Travel should be a gratifying and relaxing experience. Still, planning travel is often a source of serious stress. Choosing the right online travel website can make a huge difference, so we will compare Booking vs. Priceline to help you decide.
Our goal is that your next travel experience will be a source of good vibes instead of becoming a huge pain in the neck.
Which is Better? Booking vs. Priceline
In considering whether to use Booking or Priceline, you might be surprised to reveal the same company owns them. The big benefit is that Booking and Priceline offer access to millions of accommodations and the best prices you will find on the internet.
Still, there are still some differences between the two sites, such as different travel reward programs.
We’ll dive deeper into the nuances to help you decide if there is a discernable difference between the two sites.
Analyzing Price and Value: Does Booking or Priceline Win?
Based on our experience, the Booking family offers some of the best online prices. In comparing Booking vs. Priceline, the prices are usually close, but the reward programs have clear differences.
Booking.com Price and Value
While the reality is that most online travel agencies offer very similar pricing, that’s not always the case. In my experience, there are times when Booking.com offers a noticeable discount compared to the other major OTAs, even if it’s not much.
Plus, joining Booking’s loyalty rewards program will provide you with access to even more discounts. If you do much traveling, I recommend you consider signing up. On day 1, you will access 10% discounts at more than 350,000 participating properties, and the benefits improve. Just sign up and look for the blue Genius logo.
After several qualifying stays, you will gain access to Genius Level 2, which offers 15% discounts. You will also access complimentary breakfast and free upgrades as part of the Level 2 rewards program. For those that travel enough to reach Genius Level 3, you will eventually unlock 20% discounts and priority support!
Some rewards programs exist to collect your personal information, but Booking.com’s loyalty program provides real, tangible benefits to its members.
Beyond the rewards program, the biggest value and price advantages occur when you utilize Booking.com to bundle your travel.
Priceline.com Price and Value
While many large online travel agencies offer similar pricing, that pricing and the related options have nuances. In my experience, Priceline.com is often around 5% cheaper than competitor sites. This isn’t always the case, but it is worth noting if you travel often or plan a big trip.
Priceline.com might be most famous for its Name Your Own Price tool, but it was retired years ago. The brand still offers the Best Price Guarantee, but the Express Deals function replaces the Name Your Own Price tool in offering big savings.
The Express Deals tool offers savings as high as 60%, but there is a kicker. You don’t see the specific hotel details until after you book. Instead, you receive a general description, like “a 3-star hotel in Midtown.” You can still see the guest ratings and amenities but without the hotel’s name. It’s a great way to save a few bucks.
As with other sites, you will save money when you book some combination of hotel, airfare, and transportation together. When you book all three, you save big.
Just how big? Well, look at their rewards program guidelines to get an idea. Members save 20% on rental cars when adding a rental car to a trip. You will start to see real savings when you receive a discount both on your hotel and your rental car.
And Priceline’s VIP member loyalty program offers some of the biggest potential hotel savings of any loyalty program on the market. Sign up for free, and you will instantly save up to 10% on hotels, but that’s just where it starts to get interesting.
Complete two trips, and you then will access up to 50% at over 15,000 hotels. While that sounds phenomenal, 15,000 hotels across the entire globe actually start to wear thin. Still, if you stick with it, the offerings get better. After five trips, you can access a 50% hotel discount at 30,000 hotels. Platinum is even better.
Comparing Services and Features
When you compare Booking vs. Priceline, remember that the same company owns the two sites. So, there is an extent to which they are very similar. But even so, the two sites utilize nuanced services and features to distinguish themselves from each other. Priceline’s Price Breakers feature is a good example of this.
Booking.com Services and Features
One thing that I love about Booking.com is that they offer options well beyond the traditional hotel. This really helps them stand apart. You can find hotels, yes, but you can also find rentals, including big city apartments, beachside villas, condo hotels, cottages, vacation homes, and more.
There are very few sites that offer a similar breadth of options.
And we also love the different ways you can search for potential destinations. Booking.com serves as a booking service, but they are much more. If you are looking for inspiration, they will help you find that, too.
