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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

#41

Post by caw »

tallanvor wrote: post #33

“There had been this perception that to get the best price, you book through a different channel than going direct,” he said. “That’s never actually been the case.” Yeah, that's a load of crap. I always start with an aggregator, and if I find a place that I like, I check their website as well. Unless they're cheaper or offer some major perks, I book through the 3rd party site. Of the last 5 hotels I've booked, going…

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 third party. I said I got the room for 10% less than their best online rate and their response was that I should have called bookings to talk to them. So now there's even more hoops to jump through to book direct? No thanks.

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

#42

Post by kbart »

usrusr wrote: post #31
kbart wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it really feels good to pay the hotel that offers the services, instead of some tech company in the US." Most of the times I booked through booking.com it was "cash on arrival", so these sites are nothing more than ads. I think the problem is travel agencies, that book bulk of rooms to rent them later (just a guess, can't read the article itself due to paywall).

> Most of the times I booked through booking.com it was "cash on arrival", so these sites are nothing more than ads. Expensive ads. Cash on arrival does not mean that the hotel does not pay a sizable commission. Roughly in the range as the cut iTunes, Play, Steam take for transactions that, unlike hotel service, create zero cost beyond the initial investment. Occasionally, hotels might even offer you a cheaper room i…

Most of the times I book private apartments (I hate hotels), so I have to deal with their owners directly. None of them has complained yet that I've book through booking.com or offered an alternative way, so I assume the situation is not as dire as other commenters try to imply.

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

#43

Post by rorykoehler »

tallanvor wrote: post #33

“There had been this perception that to get the best price, you book through a different channel than going direct,” he said. “That’s never actually been the case.” Yeah, that's a load of crap. I always start with an aggregator, and if I find a place that I like, I check their website as well. Unless they're cheaper or offer some major perks, I book through the 3rd party site. Of the last 5 hotels I've booked, going…

Many hotels have contracts which ensure they can't undercut 3rd party resellers. The trick we used back in the day was to offer the same price on the hotel website while bundling in a bunch of freebees such as wine/dinner etc.

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

#44

Post by mbaha »

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 completely agree. To those pointing out the Sabre/Amadeus "debacle", a few benefits as a reminder:

* To innovate, the GDS only think about how the messaging should be differently handled.

* To buy a ticket, an airline/travel agent uses almost the same syntax throughout the world (this is a miracle, when you can't even order cabs in the same manner in the world).

* Airline companies implement similar interfaces (between different GDS) to handle ticket processing. Which is another miracle: think freight handling done with the same messaging protocol.

Now add to the mix modern protocols and you get nice APIs. The hotels CAN be the only one properly consuming the APIs (w/ gorgeous and easy to use platforms), but if they can't do it well, let tech-aware organisations do it.

Instead, these hotels are fighting for breadcrumbs and insulting companies which have done more to facilitate accomodation than any other hotel in the past 40 years.

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

#45

Post by gazoakley »

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…

But they have:

* http://opentravel.org/

* http://www.htng.org/

It's all XML based and sometimes it's a bit confused but a lot of hotel booking sites work by forwarding OTA/HTNG schema messages to booking engines (e.g. Siteminder). A heck of a lot of hotels are already bookable through those engines.

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

#46

Post by briandear »

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 the Luberon" or "Provence hotels." Since we are a very small place (just 3 suites,) it's an unprofitable use of my time to be generating blog content and engage in full-court-press inbound techniques -- so unless you are a chain or happen to be featured by travel writers, good luck being discovered via inbound searches.

We do have a website and a good direct booking system, but we probably get 3 bookings per year directly from our website yet between Booking.com and cross-listing on AirBnB, we are completely booked through most of the season. Our booking software is integrated with Booking.com and AirBnB so we are able to have all of our channels coordinated with a minimum of work. If one considers Booking.com as a lead-generation system, 15% is a huge value. I would easily spend far more if I were marketing directly through ads. Our TripAdvisor page is free -- we haven't paid the yearly €799 fee for an enhanced listing but TripAdvisor still is great for us since we have 4.5 stars.

