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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

#51

Post by briandear »

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…

iTunes charges 30%. Booking.com charges us 15%. 15% is a bargain considering they are an amazing source of customers who would have never found us otherwise.

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

#52

Post by briandear »

babuskov wrote: post #24
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. I can confirm this. I believe the hotels only pay a monthly fee for listing and that's all.

Not true. We pay a percentage of the reservation cost to Booking.com each month. TripAdvisor on the other hand, charges a yearly fee for an enhanced listing, no fee for the standard listing. So those pay on arrival bookings -- we get an invoice from Booking.com each month for those. Nothing on booking.com to my knowledge is pre-pay -- Booking never actually charges the guest's card. But we still get the invoice.

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by jaclaz »

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 depends on countries, in some the clause has been deemed as invalid) the contract states that the hotel must not expose to the net (on its own site) a price that is lower than the one on the aggregator.

Hotel chains might have the visibility and resources to bypass this perverse mechanism, and even if they pay the lowest fee of 15%, in times of low margins every fraction is important.

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

#56

Post by Grue3 »

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.

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

#57

Post by joshvm »

babuskov wrote: post #22
joshvm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Booking.com is an absolutely atrocious website. It's full of very pushy marketing that tries to convince you that every hotel is almost fully booked and the entire world is about to place a reservation. Not to mention the weird push-style notifications. That said, the 24 hour cancellation policy is really useful since some of the listed hotels wouldn't otherwise offer it.

I had a very interesting experience with booking.com. I found a hotel room, it said something like "Only one left". So, I quickly booked and by the time I entered the payment details the room was taken. Ok, so I went back to search for alternative, and it showed the same room again. I tried to book it again, and it simply went through. I actually stayed at that hotel in the end. It looks like some really weird algori…

It's possible they use a queue system similar to the one used for concerts. Once you select a room/ticket, it gets held for a few minutes while you check out (and taken off the public market). So you can have a situation where there's no room, but someone else fails to complete the reservation and it becomes available again.

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

#58

Post by barrkel »

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.

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

#59

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

That's a weird position.

Frankly the aggregators provide really low value to the hotel as a stakeholder in the process. They demand concessions and commoditize the hotel itself, which is obviously not in the hotel's interest.

This is a classic channel vs direct issue. The only reasons that travel agents and these aggregators exist is that they provided a way to offload inventory or increase demand. Now we have the internet -- so it is easy and cheap for hotels to engage directly with many customers. Why should my local Hilton Garden Inn give 20% of the gross to Expedia?

For the core customers of the business, the hotel can offer more value to the customer (things like online checkin, etc) while cutting out the commission to the middleman. Travel agents still offer value for complex itineraries, destination travel, integration with corporate ERP systems, etc.

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

#60

Post by roel_v »

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…

"instead of some tech company in the US."

Booking.com is Dutch.

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