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For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

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Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#81

Post by chvid »

briandear wrote: post #46

I feel compelled to respond since I am on both sides of the hotel business.. I own a tiny hotel in the Luberon and I also fly about 50k miles per year (staying in hotels along the way.) Booking.com has been amazing for us. They take 15% but it is completely worth it. We don't have "a name" nor do I have time to invest in the relentless SEO content marketing necessary to differentiate us when people search "hotels in…

Yes! 15% for marketing, payment and secure booking is not expensive. It is actually very cheap.

And for us consumers services like hotels.com are really a great help, makes bookings fast and constistent. And they are secure; making me not worry about booking a hotel in an unfamiliar country.

Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#82

Post by toomuchtodo »

jonknee wrote: post #62
caw wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago I booked a hotel for a trip. I checked the 3rd parties, found a hotel and then tried to go direct. HHonors claims the best prices online if you're logged in--it was the same as the booking third party (Groupon Getaways via Expedia), except Groupon gave 10% back in Groupon Bucks. I arrived at the hotel, they noted my HHonors basic membership and mentioned I wasn't receiving points due to booking with…

I called a Hilton once after seeing the same place cheaper on HotelTonight, the woman said she couldn't match the rate... So I got it for the "impossible" to match rate (and the hotel paid a commission for the privilege!). Price matching is great when it works, but infuriating when you can't actually back it up. It should all be automated, I can't imagine someone at Hilton is manually setting HotelTonight prices and…

Hilton is setting the distressed inventory price algorithmically and offering it to the GDS (or directly to HT), and no one local is empowered to override. You pay HotelTonight, They pay for your room with their corp MasterCard, and everyone is happy.

Some processes and business practices are super hard to change.

Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#83

Post by jaclaz »

Grue3 wrote: post #56
jaclaz wrote: post #55

The base issue is that the fees that agencies/aggregators like booking.com are (IMHO outrageously) high, in the 15% (a minimum that I believe very few hotels pay) up to 25%-30%. On average, it is something like 18%-20%. To have a term of comparison, in the old times when travel agencies existed, the fee was more in the 5%-10% range. Small hotels must submit to them to have any visibility on the net, and (I believe it…

But consider that there's basically zero chance that I (as a typical user) will book a hotel if it's not listed at booking.com. Just because I must read real guests' impressions of the hotel to avoid the ones with bad Wi-fi. That's much more valuable service than what travel agencies provide, so it makes sense it costs more.

Maybe we are talking of two different kinds of travel/hotel agencies.

Once upon a time there were travel agents that put their name (and face) upfront to the customer, guaranteeing when they recommended (and booked in behalf of) a given hotel (or vector/transport), they usually knew (from direct experience or from "verified" reports) the qualities of the suggested hotel or travel arrangement.

And - just for your interest - the "real" adjective when talking of guests impressions reported on booking.com (and much, much worse than that on tripadvisor) is something that needs to be attributed with more than a pinch of salt.

Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#84

Post by jonknee »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #82
jonknee wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I called a Hilton once after seeing the same place cheaper on HotelTonight, the woman said she couldn't match the rate... So I got it for the "impossible" to match rate (and the hotel paid a commission for the privilege!). Price matching is great when it works, but infuriating when you can't actually back it up. It should all be automated, I can't imagine someone at Hilton is manually setting HotelTonight prices and…

Hilton is setting the distressed inventory price algorithmically and offering it to the GDS (or directly to HT), and no one local is empowered to override. You pay HotelTonight, They pay for your room with their corp MasterCard, and everyone is happy. Some processes and business practices are super hard to change.

I know how HotelTonight works, but since they advertise matching the lowest price they should empower anyone doing booking to match the lowest price.

Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#85

Post by mindcrime »

barrkel wrote: post #58
stupidcar wrote: post #21

If hotel chains were managed by sensible, tech-aware people, they wouldn't bother with these expensive, rearguard marketing campaigns. Instead, they'd get together and form an industry working group, and design simple, standard data formats and querying/booking APIs, and then make all their data available through them. This would make it far easier to build a hotel search engine, which would cause an explosion of com…

This would reduce the hotel's value proposition to a commodity. It would only work for the most impersonal of hotels, the hotel equivalent of McDonalds, competing on price and standardized features. The kinds of hotel you wouldn't want to stay at, if you had a choice.

