Just noticed something pretty annoying with Booking.com and their Genius “discount.”
Logged in as a Genius member, the hotel shows a regular price of $2109 and a nice looking 10% Genius discount bringing it down to $1901. Cool, right?
Except… if I log out and check the exact same hotel, same dates, same guests, the price is $1989. No discount, no Genius, just a lower base price to begin with.
So in reality, that “10%” Genius discount is more like 3–4% once you compare it properly. Feels pretty misleading.
After digging a bit more, it seems a lot of this is tied to IP location. Prices from EU IPs often appear higher than from US or UAE IPs. Switch locations and suddenly the “discounted” Genius price doesn’t look special at all.
Honestly makes the whole Genius program feel like marketing fluff unless you’re careful and compare logged-in vs logged-out prices.
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