> Hotels generally dislike third-party booking sites, because they're just skimming off profits while offering a worse service
The problem is, the customers tend to want said third-party sites. Hotels have, at least for the masses, become a commodity - 99% of people just need a place to crash because they're out all day - and so customers expect to be able to shop around purely based on price and a bit on the location.
There is wider variability in hotel quality than you know...
I live near a decent-sized college town and there is a hotel right off the interstate. It's a well-known hotel name in a decent (even semi-posh) location, so you'd think it was good and safe. In reality, it is run down, dirty, smelly, has pest problems, long-term residents, and lets just say is frequently the subject of police activity and only the occasional murder. The owner lives outside the country and has no interest in cleanliness, upkeep, or safety. The health department and local government have been trying to get it shut down but there's only so much they can do. The owners pay people to post positive reviews online and try very hard to get the bad reviews taken down.
Their prices are only slightly below most other hotels in the area and all of the photos are from rooms at other locations. So unless you actively went and searched the Internet for reviews for this specific location, you wouldn't know what you were getting into.
A lot of hotel websites are terrible too and I’ll be damned if I have to actually call someone and waste my time when I’m trying to compare prices, or if there is a significant language barrier.
Practically if you go to a bigger city, it's just not feasible to look at hotels directly. Who has the time to check the 100 of pages, each with their own lookup/booking system, each possibly not available, each listing the size / facilities differently?
The problem is, the customers tend to want said third-party sites. Hotels have, at least for the masses, become a commodity - 99% of people just need a place to crash because they're out all day - and so customers expect to be able to shop around purely based on price and a bit on the location.