxes that weren’t disclosed. Or you realize that you’ll need to upgrade and pay more to get what you thought you were booking in the first place.

Online travel retailers use these methods to pressure consumers into buying particular products and packages, when they were really only trying to do some basic research about pricing and availability. You log on to see what’s out there and what it might cost, and suddenly you’re subjected to pressure because 8 users recently booked this property! Or, maybe there’s a countdown clock that pressures you to book now or lose your access to a “deal.”

These techniques are colloquially known to marketers as dark patterns, which manipulate the users of these companies’ websites into making specific choices without understanding why exactly they are making them. Hidden pricing is a common “dark pattern” marketing technique. So is convincing you that a bunch of other people are about to pounce on a fare.

Here is one recent example of an online booking site using fake numbers to pressure users to book quickly.

Now, I’m not going to say that it’s never happened to us that we’ve seen a fare change overnight, or a hotel room disappears from inventory while we were about to book it. But keep in mind that we run a travel business so we book travel regularly for hundreds of clients on complex itineraries each year. While it’s certainly happened to us a few times that pricing will change or availability vanishes, it doesn’t happen nearly as often as these sites want you to think—especially if you’re planning your trip several months out.

Here’s the upshot—these online booking sites know that people who have no brand loyalty are going to go online to look for a “deal.” And that’s why they try to “hate sell” to those customers. Anything they can do to convince you to book right then and there will get them the sale, because they know that you don’t have any loyalty to their brand, product or service. Maybe you’re just doing research—you didn’t necessarily want to book! But now you feel the urgency, because they’ve manipulated you into thinking that if you don’t agree to be up-sold, or book on the spot, that you’re missing out.

Well, here’s what happens when you book with a verified travel advisor like Huckleberry Travel. We don’t “hate sell.” We don’t have a booking engine on our site that insists that your room is going to disappear or that presents you with rates that you have to “book now.” And you’ll never hear us quote a price that has hidden taxes, fees or surcharges—we always disclose what’s included, and what’s not. If we get a promo from a supplier that expires on Friday, we’ll tell you that—but you can believe us when we tell you that the promo is real, and it’s actually expiring on Friday! And if there’s a new promo starting on Monday that we know about—well, we’ll tell you that, too!

We’ve said before that a deal that you find on the internet isn’t truly a bargain if you’re miserable on your vacation. So, rather than letting those online booking sites manipulate you into booking something that you don’t want at a price that doesn’t include any value, why not work with a professional travel advisor who can cut through the noise, bypass the manipulative sales tactics, and match you up with a travel experience that’ll work for you?

Just drop us a line. We’ll take good care of you!