My wife and I are planning a weekend getaway to a popular resort town on the east coast for July, and most of the hotels were running $300 /night for the weekend. My wife found a substantially cheaper rate (under $200) for one particular hotel on Kayak/Priceline (non-opaque, non-prepaid, and cancelable) which wasn't available directly from the hotel's website or any other third party sites that I saw.

From reading this sub, I know how much you all despise third party bookings (plus I like my points/benefits), so I booked through the chain's website at the much higher rate and then submitted a best rate guarantee claim, which was approved and knocked my rate down to beat the third party rate.

That got me thinking... who "pays" when that happens? Does the individual hotel get penalized or have to eat the cost difference, or does the chain absorb that as a cost of doing business? Do they at least let you know so you can fix the mis-pricing or zero out inventory on the third party site?