Hyatt and Booking.com quietly signed a new and restructured distribution agreement in early June about a year short of the prior agreement’s expiration as the U.S.-based hotel chain seeks leverage in its contentious negotiations with Expedia Inc., Skift has learned exclusively.
Hyatt, according to multiple sources, was reluctant to publicize the new pact with Booking.com because the chain didn’t want to further aggravate Expedia during negotiations, but with a July 31 deadline looming, apparently it is time to shake things up.
Some inside Hyatt believe that Expedia is being overly contentious and playing dirty by making direct pitches to Hyatt property owners about the perils of a prospective lack of an Expedia-Hyatt corporate-wide agreement, if that scenario comes to be.
On the other hand, it might be pointed out that it was Hyatt that first took the two sides’ stalemate public by seemingly leaking a communication to property owners about a decision to withdraw listings from Expedia in the event of no new agreement.
Skift learned that Hyatt signed a primary distribution deal in early June with Booking.com, one of the largest accommodations’ sites on the planet, and secondary agreements with sister sites Agoda and Priceline.com. None of these agreements were announced.
There are elements of the Hyatt-Booking.com agreement that contain volume pledges for Hyatt in the event the Chicago-headquartered chain’s properties becoming missing in action on Expedia Inc. sites, including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Orbitz.
Regarding those volume assurances from Booking.com, one Hyatt insider claimed that if the chain’s properties go dark on Expedia then he or she “could still sleep well at night.”
There is also talk that if the Expedia-Hyatt contract terminates with no resolution, then Booking.com would get some exclusive Hyatt content that wouldn’t be available broadly to other distributors.