Guests from Booking.com are far less work than from AirBnB or direct. AirBnB customers seem to still not understand what Instant Booking means -- we get almost daily inquiries of "do you have availability for some date" -- yes, obviously that's why you are able to instant book! AirBnB guests tend to want to have long conversations while Booking.com people just book and show up with a minimum of fuss. We also have a very liberal cancellation policy, unlike many places in the region -- we found that just letting people cancel whenever they want works out fine in the long term because are area is high demand so cancellations don't really cost us anything because we quickly get rebooked during peak season. So everyone is happy. In terms of taxes -- our prices have all of that included.

My point is that sites like Booking.com and AirBnB have made our business -- we essentially incur no marketing costs. So we love Booking.com! It honestly doesn't matter one bit of you book directly with us or via Booking/AirBnB -- our prices take our costs into account so you aren't "hurting" us if you book through a third party. We are just glad to welcome any guests however they find us. The big chains probably get hurt the most by third party booking sites because they are already spending money on marketing and have name recognition, where for ultra-small-timers like us, you probably would never have heard of us without those third party sites.

The short version: third party sites add huge value to our business -- they get to do the hard work of marketing us while we can focus on the guest experience.

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

#47

Post by csydas »

tallanvor wrote: post #36
a_humean wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work a part time job doing hotel reservations for a small hotel a few years ago. Back then about 35-40% of their bookings were made through booking.com, and although I didn't know the actual cut booking.com took, I know it wasn't small. The hotel was always keen on trying to convert their booking.com or other third party customers into direct customers. We were always instructed, depending upon predicted or…

Honestly, that's great if you're in the US and trying to book within the country, but once you start thinking internationally, calling becomes a headache, especially if you're traveling to countries where not everyone speaks English very well. And when I'm on a trip, the last thing I want to do is hope for the best at finding a hotel the day I arrive!

I definitely appreciate your sentiment and agree, that I don't want to be fighting for a room when I'm on vacation - but with regards to the language barrier, where there's a will, there's a sale.

In all my experience abroad, as long as there is some effort made to communicate, language has never been an issue when it came to prices and sales. Sometimes this means we pass a calculator back and forth with different prices until we agree, but as long as there's an effort and money to be made, people are fairly open to alternative means of communication, even in remote nowhere locations.

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

#48

Post by afc »

tallanvor wrote: post #33

“There had been this perception that to get the best price, you book through a different channel than going direct,” he said. “That’s never actually been the case.” Yeah, that's a load of crap. I always start with an aggregator, and if I find a place that I like, I check their website as well. Unless they're cheaper or offer some major perks, I book through the 3rd party site. Of the last 5 hotels I've booked, going…

This is my experience too. After doing this for a while, I concluded that there's no point going to the hotel's website to check prices anymore, I just book on the aggregator now.

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

#49

Post by mbaha »

what_ever wrote: post #12
flexie wrote: post #5

It has become ridiculous with these booking sites. When you google a small hotel, often the first many results are hotels.com, bookings.com, tripadvisor.com etc. and the hotel itself is down to spot 3, 4, 5 or even lower. There is a place for the booking sites, especially for exploring several hotels at a time. And they do offer some reviews and comparisons that can be useful. Sometimes, they also offer the cheapest…

I'd argue that tripadvsor.com would be more useful to me than the direct hotel website as I'd see more neutral outlook of the hotel compared to the hotels website itself. I know, the reviews are not 100% neutral given neutral experiences usually don't end up in reviews - only really positive or negative do but it's still useful than not having any opinions which would be the case on hotels website. Also, the travel w…

Yeah, it seems like nobody has ever tried booking a hotel from a direct channel before.

Customers don't want to go through the hassle of "discovering" a half-baked website filled w/ pretty little quirks.

This worsens the user experience by a ton, I find.

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

#50

Post by mattmanser »

flexie wrote: post #5

It has become ridiculous with these booking sites. When you google a small hotel, often the first many results are hotels.com, bookings.com, tripadvisor.com etc. and the hotel itself is down to spot 3, 4, 5 or even lower. There is a place for the booking sites, especially for exploring several hotels at a time. And they do offer some reviews and comparisons that can be useful. Sometimes, they also offer the cheapest…

Why is that their fault, but not Google's? Blame the search engine for bad results, not the sites.
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