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Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

wsj.com

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Re: Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

#21

Post by lowpro »

electic wrote: post #9

Question to anyone here who is familiar with this industry. Would one be able to save even more by just going to a wholesaler? I mean, with the right know how, can someone just buy from a wholesaler directly?

I don't know about hotels since airbnb is almost always cheaper, but with flying you will almost always find cheaper flights going directly to the airline or using something like The Matrix [1] than using kayak, expedia etc. These companies used to be cheaper than going directly with an airline, but since they were so easy to use everyone uses them now and they charge high margins for that convenience, so the position has switched in the last 20 years.

I also use secretflying.com which is like skyscanner but better imho. Using these flight websites I normally get flights from Chicago to east asia in the lower $400 range roundtrip, the cheapest I've seen was $300 roundtrip from ORD>SIN!

[1] https://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Re: Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

#22

Post by electic »

lowpro wrote: post #21
electic wrote: post #9

Question to anyone here who is familiar with this industry. Would one be able to save even more by just going to a wholesaler? I mean, with the right know how, can someone just buy from a wholesaler directly?

I don't know about hotels since airbnb is almost always cheaper, but with flying you will almost always find cheaper flights going directly to the airline or using something like The Matrix [1] than using kayak, expedia etc. These companies used to be cheaper than going directly with an airline, but since they were so easy to use everyone uses them now and they charge high margins for that convenience, so the positio…

wow, thank you so much. Great site. If anyone has any other tips/hacks etc, would love to hear about it.

Re: Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

#24

Post by mcny »

dragonwriter wrote: post #19
phsource wrote: post #6

This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. This quote really caught my attention: "OTAs earn a roughly 20% commission from hotels for each reservation they book, which covers their cost of marketing, inventory acquisition, customer support and payment processing." 20% is a ton! Later in the editorial, the writers complain about how Google takes "a…

> This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. Superficially, but more deeply it's part of the propaganda war the WSJs corporate parent has been carrying out against Google on all fronts for quite a long time, which is in part partisan/ideological, and in part business over similar issues in publishing.

I still don't get why we can't talk about banning "fake news" like wall street journal on hn.

These are clearly hit pieces and as my parent mentioned, part of a coordinated effort to undermine Google. They did the same thing with YouTube. Everyone is worse off because of wsj.

Re: Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

#25

Post by dmode »

dragonwriter wrote: post #19
phsource wrote: post #6

This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. This quote really caught my attention: "OTAs earn a roughly 20% commission from hotels for each reservation they book, which covers their cost of marketing, inventory acquisition, customer support and payment processing." 20% is a ton! Later in the editorial, the writers complain about how Google takes "a…

> This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. Superficially, but more deeply it's part of the propaganda war the WSJs corporate parent has been carrying out against Google on all fronts for quite a long time, which is in part partisan/ideological, and in part business over similar issues in publishing.

Can you elaborate on the WSJ's agenda against Google ?

Re: Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

#26

Post by fuddcoinn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #19
phsource wrote: post #6

This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. This quote really caught my attention: "OTAs earn a roughly 20% commission from hotels for each reservation they book, which covers their cost of marketing, inventory acquisition, customer support and payment processing." 20% is a ton! Later in the editorial, the writers complain about how Google takes "a…

> This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. Superficially, but more deeply it's part of the propaganda war the WSJs corporate parent has been carrying out against Google on all fronts for quite a long time, which is in part partisan/ideological, and in part business over similar issues in publishing.

thank you for introducing this idea to HN even if this is not provable at this moment.

the percentage of people who take stories at face value is way too high.

i'll keep my words kind and limit this comment to just that....

Re: Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

#27

Post by somberi »

lowpro wrote: post #21
electic wrote: post #9

Question to anyone here who is familiar with this industry. Would one be able to save even more by just going to a wholesaler? I mean, with the right know how, can someone just buy from a wholesaler directly?

I don't know about hotels since airbnb is almost always cheaper, but with flying you will almost always find cheaper flights going directly to the airline or using something like The Matrix [1] than using kayak, expedia etc. These companies used to be cheaper than going directly with an airline, but since they were so easy to use everyone uses them now and they charge high margins for that convenience, so the positio…

I am not associated with the site below, but I find it useful to book itineraries that show up in Matrix (but you cannot book from them).

https://bookwithmatrix.com/

Also the original WSJ article is written by its Editorial Board (as opposed to their reporting arm). Editorial board can and does operate with its the owner's mandate, in most newspapers.

Re: Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

#28

Post by sitepodmatt »

I was always of the impression that the 18%-22% commission charged to small hotels using an OTA most of it went back into PPC and other online marketing anyway, kind of like a slot machine winnings, hence you needed a lot of cash to bootstrap competition. In this instance paying out to Google meta search is probably no different than a PPC campaign for the OTA, you have to pay to get the eyes. Slightly off topic, I remember a hotel manager bitching about how much OTAs charge and then saying he was going to fund his own site and charge hotels only 5% and make a killing, I'm not sure how far that Joomla project got lol

Back on subject, I don't have too much sympathy if this is deemed unfair, as OTAs are quite anti-competitive too, they force hotels to sign agreements that disallow themselves from running their own promotions or advertising on other sites for anything less than the best rate given to the OTA, and yes this is enforced, in the old days via screen-scraping of competitors.

>Most hotel chains guarantee the lowest rates on their websites.

I've never seen this to be true, even though nearly all big chains litter their website with it, it's always marginally more expensive (with other surcharges etc..) and massively more annoying due to clumsy UI and harsher terms & conditions.

Re: Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

#29

Post by bkor »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #17
phsource wrote: post #6

This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google. This quote really caught my attention: "OTAs earn a roughly 20% commission from hotels for each reservation they book, which covers their cost of marketing, inventory acquisition, customer support and payment processing." 20% is a ton! Later in the editorial, the writers complain about how Google takes "a…

This to me still seems like a net loss. old: OTA makes a $20 commission on a $100 rate through them new 1: Google makes an ~$20 commission on a $140 room rate (15%) through Hotel new 2: Google makes a $17 commission on the $117 room the OTA now has to sell it. Or the OTA tries to still sell at ~$100 and only makes a $3-$5 commission. And this lovely quote: > Google also requires OTAs to give its webcrawlers access to…

> Great, the amazon model of

Apple does pretty much the same thing with its suppliers, no? They even work out what profit and costs a supplier is supposed to have (meaning: if your costs are higher it's the fault of the supplier).

A "others do it too" might not be too good of an argument, but I do wonder why heavily looking into your suppliers (costs, etc) is that bad.

Re: Google works with hotels to hurt travel competition

#30

Post by bkor »

thesumofall wrote: post #16

This article is largely incomprehensible and seems strongly biased. Having said that, I don’t quite see how consumers are being hurt. The issue only seems to be with very targeted search queries such as “Hilton Houston” where Expedia, etc. ageeed voluntarily not to show ads and smaller ones are allegedly somehow blocked by Google. But: if one searches for such a specific term, a customer will almost always be harmed…

> Most hotel chains guarantee the lowest rates on their websites

To be clear: My response is not about OTA vs Google. It's OTA vs hotel.

Various OTAs used to have clauses in their contracts prohibiting this. See e.g. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ad48f831-75c3.... They made them switch terms. Before that it was pretty much impossible for a hotel to offer a lower rate through their website.

Consumers were being hurt (by OTAs) due to not being able to offer lower rates in their own website. It only changed after EU stepped in. Nowadays you see that you can book directly with the hotel, immediately become a member for free and immediately get a discount for that booking. Before the lowest rate was usually via the OTA. Then obviously people will book via the OTA.

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