I no longer travel frequently for business, but when I was a consultant I was constantly traveling around the US and staying in various hotels. I would say that to a large extent, I always saw them as just commodities. I only had one or two pet issues that occasionally cropped up, but 99% of the time I didn't care a lick about the "brand" of the hotel, nor did I want to.

Maybe it's different for recreational travelers, but for at least one business traveler my hotel room was just a place to park my clothes and stuff during the day, and to sleep at night. As long as the AC worked, and the bed was anything close to reasonable, the rest was moot.

Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#86

Post by mindcrime »

ForHackernews wrote: post #29
stupidcar wrote: post #21

If hotel chains were managed by sensible, tech-aware people, they wouldn't bother with these expensive, rearguard marketing campaigns. Instead, they'd get together and form an industry working group, and design simple, standard data formats and querying/booking APIs, and then make all their data available through them. This would make it far easier to build a hotel search engine, which would cause an explosion of com…

I think that's completely wrong. Very few vendors want their product to be commoditized. From the perspective of a hotelier, reducing their property to a few lines of JSON data is a losing proposition. The result will be the same thing we've seen in the airline industry: a race to the bottom, competing only on price, with ever-crappier service and more nickle-and-dime addons.

Very few vendors want their product to be commoditized. From the perspective of a hotelier, reducing their property to a few lines of JSON data is a losing proposition.

Meh. For that to be true, it would have to be the case that all consumers care only about price. I'm pretty sure that's not actually the case. As long as there are consumers who will pay more for $WHATEVER, there will be a market for $WHATEVER. The point is, you can still price discriminate, even if you make your data available as a simple JSON (preferably JSON-LD) file.

Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#87

Post by toomuchtodo »

jonknee wrote: post #84
toomuchtodo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilton is setting the distressed inventory price algorithmically and offering it to the GDS (or directly to HT), and no one local is empowered to override. You pay HotelTonight, They pay for your room with their corp MasterCard, and everyone is happy. Some processes and business practices are super hard to change.

I know how HotelTonight works, but since they advertise matching the lowest price they should empower anyone doing booking to match the lowest price .

My mistake. I agree.

Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#88

Post by dragonwriter »

Retric wrote: post #70
dragonwriter wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, I wish hotel rooms were commodities that competed on two factors: cleanliness and quietness. A commoditized market has products, by definition, that compete on one factor, price. If you care about cleanliness, quietness, or other qualitative features being areas of active competition, you don't want a commoditized market.

Commoditized market does not mean lack of options or low quality goods. It just means the differences are predefined aka it's X octane gas without lead and a bunch of other things that you don't need to see on the pump. People don't just buy generic meat they buy Grade A (means something) Prime Rib (means something) Angus Beef (means something).

> Commoditized market does not mean lack of options or low quality goods.

No, but it does mean that goods are perfect substitutes that compete only on price, although it is a condition which in practice is approximated more often than actually attained.

> People don't just buy generic meat they buy Grade A (means something) Prime Rib (means something) Angus Beef (means something).

Right. "Meat" isn't even approximately a commodity. A particular cut and grade might be approximately a commodity (though makers will actively seeking to decommoditize it by building brands; no one wants to sell into a commodity market, since basic economics mean that competitive factors will drive market prices in such a market down to producer costs and eliminate profits.)

Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#89

Post by xadhominemx »

stupidcar wrote: post #21

If hotel chains were managed by sensible, tech-aware people, they wouldn't bother with these expensive, rearguard marketing campaigns. Instead, they'd get together and form an industry working group, and design simple, standard data formats and querying/booking APIs, and then make all their data available through them. This would make it far easier to build a hotel search engine, which would cause an explosion of com…

There are many hotel search engines out there already, and I don't really understand why new search engines would pick up meaningful market share. The priceline and expedia web properties (Booking.com, priceline.com, KAYAK, Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Travelocity, trivago, etc.) have pretty decent customer loyalty, a lot of app downloads, and highly optimized customer acquisition and conversion.

Re: For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies

#90

Post by draw_down »

I had a really bad experience recently with Travelocity. I needed to change dates for a stay in SF, which ended up being very costly in addition to being a hassle. I was forced to cancel the stay as well as pay the entire cost for the stay, and there was no way to do it online. I had to sit on the phone with a Travelocity agent who called the hotel to "negotiate" (which did nothing but waste time), then they started telling me about some Travelocity deal involving coupons, etc. It was confusing in addition to being a waste of time and money.

I would probably just book directly these days. Hotels seem to have had it with dealing with the aggregators.

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