Discounts are always promised, but they are only valid today. If you look online again 2 days later, the discounted price is already available again. At least one hotel is always advertised with a high price. Dont be influenced by this, real bargains are rare. Most "offers" of this kind are false. See next trick.

This trick is slowly getting out of hand. Partly, especially Agoda and Booking e high fantasy prices for a hotel room per night. The room was and is never offered at this very high price. The "special price" on the other hand is the regular price. Sometimes 1 or 2 € cheaper, but by no means 122€ cheaper as stated. Particularly striking but effective. So every offer looks like an incredible bargain. Dont be tempted and decide logically which hotel is worth the money. It is easy to check whether the "before price" is realistic by simply looking at other portals such as hotels.com or expedia.com to see what a room in this hotel costs.

This is to convey a popularity that a hotel is apparently supposed to have. The source code of such texts on booking portals has already been exposed several times. Here, a random number between 20 and 40 is simply generated by the computer. This is a marketing trick.

An already cheap room is even cheaper on Agoda than on the website of the hotel itself.
In many cases it is unfortunately the case that hotels have some less nice rooms, for example on a noisy main street or with a bad view or is a bit smaller than all the others. These hotels are then naturally given to the hotel guests who paid the least. This is how the lower price sometimes comes about. You can see this again and again in the hotel ratings. If the room of a price category was rated good by the majority, but your individual reviews about terrible complaining. "Mould in the bathroom" "I couldnt sleep at night" "worn out and tiny room".

Since you look at the reviews to find out if a room is good or bad, it is even more annoying that the portals always try to promote ALL hotels as good. If you pay attention, you will notice that even if all the reviews of customers write how terrible the hotel is the worst hotel in the city. then even the rating that the portal shows is still "Satisfactory".
Most of the time, the designation "very good" or "excellent" is already written in large letters next to the name of the hotel on the websites of the booking portals. The ratings, however bad, already start with "This hotel was rated VERY GOOD".

It is only possible not to be deceived if different sources of information are used. Read reviews on Tripadvisor, check prices on other booking portals, etc. The tricks of the booking portals are not optimal but with a little research and as soon as you know them, you can continue to book with them without any problems and have a great time on holiday.

Tip:
Booking, Agoda KAYAK, Momondo all belong to one company.
If you want to compare, also use Expedia or TUI etc.