otas

Years into an ongoing tug-of-war over direct bookings, it’s fair to say that OTAs still stir up a lot of angst within the hotel marketing community

Google is back at it, adding another vital feature to results in its Hotel Ads product to help users decide where to book: pictures of the rooms

Here are the four steps you can take to optimize your hotel’s OTA profiles to improve your ranking, land more bookings – and make more money for your hotel

While some segments can evaporate in hours, your direct online segment is much more stable. If your share of direct business is below 10% of your bookings, you can be seriously harmed

Research by Which? suggests 80% of hotel rooms can be booked cheaper by going direct than through OTAs. Rate parity clauses were blamed, with UKHospitality calling for the UK to ban them.

Analyze and take time to improve OTA rankings for your property. Better ranking can make a huge difference in reaching a wider range of customers who would book your hotel and enhance revenue

Google will continue to want as many players advertising on its platform. OTAs and metasearch sites will need to adapt and evolve. It just means the industry is playing the game by Google’s rules

Obviously OTAs also offer a big marketing opportunity for hotels, but they still want to push for direct bookings and escape restrictions on parity rates

Within 14 of the 20 tourism destinations, direct bookings – gained via a hotel’s website – either climbed the list from the previous year or maintained their position among the top five spots

As Google has risen to become a travel powerhouse in recent years, a complex situation has developed between the search giant’s marketing efforts and its travel selling arm