Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), like Expedia, allow you to search for flights across a wide variety of airlines (the same goes with hotels) – they can be a great tool when you’re planning a trip, to compare prices, itineraries, etc. The golden standard for searching revenue/cash flights is Google Flights, however, you often can’t book directly through Google and instead you are redirected to either an OTA, like Expedia, or the airline directly.
Pros: Booking a Flight via OTAs
There are a few pros if you are booking a flight via an OTA, like Expedia. One of the most important ones is free 24 hour cancellation – Expedia offers this on most flights booked with them, even if that airline doesn’t offer free cancellation if you book the flight directly with them.
Another pro is that many OTAs have their own loyalty program whereby you can collect points or rewards for every transaction you make with the online travel agency (flight booking, hotel stay, car rental, etc). Then you can use these points towards pre-paid hotels, cars, and some other trip elements.
Lastly, since you can book a ton of different airlines on an OTA, it can be handy to just use the OTA since you most likely have all of your passenger information pre-filled (like date of birth, passport number, etc). If you are someone who books flights on a lot of different airlines, it sure can save a lot of time if you do not have to type your personal details over and over again.
Cons: Booking a Flight via OTAs
If you can book a flight directly with an airline, you should in most cases. That’s because if there is a schedule change on your itinerary, it is usually much easier to just reach out to the airline and work with them to find a solution. If you book via an OTA and there is a schedule change, you need to call the OTA who then calls the airline, and the two discuss flight options which then the OTA agent lets you know about, and often the agents working at OTAs aren’t the brightest and may not grasp what you need to do.
It gets really messy and you are going to waste several hours of your time if you have an OTA involved between you and the airline – book directly with airlines in most cases, because the customer support at OTAs can sometimes be even worse than at an airline (I know, shocking).
Pros: Booking a Hotel via an OTA
Online travel agencies have access to millions of hotels worldwide – so it is nice to see all of the results in one place. While you will likely get a whole bunch of results for your trip on where you should stay, OTAs do offer a lot of filters and sort functions to help you narrow down your perfect hotel – and then it is easy to book.
Many hotels around the world do not participate in a hotel chain, so they can only offer their rooms via OTAs and that’s great, because non-chain hotels are usually cheaper and sometimes, even if you are loyal to a chain, it might make sense to spend a night somewhere else.
In some cases, an OTA could also be selling a hotel room at a chain hotel for less than the chain is directly. In these cases, you could potentially resort to using the hotel chain’s “lowest price guarantee”, but that process is often too complicated.
Cons: Booking a Hotel via an OTA
Not having to visit every hotel chain’s website to search for availability and book hotel stays is great, but it does have major impact: if you do not book a hotel stay directly with the hotel or hotel’s chain, you will not earn any points or elite night credit for that stay. Furthermore, your elite benefits will likely not be honored as you did not book direct. There are only a few exceptions to this rule (like American Express FHR bookings, for example).
The same as with flights, if for some reason the hotel needs to cancel your stay (like if it floods or something), rebooking a hotel stay via an OTA can be a nightmare for the same exact reason rebooking flights is – you have another party involved between you and the hotel.