Trivago: save money with the US flag setting

gaiscioch

Has anybody else noticed that when you use Trivago with the Irish flag in the top right corner, the price of all hotels are more expensive (have your currency set to €).

Here's a Trivago search for Paris using the Irish flag and € setting.

Here's the same search using the United States flag and € setting

The local currency in both cases is the € (France), but the prices are higher on the Irish site. For instance, the first two hotels (Le Grey & Le Seven) at this moment are €194 & €207 respectively, but on the US setting the same hotels are €176 & €216 respectively. The same happens on all the hotels. If you set the state to UK, you are also paying more than the US setting.

Can anybody explain the logic to this?

spurious

VAT?

killbillvol2

spurious wrote: »

VAT?

You shouldn't be paying the Irish rate of VAT on a hotel in Paris.

OP, I've come across this all over the place on travel sites. I never use the .ie sites. The worst example I came across was a €300 price difference between ebookers.ie and ebookers.fr on a flight from Dublin - Tokyo (€750 versus €1050 for the exact same flights).

Shop around and learn to read French, German and whatever else you can manage!

EDIT/ Just to back up the original post, Le Seven is only €172 on the Portuguese site and €164 on the Chinese one.

spurious

Are you covered by Irish consumer laws if you book on a US site?

Batgurl

US sites only add tax at the end of the booking process. Go the whole way through to entering you credit card details and they will possibly add it on.

ScottSF

I've seen this behavior as well on various travel sites but sometimes you have to be 100% sure you are comparing apples to apples. Are all taxes included or are any added later during the booking process? Plus also be aware in which currency the hotel is charging your credit card. If it is Euros to Euros you should be fine. However if you are booking a hotel in the US or Czech for example, the quoted rate may be the estimated charge in Euros. Then when you go to pay you could be charged in the local currency which means your own credit card will add a conversion fee, or sometimes the booking site will convert it to Euros using an unfavorable rate without making it clear to customers.

I know with Hertz they are terrible about rate parity between .ie and .com sites for example. Not only are the car hire prices always different, but the insurances included in the base rate also vary (with some coverage options only available at the rental desk). So it takes us all that much more time to figure out if we are getting overcharged or if in the end the rate is similar with other taxes and fees applied at confirmation or pick-up time.

Sheldons Brain

Batgurl wrote: »

US sites only add tax at the end of the booking process. Go the whole way through to entering you credit card details and they will possibly add it on.

This.

I wouldn't be sure of any gap until I got to the end of the process.
Also Trivago is only passing on the details of other sites, it would be worth looking at those sites directly.

killbillvol2

Batgurl wrote: »

US sites only add tax at the end of the booking process. Go the whole way through to entering you credit card details and they will possibly add it on.

...if you're booking in the US. These hotels are in Paris so US taxes don't apply.

In any case, Trivago is pretty unreliable at the best of times - the prices are often not available when you go to the selling site.

gaiscioch

Batgurl wrote: »

US sites only add tax at the end of the booking process. Go the whole way through to entering you credit card details and they will possibly add it on.

That's what I would have thought. However, I did a full search on the first hotel here and the final price at both an Irish and a US setting had the same taxes and fees, making the final US price a noticeably lower than the final Irish price.

gaiscioch

killbillvol2 wrote: »

In any case, Trivago is pretty unreliable at the best of times - the prices are often not available when you go to the selling site.

Overall, I find Trivago excellent at the best of times, especially when prices are also compared using a similar site like hotelscombined. Certainly prices are outdated at other times when you go to the source website, as happens on skyscanner for flights also. In general, however, online shopping for hotel rooms is much better with Trivago than without. (although I wish they could develop a system that could give us the final, final price and eliminate the time-wasting websites like Agoda which add on c. 20% at the end and thus give an initial false comparison)

Batgurl

killbillvol2 wrote: »

...if you're booking in the US. These hotels are in Paris so US taxes don't apply.

Not true. If you are booking a US hotel from say Sydney, the booking engine is obliged to include all relevant taxes.

However, if you book from a US booking engine (which is the case if you change the flag to an American flag) then you are following US law which dictates that you don't have to add taxes til the end.

Stupid rule if u ask me but such is life.