I’m not proud of it, but I book many of my stays through Airbnb and Booking.com. Every time something goes wrong, I come across a Reddit horror story, or I read an article about how unethical these companies have become, I tell myself it’ll be the last time. But it’s not really that easy, is it? After doing some research, it turns out finding alternatives to Booking.com and Airbnb is even more challenging than I first imagined.
The more you read, the harder it gets to justify giving a cut of every single trip to these big corporations. I’m talking about the ever-rising fees, the scams, the socio-economic impact on local housing markets, and the customer support that vanishes the moment you need it. If you just want to cut to the chase, you can jump to a list of some alternatives to Booking.com at the end of this article.
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Think you can avoid Booking.com?
I was fed up with Booking.com so decided I’d switch to Agoda. Joke’s on me. Agoda is Booking.com. Ok, I’ll try Kayak. Nope. Both belong to Booking Holdings, which is the massive parent company that owns several mainstream booking sites. It pulls in over 20 billion dollars in gross profit every year. Sorry if I’m ruining your day. Here’s Booking Holdings’ portfolio of brands:
- Booking.com
- Priceline
- Agoda
- Kayak
- OpenTable
- Rentalcars.com
- Rocketmiles
- Fareharbor
- Hotelscombined
- Cheapflights
- Momondo
But ok, so let’s ditch that whole family and use Expedia, Hotels.com, or VRBO, right? Wrong. Also one company. Expedia Group owns all three, plus Travelocity, Orbitz, Hotwire, Trivago, Wotif, and CheapTickets.
These two conglomerates wear a dozen different outfits to appeal to your travel style while casually controlling online travel bookings worldwide. When you think you’re shopping around between Booking.com, Agoda, Priceline, and Kayak, you’re actually comparing one company’s prices against itself.
It’s all smoke and mirrors. Especially with the Genius discounts and other dopamine-spiking price cuts you see when searching for accom. These can also sting unsuspecting hosts — I’ve seen it happen to real people on a New Zealand host Facebook group I’m in. (I’m not a host, I’m just curious/nosy.)
What the system costs you
Don’t get me started on the frustration of simply typing “Booking.com” and it automatically turning into a link. But besides your sanity, here are some other tangible negatives to using platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com.
The fees
Booking.com and Airbnb are online travel agencies (OTAs) that make their money on commissions and service fees. It’s usually 15–20% between guest fees and the commission the property owes the platform. And neither hosts nor hotel owners are doing this with the intention of breaking even. So you best believe those commissions get baked into your nightly rates, even if the booking platform says there are no service fees.
I spoke with Eric Goldreyer, founder of direct-booking platform Savvy about rising costs and alternatives to Booking.com. According to him: “Many travelers don’t realize how much of their trip budget is being absorbed by OTA, middleman or platform fees until they compare the same property elsewhere.” (More on Savvy below.)
For a weekend stay, that 20% is pretty annoying but easy to ignore. But multiply that across a two-week family vacation or a year of travel and now you’re funding the shareholders’ luxury vacations rather than your own.
The lack of customer support
In Brunei, I booked a week-long stay through Booking.com that turned out to be incredibly dirty, with cigarette butts in the shower, stained sheets, and cockroaches scurrying around. I tried contacting support, which you’ll know is nearly impossible if you’ve ever needed to reach Booking.com, and they hung up on me. Repeatedly. Or as they put it, we “lost connection.”
They did absolutely nothing beyond email the property to ask if I could leave? (I could do that myself?) But of course the property didn’t respond, so after 24 hours Booking threw up their hands in defeat — they’d tried their best, after all — and said no refund, but they’d compensate me.
That compensation for spending a week in an objectively grim, dirty room was a generous $14 SGD. (Fun fact: Singapore dollars work on par with Brunei dollars.)
And I’m far from alone in this experience. My story actually pales in comparison to some of the stuff I’ve read on r/Bookingcom. Spend 10 minutes in this corner of the internet and you’ll find an endless scroll of travellers stranded mid-trip with cancelled bookings, denied (massive) refunds on “refundable” bookings, and blood-boiling support scripts that seem designed to drive you mad. I get angry just reading the stories and they didn’t even happen to me.
The scam economy
Booking.com and Airbnb both have hundreds if not thousands of scammers using the platform to make a quick buck. But Airbnb’s scam problem has grown into a category of its own. Professionally faked listings, AI host profile photos, and more elaborate schemes.
Montreal was the worst I’ve encountered, and only after going through it myself did I learn the city has a huge problem with illegal Airbnbs and related scams. It’s been covered publicly since at least 2023, and nothing has really changed. The Airbnb support team was actually helpful when we realized we’d fallen prey to a weird bait and switch scam on a cold night in Quebec.
Nice pictures, good reviews, and then the “pipe burst” right before we arrived. So naturally they had to move us to another apartment in a dingy basement. I looked more closely at the host’s profile photo and ran a reverse Google image search only to discover it was a stock image of some guy. I also dug deeper and found some buried reviews from guests who also had a “pipe burst” right before they arrived, too.
I called Airbnb and they helped me get my booking refunded so I could move to a better place that same night. I was actually pretty impressed.
But even the apartment we moved to was a different sort of Airbnb scam. Two days into our stay we received a heavy handed knock at the door, and I opened it to a literal collections officer seeking rent — he did not look happy when I said I was just an Airbnb guest.
The notice wasn’t in a sealed envelope or anything so I obviously read it, and the “host” had started renting the apartment a few months ago but wasn’t paying rent. It was really a scam on the landlord rather than us guests, but omg.
The platforms don’t actually care, though. They profit from volume, not vetting. Every fake listing still generates fees until enough people report it — and reporting the problem doesn’t necessarily mean the listing will get taken down.
