71–77 of 77 posts
Wait until they buy Homeaway next..
Homeaway focuses on vacation rentals and is in a very different market than Expedia and Orbitz. It's not out of the realm of possibilities, but Expedia and Orbitz are much closer competitors than either would be with Homeaway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When a hotel signs a contract with an OTA (Online Travel Agency), it is (was) a common practice to include a 'price parity' clause, i.e. the hotelier cannot send different prices for the same offer to different websites, and the OTA agrees on not modifying the final price specified by the hotelier. But the reality is that: - Not all the hoteliers update all the rates simultaneously (through a channel manager, for exa…
> There are more 'shady' tricks that can lead to different prices for the same hotel, but it would be too long to write all of them in a post. I'd love to see a blog post on this, and would gladly send beer/coffee money your way to see it!
But, I can share some pricing strategies that I've noticed that our competitors are doing, for example:
1) Different prices for different countries, example:
http://www.amoma.com/hotel.php?id=30800&key=2015022020150221... and open it again in english, using an incognito window (important): http://www.amoma.com/hotel.php?id=30800&key=2015022020150221...
2) Most of the hotels set the price using their local currency, and when the prices are converted to the customer currency, every OTA can decide to be optimistic or pessimistic. They could even decide to use a different conversion rate depending on the booking windows (number of days to checkin).
3) Price parity clause can be avoided if the price is not 'public' (http://www.osborneclarke.com/connected-insights/blog/hotels-...) so now most of the OTAs are trying hard to get the users logged in before booking. Once the user is logged in, the prices are not 'public', so the OTA can lower their commission slice of the price.
4) Some hotels have a specific (cheaper) rate for 'package bookings' i.e. the room is booked together with another service (flight, car rental...). But some OTAs decided that a flight booked earlier was enough to offer a 'package rate' to the customer. See: http://www.tnooz.com/article/expedia-playing-hardball-hotel-...
Thanks for the beer, we may have an opportunity to drink it together in the future.
All these sites seem to use the exact same backend services, so it's difficult to care. About the only site I use regularly is hotels.com because they have a loyalty scheme (book 10 nights, get 1 free) - and even then I'm sure there's some catch I'm not aware of that makes them the same as everyone else.
The catch, in my anecdotal experience, is that third parties have terrible integration with the hotels. In some cases, they fax a reservation using a company credit card, to pay on your behalf. End result is some percent of the time, this gets messed up and you end up dealing with an annoyed person on check in that sometimes ends up having to get the agency on the line to sort it out. Same for flight bookings. I've n…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this article from Reuters [0] their CFO stated that they only hold a single digit market share in the travel industry. "The possibility of antitrust issues was played down by Expedia's Chief Financial Office Mark Okerstrom who said, "It is a $1.3 trillion industry and is highly fragmented ... We are only a small player and our overall share is in single digits."" [0] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/12/us-or…
That's a ridiculous argument by their CEO. That is like saying Microsoft Office only holds a single digit percentage of revenue in the technology sector. It might technically be true, but it is irrelevant. MS Office has a monopolist hold on the office software space. Monopolies aren't defined by someone who controls an entire sector (a "sector" is arbitrary anyway) it is when one specific company controls one commodi…
"...anyone who has a monopoly will pretend that they are in incredible competition ... The basic lie you tell as a monopoly is the market you’re in is much bigger than it looks."
- Lecture 5: Competition is For Losers http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec05/
Wait until they buy Homeaway next..
Homeaway focuses on vacation rentals and is in a very different market than Expedia and Orbitz. It's not out of the realm of possibilities, but Expedia and Orbitz are much closer competitors than either would be with Homeaway.
This is not an "if" it's a "when".
They have been in bed together for years now. This is coming from someone who works specifically in the Vacation Rental industry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Homeaway focuses on vacation rentals and is in a very different market than Expedia and Orbitz. It's not out of the realm of possibilities, but Expedia and Orbitz are much closer competitors than either would be with Homeaway.
Expedia syndicates HomeAway listings on their site now.