Air France and the booking.com website have just announced a new partnership. It will now be possible to book hotels directly from the Air France website or application (which was already possible from the KLM website for some time).
Air France and booking: not a good deal for everyone
The nights thus booked will allow the passenger to accumulate miles on the Flying Blue loyalty program, thus a good deal for the customer. Well, not if you look closely.
Indeed, booking a hotel through booking deprives the passenger of the benefits of the hotel loyalty program. For example, a passenger who has a status in a hotel loyalty program
- will not be eligible for program benefits (upgrades, lounge access, late checkout ….)
- will not credit points/nights on the program concerned.
Hotel loyalty pays better than airline loyalty
Is it worth it to earn a few miles (and not even XP)? From our point of view, no, especially since hotel loyalty programs provide more substantial benefits than their airline counterparts and it would be very foolish to jeopardize a status in order to collect some miles.
And this is all the more true since, contrary to popular belief, booking does not always offer the best prices on the market: it will always be cheaper to go directly to the hotel’s website, especially if you are a member of the loyalty program and, in the worst case scenario, all the major chains have an alignment/compensation system when you find a cheaper rate elsewhere. In the worst case, even for an independent, a simple phone call is enough: for the hotelier, a direct reservation is 18% of the sale price that he will not pay to booking and therefore, technically speaking, it is the amount of the discount that he can give you without it costing him anything.
This offer will certainly satisfy occasional travelers, but is of no interest or even counterproductive for frequent travelers.
Photo : booking.com by chrisdorney via Shutterstock
