Hotel booking sites actually make it hard to get cheap deals, but there's a way around it
- Written by Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Booking a place to stay on holidays has become a reflex action.
The first thing many of us do is open a site such as Wotif, Hotels.com or trivago (all of which are these days owned by the US firm Expedia), or their only big competitor, Booking.com from the Netherlands.
Checking what rooms are available – anywhere – is...