In hindsight, I probably should have clocked this as a stock image. But I rarely inspect host profiles.
How Airbnb and Booking.com profit from occupied land in Palestine
A February 2024 Guardian investigation found roughly 350 properties on Airbnb and 26 hotels on Booking.com (~760 rooms in total) listed in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. These settlements are considered illegal under international law.
Both Airbnb and Booking.com appear in the UN’s database of businesses operating in these settlements, you can even search them up yourself. And both are now facing legal complaints alleging complicity in “occupation tourism.” Human rights groups like Amnesty International say they’re profiting from war crimes.
You're not a bad person if you use these hotel booking platforms
Deep breath, you’re not the problem. I still (begrudgingly) use both platforms occasionally because there’s often no realistic alternative to Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, and the other major players.
Small businesses like family-run guest houses can’t always build and maintain their own booking websites. Even when they do have a website, the “Book Now” button sometimes just redirects you straight back to their OTA listing.
And if you’re on a budget, you’ll agree that anyone who says “just book hotels” has no idea what they’re talking about. Hotels are simply not as affordable as low key Airbnbs, and sometimes you need a kitchen to save money by eating in, or an office space that isn’t the same at a regular ol’ hotel.
The goal doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing, dramatic boycott. But you can make better choices when a better choice actually exists. Sometimes that’s possible for the whole trip, and sometimes it’s just one stay out of 10, but both count.
The best alternatives to Booking.com and Airbnb
I know I just said it’s hard to find other options, but they do exist. Here are just a few Booking.com and Airbnb alternatives. I’ll admit it’s more difficult to manage several bookings across various platforms, but that’s a small price to pay as a trade-off.
Savvy
Savvy lets you book directly with property managers, cutting out the OTA fee entirely.
I spoke to Eric Goldreyer, the founder of Savvy, about how that affects travellers directly. “Since launching Savvy in early 2025 and processing thousands of bookings, we’ve found travelers save more than 16% on average by booking direct, often close to $500 per stay.”
Savvy is US-only for now. But when I asked Goldreyer about plans for going global, he said:
Hostelworld
Hostelworld is the best alternative to Booking.com if you’re a budget traveller. It remains independently owned and doesn’t exist under the Booking or Expedia umbrellas. And it still has the absolute best inventory of hostels and budget stays worldwide.
Obviously, if you’re in your 40s and looking for a cushy boutique hotel, you’re not going to switch to hostel dorms just to make a more ethical booking decision. But if you’re still in your budget backpacker era, you can feel good about booking bunks through this tried and tested platform. We’ve also stayed in some nice budget-friendly private rooms at hostels.
Ecobnb
If your travels lean European and you’d rather your money went to places that actually care a little about the planet, Ecobnb may be the one. It lists eco-certified accommodation like organic farmhouses, car-free mountain retreats, and solar-powered B&Bs that are vetted against actual sustainability criteria rather than a token “eco-friendly” checkbox.
It has way fewer options than other booking platforms and is mostly a thing in Europe for now, but every property is independently run.
Use the OTAs as a search engine, then book direct
Browse Booking.com or Airbnb to find a place, then track down the property directly — Google the name, find their website or contact info — and book with them straight. Most independent hotels and guesthouses will happily match or beat the OTA price, because they’d (probably) rather give you a discount than give a massive corporation a commission.
In Southeast Asia especially, a quick WhatsApp message can do the trick. You get a better rate and they keep more of the money. Win-win.
Go for a coliving if you're a slow traveller
This is again a pretty niche option, but coliving networks like Nomadico and Outsite.co are independently owned and give you the opportunity to live and work remotely with long-term stays in shared houses. They’re great alternatives to Booking.com and Airbnb if you’re looking to stay somewhere for a month or more.
Stay loyal to global networks
If you’re doing hotels, there are benefits to booking with them directly. Direct rates are often identical or better, you’ll often get loyalty points, and hotels prioritize direct bookings when it comes to upgrades, because you’re their customer, not the OTA’s. That said, I’ve definitely seen it where the direct booking rate is not as low as Booking.com’s Genius whatever price slashing. So in that case you have a choice to make. If it comes down to a few bucks, pay a bit more to book directly. The hotel may prioritize you for upgrades and stuff!
All Accor, Marriott Bonvoy, IHG, World of Hyatt, and Hilton Honors all have loyal programs worth joining if you already stay at hotels in this price range. Sticking to one network is usually the best way to go so you can rack up points more quickly.
Not to layer on more ethical dilemmas, but some of these brands have their issues to be aware of, too. For example, the Ritz-Carlton, which is part of the Marriott Bonvoy network, has built a controversial ultra luxury resort smack dab in the middle of a vital wildlife river crossing in the Maasai Mara. Conversely, the Hilton is actually pretty environmentally conscious.
Full disclosure
Because this article about alternatives to Booking.com would be pretty hypocritical without it:
I earn affiliate commissions for links throughout my site. Stay22 is a tool that monetizes hotel links — and yes, many of those bookings happen through Booking.com, VRBO, and Expedia. When you book a stay through links on Runaway Traveller, there’s a decent chance one of the giant OTAs I just spent 2,000+ words criticizing is paying me a small cut. But I’m just a girl, and links like these keep my site running and cost you nothing extra. I still highly recommend looking for more ethical alternatives to Booking.com, Airbnb, and other big corporations whenever possible.
Naomi Lai
Naomi is a Canadian travel editor and writer with 13 years of international travel across Southeast Asia, Europe, South America, New Zealand, and beyond. She covers everything from budget backpacking to luxury travel — always from personal experience.
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