Just to add to the dynamic for those too busy to read:
> When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation.
> Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules.
I wonder if this changes our perception of things. If you book two dates and then cancel, are you not also part of the problem?
Perhaps if you didn't go for the free cancellation, then it should be a fair two way lock in, if you commit, we'll commit etc. Still not as bad as when Jason Manford finished a show, turned up at the Village Hotel in Bournemouth, and because he checked in late, they'd given his room to someone else.
> I wonder if this changes our perception of things. If you book two dates and then cancel, are you not also part of the problem?
If the website said "you can cancel for free", why would I consider myself part of the problem?
If the website said "you can book, but we could cancel your booking for any reason, including because we can rent it to someone else for more money", I wouldn't consider the website as part of the problem either.
As it stands, only one of those two things was prominently mentioned on the website.
That's definitely part of the problem. You're following the letter of the rule, because yes, it says Free Cancellations, and you cancelled for free.
It doesn't follow the spirit of the rules though; it's something I've always viewed as the business saying "Listen, we get it, life happens. If you can't make it, don't panic, we've got your back". To book both weekends with the intent of cancelling carries a strong odour of bad faith, and IMO makes you part of the problem.
Notably, the free cancellation policy only really works in a high-trust society, which at least one prominent nation seems to be backsliding on - meaning policies like this may be on their way out.
I don't know, I (and lots of people I know) book multiple dates with free cancellation months in advance and just keep the one we can make, closer to the date. I think this is a pretty widespread and common thing?
Lots of people don't return carts, dip their high beams for oncoming vehicles, or intentionally drive through yellow/red traffic light when there's ample time to stop. If those behaviors were adopted universally, life would get miserable for everyone.
Returning clothes that were worn once for an event is also widespread and common.
The problem is it's lying. It's abusing a grace to get something for nothing. Holding a room for you that you will never use is denying it to someone else who was not lying and actually does intend to complete the transaction.
So yeah, doing this doesn't explain the hotel committing their own cancellation fraud but it is exactly the cause of the hotels reaction to just not offer cancellations.
If someone wants to reserve all the options for themselves but not actually use them, that should cost something. They are getting something, and it's not free to produce, so it should cost something. Then ot wouldn't be an abuse or a minor fraud, just an honest transaction. There should be a "rent the dress" option. And what do you know, thete usually is. It's called the higher rate for the option to cancel.
But there is really no way to distinguish this kind of abuse from honest people who had plans change outside their control who you don't want to burn except by collecting and sharing data on everyone to maintain profiles and track history and behavior, and no one wants that right?
But you know that most websites nowadays do actively want you to order lots of clothes/sizes, try them on, and return for free the ones you don't want, right? This leads to more sales.
I think websites/hotels have the same intention with free cancellation. It drives up rentals.
Cultural thing in my country that would be asshole behaviour. Which doesn't stop people doing it ofcourse.
It goes both ways though. A restaurant or hotel will not one-sidedly cancel on you. A deal is a deal. When the ink is dry and money transferred all parties keep their word.
> ...high-trust society, which at least one prominent nation seems to be backsliding on
For those not living in the true north (Canada), 90% of the time, this is dog-whsitle phrasing preferred by the Canadian right wing to complain about Indian immigrants. Canada does have issues with immigration fraud, but this phrasing of complaint pretty exclusively is used by people who don't like Indians.
While this may be true in some contexts, what reason do you have to believe it is here? All of these supposed "dog whistle" call-outs do not feel constructive to me. I would never have though the parent comment was deriding Indians (and still don't).
This is a US site, patronised seemingly by mostly non-Candians. My purpose is to contextualize who and what the subtext of this phrase's use in Canada within the context of this Canadian story.
> All of these supposed "dog whistle" call-outs do not feel constructive to me. I would never have though the parent comment was deriding Indians (and still don't).
The point of a literal dog-whistle is that the intended audience (dogs) can hear and understand the whistle perfectly, while other people do not hear anything at all.
Figuratively, a dog-whistle phrase leaves room for debate (like this), and provides cover for people to say unsavory things while still being able to deny the meaning. Well-meaning folks can say things like "I would never have though the parent comment was deriding Indians" because that is the whole point of the dog-whistle in modern rhetoric.
The analogy holds well here as well. You can wade into any right wing space in Canada and you will hear the phrase "low trust society' and "high trust society". It is ALWAYS used in the context of immigrants (low trust) and white Canadians (high trust). It is almost always used in reference to Indian immigrants specifically.
The whole point of a dog whistle is that you can take them at face value and see nothing explicitly wrong with the statement. Is it possible that this commenter simply blundered into this phrasing without understanding that it is used specifically against Indian immigrant cultures by the extreme right? Yes. Do I believe that they happened on the exact same particular phrasing and argument that anti-Indian/anti-immigrant groups use was made by pure coincidence? No.
