Online travel agencies are exerting greater influence over which hotels pop up first on your search screen. Hotels don’t like the practice, which can be so subtle that consumers rarely notice. Expedia now uses customer ratings and complaints to order some hotel searches, punishing hotels with problems or disputes with Expedia customers to lower pages of search results—no man’s land for bookings. If a hotel overbooks and “walks” a customer to a substitute hotel, Expedia and its other brands, Travelocity, Orbitz and Hotels.com can now hold that against the hotel.

Read the full article at WSJ.com