For instance, they have ‘unique places to stay’ grouped into fun categories, including glamping sites, tiny houses, romantic hotels, ski resorts, and more.
You’ll find local attractions, too, which you can book as part of your overall bundle.
Booking offers various niche services designed to meet any travel need or preference. For extended trips on which you plan to stay 30 nights or more, Booking will help you locate discounted rates. After all, in an era of work-from-home and nomadic lifestyles, the old rules don’t apply.
While joining the Genius Loyalty Program will result in big discounts, remember that you will also gain access to other loyalty program features. For instance, at Level 2, you will unlock free breakfast and room upgrades, and at Level 3, you will unlock prioritized customer service.
Booking Mobile App Experience
Booking.com’s app offers a clean interface, is easy to use, and offers access to nearly all of the same services and features that are available on the full web version of the site. While some travel sites have apps that feel like an afterthought built during the stone age of mobile applications, Booking.com’s app is modern and intuitive to use.
While that might seem like generic platitudes, I assure you that the app is top-notch. Quite frankly, the Booking.com app is a world-leading app in the online travel services space, and you don’t have to take my word for it. With more than 800,000 reviews, the Booking mobile app is rated at 4.8 stars.
You can book your entire trip from the app, including local attractions. Plus, Booking offers app-exclusive deals, so it makes sense to check it out. The mobile app also makes it easy to manage your trip from the palm of your hand. For instance, most partner sites offer free cancellations, which you can conveniently take care of wherever you want, and whenever you want to do so.
Priceline.com Services and Features
You likely recall Priceline’s Name Your Own Price commercials, even though the company has long since retired the feature. Still, Priceline still has a few tricks up its sleeves.
As we noted above, Priceline’s Express Deals offer up to 60% off from an unknown hotel at the time of booking. You won’t fly completely blind. Priceline lets you see the reviews for the hotel and assigns a star rating.
Still, some people will want a little more peace of mind before throwing down their credit cards. For those that prefer a little more transparency, Priceline also offers Pricebreaker deals, in which you can still save up to 50% off of your hotel.
Pricebreaker deals differ from Express Deals because you can see three potential hotels. You don’t know which one offers the Pricebreakers price, but you can review all three to be comfortable with any of the options before you book.
Priceline’s Express Deals and Pricebreakers really stand out as differentiators, even against other sites within the Booking family. Even so, you still find other services and features, including the ability to search for cruises and other experiences or to build your bundles from scratch.
Priceline Mobile App Experience
Priceline’s mobile app isn’t as popular in Apple’s app store as some of the competitor apps, but that is largely a function of volume. Priceline’s app is rated 4.8 out of 5 stars, which seems to be par for the course for travel apps.
Still, any rating that high is commendable. This is especially true since Priceline is encroaching on a million total ratings.
The app is intuitive but designed around the VIP member (loyalty program) benefits. It is free to sign up, and I recommend doing so if you book travel through Priceline.com. This will open up access to many of Priceline’s best features, including the Best Price Guarantee, Add-On Deals (suggested bundled savings), and Insider Coupons.
Considering Customer Service
Most travel sites have poor reviews and customer service ratings. This is almost universally true, and it makes sense to an extent. Online travel sites enable you to book travel with third parties; when you have trouble, it is likely the third party’s fault in many instances. Yet sites like Booking and Priceline are held accountable.
For this reason, I recommend considering the app ratings and online reviews. Most of the app scores hover up near five stars, which might give you a different perspective when you consider the online review.
Still, Priceline.com is an outlier because they have an average online review. They aren’t stellar but much higher than nearly any competitor. In comparing Booking vs. Priceline, this is worth considering.
Booking Customer Service
Even though it is important to remember that most people that jump online to leave reviews have a score to settle, Booking.com’s Trustpilot score leaves something to be desired. With over 40,000 reviews, Booking.com’s customer service is rated as “bad.”
This is based on the customer scoring 1.2 out of 5 stars. Even so, nearly 10,000 people rate Booking.com as five stars.
This is in line with most of the travel agencies online but lower than a few of the competitors. Priceline has the most impressive Trustpilot score in the industry.