If OP did blunder into their statement, they can easily reply and correct their true intent. If I accidentally used a racially loaded statement that signals allegiance with certain groups, I would absolutely want someone to point it out so I can clarify.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. How should someone discuss those topics without tripping a dog whistle alarm? That is my issue with that sort of discourse, it fences off things that have literal meanings and makes them verboten.
Use your own words, and understand what other phrases mean if you are using phrasing that you picked up somewhere else. Its totally fine if you don't pick up on someone else using controversial 'dog-whistle' phrasing, that's kinda the point of a dog whistle. Don't hide your meaning in implications.
If you think that high levels of Indian immigration are causing a conflict between dominant Canadian culture that relies on "high-trust" transactions because the immigrants come from a "low-trust" group that take advantage of it, then say that (or whatever it is that you actually believe). Phrasing it like OP has, leaves room for multiple interpretations. It is possible that they think this is a transition from high to low trust that Canada is making entirely independently of immigration policy. Because they chose to use ambiguous phrasing preferred by a specific polity, we are forced to interpret for ourselves.
In short: say what you mean clearly in plain language. "[this] cancellation policy only really works in a high-trust society, which at least one prominent nation seems to be backsliding on" is not clear or using plain language.
I guess I still struggle with what amounts to the opposite of "assume positive intent" which can make communicating significantly less productive. I do generally agree with the preference for plain and direct language.
> For those not living in the true north (Canada), 90% of the time, this is dog-whsitle phrasing preferred by the Canadian right wing to complain about Indian immigrants.
I'm not sure I have assumed ill intent. I didn't say anyone was categorically wrong or racist. I simply pointed out that they are using phrasing mostly used by people who dislike Indian immigration.
If that is not what they intended, I have left plenty of room for them to say they are not part of that group, and the phrasing was coincidental, or that they did not understand that the phrase is a reference to the superiority of one culture over another.
> My purpose is to contextualize who and what the subtext of this phrase's use in Canada within the context of this Canadian story.
The story occured in Canada, but not about Canada. The story doesn't mention Indian immigrants, gp didn't mention them either, or even allude to them[1]. Assuming you are against bigotry, it's ironic that you're the one to introduce the anti-Indian meme to this thread with your recontextualization, where most people were thinking of economic power imbalances and contracts.
Just because a phrase is coöpted by bigots doesn't mean it becomes anathema. Context is important, IMO, you misapplied the context and took the threed off topic. If on the other hand you're trying to propagate anti-immigrant concepts in an unrelated thread and/or make people hate language-policing, congratulations.
1. IMO, The allusion is to the US, where the political wing aligned with nativism is leading the charge to undermine societal trust.
If I said that "We need to protect the German fatherland's industrial capabilities from globalists on behalf of the german folk" would you be willing to take it at face value that I want to develop Germany's industrial capacity for economic reasons? That is a possible interpretation of those literal words.
Other people would be perfectly correct to point out that the language I am using is associated strongly with certain political groups, and that it has strong implications of racial bigotry. I could then come back and clarify that I am talking about the relative merits of protectionist economic policy in the era of globalized, state supported economic segments, and not Nazi economic policy.
I pointed it out because, while the story is not about Canada the country, it is about a Canadian doing business in Canada with a Canadian business. The comment uses language and specific phrasing preferred by anti-indian immigration groups in Canada.
Is it possible that the original comment was completely unrelated... but the specific words and phrasing on a comment about a thing in Canada happening to a Canadian lead me to believe that they mean the same thing as the other people that use that exact phrasing about things happening in Canada to Canadians.
> Reductio ad absurdum doesn't really work when the subject is dog-whistles, by definition.
I was using a more globally recognizable example to illustrate it since you have already implied that you do not understand the Canadian context. It wasn't reductio ad absurdum, but just an example of the concept moved to a different domain.
> If someone says "we woke to a chaotic airport" and you go on about how "woke" is dog-whistle, I'd consider that to be an off-topic diversion, at best.
That's not what I'm doing literally or figuratively. I'm not picking on one specific word.
I am pointing out that specific phrases and ideas used to express a specific sentiment on a specific topic can have hidden meaning assigned to them by interested groups.
In this case the phrase is "... [booking.com's] free cancellation policy only really works in a high-trust society, which at least one prominent nation seems to be backsliding"
The ambiguous/suspect terms here are "high-trust society" and "prominent nation seems to be backsliding". I am not suggesting that we cannot use those terms without being suspected of anti-indian sentiment, I am suggesting that using that phrasing to convey a message on that specific topic is a pattern predominately invoked by those with anti-indian/immigrant sentiment.
