In the modern days of travel, there are countless ways to book a hotel room. One of the easiest and most pushed options by travel companies is by booking through their apps— and Expedia is a giant. With over 200 websites in over 70 countries and over 875,000 properties listed, Expedia Group remains one of the most popular choices for travelers looking for accommodations. The group also includes other brands, such as: Vrbo, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Trivago, and more. When searching for hotels or flights via major search engines, Expedia’s pricing largely shows up first with a direct link to open the website or app to complete booking through them, rather than directly through the property’s website. 

I’ve personally used Expedia to book several hotel rooms and a few flights since around 2016, but for the purposes of this article I’m solely focusing on Expedia’s hotel booking experience. Throughout the course of using their services to book rooms, I noticed one theme always rang true: Expedia severely lacks transparency, making booking with hotels extremely challenging for travelers, and significantly more stressful if you’re a disabled traveler. As if that wasn’t enough, the frequency at which Expedia places blame on their customers for Expedia’s own shortcomings -and the shortcomings of the hotels listed on their app and website- firmly drives home the point that they are one of the worst companies to book through, despite their popularity. 

On October 7th, I unknowingly made what would be my last booking through Expedia. We had an extremely emotional and necessary trip coming up that required hotel stays across Oregon and Washington. Having had bad experiences with booking hotel rooms over the phone, I opted to use Expedia like I had many times in the past, thinking that it might be easier and may alleviate some of the stress and costs of our trip. Inevitably, I thought wrong. We only ended up staying at ONE of the three hotels we booked through Expedia, and that hotel ended up having to comp the stay entirely due to a lack of accessibility, and staff who lied to us the morning of our arrival over the phone and again at in-person check-in about why a charge was made to my credit card in the wee hours of the morning on our arrival day.

Of the other two hotels, one left us stranded and without accommodations after they called us a mere three hours before check-in on the day of our arrival to tell us they had given away our roll-in shower room, with none left for us to stay in. It didn’t matter that we had booked over a week in advance, and called the hotel to confirm our reservation, and got a confirmation message about our room type. They gave it away to someone else anyways. It was a mad dash to find an accessible accommodation while already being behind on trying to carry out the mission of our trip, and the hotel we ended up staying cost us more money than the originally booked hotel would have. Plus, we had the absolute pleasure (sarcasm) of encountering nasty employees and more structural barriers/ADA violations. 

The third hotel we booked using the, “Book Now, Pay at Property,” option via Expedia also charged my credit card at 2 A.M. (our arrival time being around 8 P.M.) without any warning, much like the first occurrence. When I called the hotel to get clarification, I had a manager of the hotel yelling at me over the phone about how they, “cater to disabled people, and especially disabled vets!” 

It should be noted that this is the same hotel that makes disabled travelers jump through unnecessary hoops to book an accessible room online by blocking out accessible rooms on the app and having them listed as, “none available,” when those rooms are, in fact, available. But, y’know, only if you play their game and call in multiple times to ask for one. 

The manager just so happened to be the same person I spoke to the day after I made reservations on Expedia, and she never informed me that they supposedly have a policy to charge the hold card in the middle of the night. Odd, considering I had told her we would be using a different card upon our arrival to pay for the room. That would’ve been a perfect time to inform me of this alleged “policy” of theirs, which cannot be found on their website, their Expedia listing, my receipt, nor the itinerary. I didn’t want to stay where we clearly weren’t welcome and would continue to be discriminated against, so I eventually got through all the manager’s bullying to cancel the booking. Once again, we were left scrambling to find accessible accommodations last minute. 

Not only is, “Book Now, Pay at Property,” a flat-out lie on Expedia’s part, but the hotels during this trip that told me (after the fact) they have a policy to charge at 2 A.M./overnight on the day of arrival do NOT have any of this information written anywhere on their Expedia listings, or on their own websites. The first time it happened during the trip, I contacted Expedia customer service through their chat feature at 12:58 A.M. because the hotel staff swore up and down that it was Expedia’s fault, even going so far as to pretend that Expedia had them locked out of the booking details by haphazardly pushing buttons on the computer. Expedia’s agent told me it had to be the hotel who made the charge, since Expedia did not have any of my card information. Expedia actually sent me two emails shortly after booking, prompting me to call each hotel directly to give my updated card info over the phone since the one used had expired (oops!), which I did. The only entity that could charge the card was the hotel- but that didn’t stop employees from lying right to our faces about it. 

Expedia and the hotel told us that in order to speak to a hotel manager and rectify the situation, we would have to wait an extra three hours past when we planned on leaving. I got no sleep because of all the stress and a loud fan that couldn’t be turned off, I couldn’t shower because the shower chair was ridiculously out of compliance (11” x 13”), and I ended up catching the manager’s heated attitude before she finally started hearing me and then did a complete 180°. I was eventually told by the manager that it was their hotel who charged my card, and come to find out, the other employees weren’t supposed to be dealing with Expedia bookings in the first place. Cue us being late to our destination because we had to have a whole conversation, and nothing is allowed to be easy when you’re disabled and traveling. 