As a reminder, in its loyalty program, Booking.com offers priority customer service to Level 3 customers. I will let you decide whether or not that makes their Trustpilot rating better or worse. Still, it’s worth considering if you travel often.
Priceline Customer Service
Over 90,000 people have reviewed Priceline.com through Trustpilot, resulting in an overall rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars. If this were a restaurant, you might turn away and find an alternative. Still, in the world of travel sites, this is stellar.
This is an interesting contrast to a site like Booking.com, which the same parent company owns. Despite similar resources and underlying technology, Priceline.com is ahead, at least on the Trustpilot platform.
While many of the features between Booking.com and Priceline.com are different, there is one commonality. Priceline.com also offers premium customer service to members in its highest two loyalty program levels.
Make of that what you will.
Diving Deeper in Comparing Booking vs. Priceline
While Booking and Priceline are both part of the Booking Holdings family, it hasn’t always been that way. As long as we are doing a deep dive comparing Booking vs. Priceline, we might as well start at the beginning.
More About Booking.com
It’s likely unsurprising that Booking.com is part of Booking Holdings, Inc., but did you know that other travel brands, including Priceline.com, Kayak, Agoda, RentalCars.com, and Open Table, are all part of the same family? Even though there seem to be nearly endless online travel agencies, most of them are part of one of two families.
Booking Holdings is one of the largest aggregations of online travel and related services. The result is greater scale, nearly endless lodging options, exclusive pricing, and a robust rewards program.
Booking.com grew from humble beginnings. The founders created Booking in Amsterdam way back in 1996. I can’t think of many Dutch start-ups that achieved such global prominence, but Booking.com certainly fits that bill. Today, the site offers tens of millions of potential accommodations and a site available in more than 40 languages.
More About Priceline.com
Priceline.com was founded in 1997, which makes it one of the oldest players in online travel. The original idea was simple: Match customers online to empty airline seats and unused hotel rooms. It seems obvious now, but back in 1997, an online marketplace for travel seemed a little crazy.
So where did the name Priceline come from? Well, in those early conversations between Priceline and the airlines, there was a “price line” that the airlines didn’t want to sell below. The original concept to allow customers to “Name Your Own Price” would enable customers to bid privately and for airlines to accept bids privately.
The result was that airlines didn’t need to publish different prices in different places. The Name Your Own Price option is gone, but Priceline.com is still strong. In fact, Priceline says that they save customers a billion dollars every year.
Today, Priceline is part of the Booking Holdings family, alongside great brands like Booking.com and Kayak.com. Even so, Priceline stands tall as the leader of discount travel platforms.
If you compare Priceline vs. Kayak, you will notice many of the same differences that you find when comparing Booking vs. Kayak. Even so, it is impressive how each site fills its own unique niche within the industry.
Booking vs. Priceline: Which Should You Choose?
So should you use Booking or Priceline? I recommend sticking with whichever platform you’ve already developed loyalty rewards with, as there aren’t significant differences. Still, if you are starting from scratch, I recommend Priceline.
The Pros and Cons: Booking vs. Priceline
Booking.com is one of the most established travel platforms on the internet, offering services to match. The biggest downside to utilizing Booking is that they have poor reviews and deliberately save premium customer service for the most loyal customers. Still, they offer fantastic bundling and price-saving options.
Priceline.com is a little bit different. The platform works mostly the same, but Priceline is a little more focused on discount travel. Like Booking, Priceline reserves premium customer service for the highest tier reward members. Even so, functions like Express Deals and Pricebreakers make Priceline a go-to site for saving money.
Is Booking or Priceline Better?
In comparing Booking vs. Priceline, Priceline.com makes it much easier to save money. For those that travel often, the rewards program opens access to the most discounted rates, but you don’t have to be a frequent traveler to save money.
Instead, I recommend using Priceline’s Express Deals and Pricebreakers features to find the best deals. Like Priceline’s old Name Your Own Price tool, these newer tools provide access to rates that the partner brands don’t want to publish outright. This is a real opportunity to save money you wouldn’t otherwise save.
Regardless of which site you choose, I hope you enjoy your coming travel!