Accusing anyone that uses the word "woke" of being necessarily political is reductio ad absurdum of its own sort, and I fully agree that using a single word once is an absurd way to determine political meaning. Fortunately that isn't what I said. At all.
I am leaving open that the OP truly does want to talk about changing social mores leading to businesses having to change their policies, and that this is not a comment on immigrant communities. But I am pointing out that they have used the same language and specific terminology that is used in anti-indian immigrant political discussions.
If their intent is not to target immigrants, fine, that can be clarified. If it is their intent, I would prefer that they plainly state that they think that immigrants are the cause of hypothetical future changes to policy at high-end luxury hotels.
Just wanted to make you aware that you are using the terms and framing preferred by anti-indian immigration people in Canada that push a theory very similar to "great replacement" theory in the US. Essentially the claim is that Canadian culture is fundamentally changing from "high-trust" to "low-trust" because we have too many immigrants from "low-trust" societies. Oddly enough, the societies they think are low trust with too much immigration are pretty much always non-white.
I was thrown off by the ambiguity and this being a story about Canada.
Because when things go to court you need a meeting of the minds for a contract to be held up. It's accepted that people don't read contracts so the terms can't be far outside what people expect unless you've highlighted unexpected clauses, or shown that the person did actually consider the contract. It's one of the reasons, for example, you can't buy a house without having a lawyer representing you (in plenty of countries).
It's standard practice now to charge higher prices for cancellable reservations.
Given all the asymmetric squeezing being done by corporate algorithms everywhere in the ruthless march towards economic efficiency, it's hard to feel bad for the algos when a human finds a pricing arbitrage that the hotel conglomerates failed to notice.
In other words, the hotel conglomerates are the ones who started the algorithmic event pricing and "cancellable reservations carry a price premium" games. It's on them if they mispriced their own dynamic-event cancellation premium.
I had the same thought when reading that line. I think we can treat it independently from the article's main point.
This is a common consumer tactic for reservations of all sorts. (It is a thorn in the side of restaurants, and why you get emails asking you to Confirm them and other appointments)
2 bookings isn't heinous; some people do things like book at multiple restaurants, then cancel all but one right before. (e.g. when their friend group comes to a consensus) It's fine in this case IMO.
It is a point of consternation for consumers more generally, when you can't get a booking because many of the ones are ghosts.
Sounds a lot like the shenanigans in the job market. The number of job ads and applications far outstrips the actual number of places and applicants. It's mostly froth. Come to think of it, huge tracts of our economy are like this.
In high demand restaurants, I've seen them require a fee to make a reservation that is credited to your bill when you come in. This would dissuade the casual multiple bookings, but not that common. I would actually prefer it to be more common.
In Europe if an airline does that they have to pay you a penalty of a few hundred euro.
But KLM (Dutch flag carrier) found a way around that: if a flight is overloaded by weight they will keep all the passengers on board but leave their luggage behind. There is no direct penalty for late luggage, so many customers will get nothing except perhaps a little free shopping if they feel like filing forms to reimburse for having to buy clothes at their destination. But that's cheaper than the penalty for not taking the passenger on time, so KLM "optimized" it.
No matter what shady thing a company does you can rest assured there will be a bit of "well, let's think about it from another angle" at the top of the comments section.
The company offers cancellable reservations for a fee. She paid the fee. What are you talking about
Every time I have ever seen a cancellable reservation at booking.com I have also noticed that it costs more than the same reservation without cancellation priveleges.
> If you book two dates and then cancel, are you not also part of the problem?
How so, exactly? Maybe if you cancel at the last minute, but if she cancels when the race dates are announced, presumably, that’s enough in advance for someone else to book the cancelled room in her place?
> Still not as bad as when Jason Manford finished a show, turned up at the Village Hotel in Bournemouth, and because he checked in late, they'd given his room to someone else.
This isn't quite what happened.
He turned up before the show to check in, and found that the hotel had been overbooked and that his room had been sold to someone else as a result, so he was forced to share a room with members of his team.
(Now that's not to say that this isn't a shitty practice and that it shouldn't happen: the hotel were absolutely in the wrong, it's just that they were wrong in a different way to what you suggested - but your bigger point is well made.)
> When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation.
> Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules.
I wonder if this changes our perception of things. If you book two dates and then cancel, are you not also part of the problem?
Perhaps if you didn't go for the free cancellation, then it should be a fair two way lock in, if you commit, we'll commit etc. Still not as bad as when Jason Manford finished a show, turned up at the Village Hotel in Bournemouth, and because he checked in late, they'd given his room to someone else.