For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by babuskov » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 5:20 AM UTC

collyw wrote: post #76

babuskov wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is just as cheap to call the hotel itself Only if it's in the same country. > book through its website For some hotels, booking via website is often half-baked web app that's full of bugs, doesn't accept certain inputs, etc. Simply because webdev isn't the hotel's main activity. Reviews on the hotel's website are usually non-existent or only positive. I mean, I hate the booking sites as well, but they are often…

International calls (to fixed lines) are not expensive these days.

It really depends on the country from which you are calling and country to which the call connects.

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

#132

Post by xadhominemx » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 2:37 PM UTC

skinnymuch wrote: post #129

xadhominemx wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is vs the '00's is the big sites have 1) scale (= operating leverage and the best deals with hotel chains and better SEO), 2) years' of data and testing (which leads to higher conversion and an ability to pay more for inorganic traffic than newcomers), and 3) organic traffic (which subsidizes inorganic traffic). HotelTonight fills a niche but I think the market they play in is pretty small.

But yeah I mean, wasn't that all true, albeit to a lesser extent, by 2005-2006, when the 3 mid-00 companies were fully launching? I agree, HotelTonight fills a specific niche and maybe that's what we'll see more of. A few sites filling niches. Trip.com itself also has to do some more superficial than substantial features to try to differentiate itself. And maybe Hipmunk was always more hype than actually being big wi…

Expedia is ~5x larger that it was in the mid-aughts and Priceline is ~10x larger and each has the benefit of a decade's worth of data. So if the barriers were not insurmountable then, I think they are now.

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

#133

Post by metaphor » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 3:49 AM UTC

wl wrote: post #93

metaphor wrote: post #30

Anyone have insight on where GSA's published per diem rates[1] fair in the gamut of hotel pricing? Seems to be the pre-tax lower bound of decent 2/3 star hotels. [1] https://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/100120

My experience has been that you can almost always find decent three star hotels at normal rates for under 125-150% of the GSA published rate. The exceptions tend to be when there's a major event that causes exceptional demand.

I agree, and that has been my experience as well.

I tend to use GSA's published rates as a benchmark to vet reasonable cost when shopping around. It's typically the case that I can find lodging accommodations that are appreciable less expensive, but they're almost always at establishments of questionable quality.