In fact, we were late to everything during our trip as a direct result of issues with hotels we booked through Expedia, and not once did Expedia offer to help us find new accommodations or solve problems in any way. We were late to pick up the moving truck, late to load it up, late to unload at the storage unit, and late to get on the road again. I was supposed to be able to spend a whole afternoon, evening, and morning with my grandmother, but I only ended up being able to see her for a mere 38 minutes. That’s incredibly valuable time we were robbed of that cannot simply be compensated via money, and this is far from being the first time that a hotel booked through Expedia or otherwise has stolen crucial time with my grandma away from me.  

What really gets me is that the Expedia agent was trying to blame ME for not being informed about these new policies at each hotel. He tried to cite Expedia’s policies about “Book Now, Pay Later,” even though nowhere in the policy does it say you will be charged for the room before check-in/arrival by using the, “Book Now, Pay Later,” option. Additionally, each hotel’s individual Expedia listing never mentions being charged for the room before you physically arrive. It wasn’t as though I was being charged for incidentals, advanced booking or hold fees, either; these were the exact prices of the rooms after tax. 

Expedia’s policy clearly states: “With Expedia’s Book Now Pay Later you don’t pay for your rooms until you arrive at the property.”

How, pray tell, am I supposed to be informed about being charged for the room before physical arrival if this information is not listed literally anywhere? And how exactly is, “Book Now, Pay Later/ Pay at Property,” NOT false advertisement when hotels booked via this very option through Expedia are charging me for the room 14+ hours before physical arrival without any kind of notice? In my eight years of using Expedia to book hotels (the last booking via Expedia being in April of this year), this is the first time I’ve ever been charged before arriving at the hotel when using the, “Book Now, Pay at Property,” option. And for it to happen twice in one trip? Why has this not been addressed? 

Speaking of things that need to be addressed, in 2009, Expedia’s parent company, Hotels.com, settled a class action lawsuit alleging that the company violated California civil rights and consumer protection laws. The lawsuit alleged that Hotels.com refused to guarantee reservations for wheelchair-accessible rooms, and the settlement required Expedia and Hotels.com to add new features to their websites to improve the ability for people with disabilities to search and reserve hotel rooms, among other terms. The fact of the matter is that Expedia doesn’t care about disabled travelers, even though we spend $58.2 billion annually on travel within the U.S. and use their services frequently in an attempt to save money. 

At this point, there has been no money saved on my end by utilizing Expedia to book hotel rooms. My partner and I have both lost track of the amount of times we’ve arrived at a hotel expecting the accessible room I’ve bent over backwards to reserve, only to be left high and dry and made to scramble to find other accessible accommodations last minute, which usually aren’t available day-of. Coupled with the fact that rooms are typically more expensive last minute, it has consistently cost us more money, time, and energy to book via Expedia than it does to book directly with the hotel. 

Many hotels themselves make booking an accessible room an absolute nightmare, but it’s worsened when Expedia is involved. According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, disabled travelers should be able to book an accessible room type online and receive the room type that was reserved upon arrival, just as able-bodied travelers are able to do. However, that’s not how Expedia or these individual hotels operate. They expect disabled travelers to call the hotel directly to make any accommodation requests, even though Expedia’s own website and app says: “Rooms booked in advance are guaranteed for your stay but are only paid for once you check in.” So why is obtaining an accessible room not guaranteed, even after you’ve done the taxing and redundant work to call the hotel directly and confirm with them the accommodations you need? And why are we being charged before check in? Expedia blames hotels, hotels blame Expedia, and disabled travelers are stuck right in the middle of the fallout. Neither hotels nor Expedia care enough to implement an actual resolution that doesn’t involve violating the ADA. 

The only thing Expedia offered was $50 in One Key Cash, but later said $50USD. I refused, obviously, as that is an insulting amount to offer as compensation for all the added distress, heartbreak, extra money spent, and physical pain we endured throughout our Expedia booking experience. Complaints will be filed with the appropriate entities, and I will continue to pursue true accountability for everything we were put through. You should have seen my grandmother when she realized how little time we had together because of hotels’ failures causing delay after delay. 

If you have to book an accessible hotel room, I don’t have any good advice on the best way to do it. I’ve traveled all over the Western U.S. and have stayed in countless hotels over the years, yet it never gets any easier. There isn’t a sure fire way to obtain an accessible hotel room online, even if the hotel says they have a good protocol for doing so, such as calling after booking and again a couple days before the trip. We get “accidentally” moved all the time. I feel like I’ve tried every which way to find accessible rooms and secure them so that they’re actually there when I arrive, but I can say with confidence that I’m only successful 1% of the time. The only way to really guarantee there’s an accessible room available at a hotel is to call around the night you need one- but it always comes at a cost. Whether that be financial, physical (like having to move rooms or hotels altogether), or both, there’s always a disability tax. 

There is a better way— Expedia and individual hotels just have to make the choice to do better. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening anytime soon considering these companies frequently and blatantly ignore settlement agreements after being sued. What’s it going to take?