At the upcoming Annual Hotel Conference, taking place Oct. 11 and 12 in Manchester, UK, Michael McCartan will be leading a talk on the relationship between hotels and online travel agencies — more specifically, he’s calling for a truce.
McCartan is managing director Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Duetto, a post he has held since December, 2014, where he handles the rollout of Duetto’s services and the ongoing development of its customer success teams throughout the region. He also feels strongly about the interactions between hotel companies and OTAs, and the title of his panel at AHC says it all: “Make Love Not War – Embrace OTAs for a Brighter Future.” The panel will be attended by Thomas Magnuson of Magnuson Hotels, James Osmond of Triptease, David Taylor of glh Hotels and Ryan Pearson of Booking.com.
McCartan knows all about what hoteliers think of OTAs, which is why he picked a panel with a mix of hoteliers, tech companies and an OTA itself. He isn’t looking to spark a battle royale, but a debate. “What we don’t want is to agree that the current situation is the status quo, and just throw our hands up and say ‘it is what it is,’” McCartan said.
Ahead of the panel, here are five observations McCartan shared on the state of hotel/OTA relationships.
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Hoteliers are warming up to OTAs
Anyone who has attended a brand conference in the hospitality industry can attest that no matter how hard executives try to steer conversations away from OTAs the topic always comes up. McCartan said that hotels by and large felt they were at the receiving end of a raw deal when it came to OTAs, as what began as a cozy relationship between hotel operators and budding technology companies feeding them bookings evolved into lopsided deals with little recourse for operators.
“Hoteliers felt they weren’t being catered to, and they despised OTAs for that,” McCartan said. “There has been a softening of their relationship recently, but that feeling still exists.”
McCartan attributes part of that “softening” to the industry’s renewed efforts to improve direct bookings, and as a result the imbalance of the relationship between OTAs and hotels has shifted to remain on the OTAs’ side.
“Rather than moan about it, hotels have decided to act on it and compete with OTA dominance in a way more constructive than whinging at a conference,” he said.
