Trivago, the Expedia-controlled hotel metasearch site, has a new side hustle: panhandling for tips. You may or may not get the same rate as booking direct, and probably not the best rate compared to ‘non-public’ rates. So for the privilege of paying the same or more, and giving up hotel loyalty perks and points, they want you to kick in even more.

The immediate reaction on LinkedIn was, “I am not tipping a publicly traded company for syncing some data feeds to offer effectively nothing.”

Tipping is a strange American practice, shifting an employer’s payroll costs onto the customer. Companies pay their workers less when customers top off wages. Even still, this isn’t a barista pulling a double shift. This is a $250 million Expedia-controlled entity rattling a digital cup.

Expedia Wants You To Tip For… Terrible Service

Expedia already takes a cut from hotels, takes payments for placement, and famously provides customer service so bad it has practically become its own meme.

• The phones that never seem to answer, and the interminable hold times while unempowered agents speak to their own support desks only to give you inconsistent and unhelpful answers.

• The refunds that never process.

• The reservations that exist until you arrive at the hotel and find out they don’t.

Expedia is the company that can’t manage to deliver basic support, but now thinks it deserves a tip on top. This goes beyond just “tipflation.” It’s not new, though, it’s just at a new scale.

Smaller hotel booking sites have been hitting up customers for tips for the past three years.

It’s similar to airport self-service kiosks prompting for 20% gratuities when all you did was buy a pack of gum without talking to anyone, but at the same level of awful as the Seattle hotel that asked guests to tip the Hong Kong-based investment group that owned the property.

Trivago is 60% owned by Expedia Group. So when you hit that “tip” button, you’re not helping some frontline worker. You’re effectively tipping Barry Diller’s empire (one of the largest online travel conglomerates in the world) for being willing to sell you a room that comes at high margin for what’s usually the same price you’d pay anywhere else. You never leave your desk or living room, no person assists in the transaction.

Tipping used to be framed as rewarding service, it’s only recently turned into an explicit corporate panhandling scheme.

If Trivago wants a tip, here are mine:

• Stop pretending you’re a waiter
  
• Fix the disastrous customer service that your parent company has been infamous for
  
• And if you want more money, provide customers with a better product and better deal

Would you ever tip the website you booked your stay with?