Hotel distribution is going to be an even more dangerous minefield in post-pandemic times, with players fighting harder and harder to get the same hotel booking.
NB: This is an article from Direct Your Bookings
But how different is hotel distribution going to be in 2021?
Any different? Or no different at all?
With this post I’m going to show you three different situations that might affect your hotel distribution and how the Online Travel Agencies are preparing for the rebound.
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There will be news, but also situations that used to be happening in pre-pandemic times too, unbeknownst to most hoteliers.
Ready? Let’s dig in.
Hotel Demand and Supply.
It’s obvious, but we shouldn’t forget: there will be a rebound of course, but travel demand will be lower than a year ago, yet hotel supply has remained the same, more or less, and generally speaking.
This means that Hotel Distribution, which I like to refer to as our battlefield, will also be affected by an increasing number of players (OTAs, Metasearch engines, Tour Operators, Wholsesalers, etc) who will put forth any sort of actions, in order to win the deal.
Many of these actions being very borderline, to say the least.
Every single dollar counts. Not only for us Hoteliers, but also for these 3rd-party players.
In other words: if Hotel Distribution used to be very complex before Covid, now it’s going to be a total mess.
And when we talk about borderline activities, how can we not start by talking about Expedia?
1. Expedia
Let’s see the real example.
Direct hotel trigger on Google, meaning the name of the hotel as keyword. In this case Bank Hotel Stockholm.
Let’s have a look at Google Hotel Ads:
Values are in Thai Bahts as I am physically in Thailand, with Google being able to automatically detect my location.
Visually speaking, EX is the go-to and cheapest hotel distribution channel, with the booking engine feeding Book on Google with higher and less competitive rates.
Let’s switch to US dollars though, as it may be easier to understand.
To do so, I connect to a server in the US. This way, the results on Google will come up as if I was in the US, and despite the fact I am physically in Thailand.
The discounted deal doens’t look so relevant, yet now all the 4 main slots on Google are prerogative of EX only, being Travelocity, Orbitz and Hotels.com part of the same group: that’s a powerful Hotel Distribution Strategy by EX, isn’t it?
However, even though visually the screen looks different, all the values are the same: EX offers the cheapest deal.
Let’s move on by clicking on the EX result.
$210.
As you might expect, that’s not the price EX should be coming up with (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it, no?).
Note in fact the 10% OFF on top of the price. Is it a discount normally applied by the hotel via extranet? Let’s see it.
Let’s click on this $210 deal to move forward and…
In no case this is something that you should see.
But I guess there is no need to explain the obvious, right?
Besides, let’s move onto the final step of the booking process and see what the final price is, including taxes.
Final price: $234.74 including taxes.
Now, let’s recap.
I’m a prospective customer of this hotel, searching for a room arriving on February 11th for 1 night.
I’m in the US (even though physically in Thailand, but as said I connected to a VPN in the US). The hotel is in Stockholm, Sweden.
Would perhaps the above scenario be different if I was in Sweden?
Country of the Hotel.
Point being, if this is a bordeline behaviour of EX (btw, you give your own meaning to the word borderline…), would the staff of the hotel see the exact same rates, when checking how their own property shows up on EX?
