I recently booked a hotel for a short getaway. I had credit card travel points that I wanted to use but decided to check Expedia which quoted a slightly lower price. It turns out my wife was also checking hotels on Expedia - she was quoted a higher price.
It turns out that Expedia applies any OneKeyCash up front when displaying the rates charged by the various hotels. This explained the higher price offered my wife who had used up her OneKeyCash on a previous trip. When I checked today, Expedia quoted C$588 for two nights if I did not log in, C$530 when I logged in to my wife's account, and C$530 less my OneKeyCash points when I logged in with my account.
On other booking platforms, I get to choose whether to apply points after I have made my decision and am in the checkout/payment process. Expedia displays a text box above the hotel listings that it will apply OneKeyCash points by default, but the text box only appears about seven seconds after Expedia shows the hotel listings. By then I was scrolling through the list of hotels.
This seems to be an example of a "dark pattern" (https://www.uxdesigninstitute.com/blog/what-are-dark-patterns-in-ux/) to make the Expedia price look cheaper than it actually was. In my case, I was better off booking using my credit card travel points.
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