While rate parity ensures that you have complete control of setting the bar for your room rates and ensure equal prices across all distribution channels, but it destroys your chances to compete freely in the market and also makes you lose a voluminous amount of potential revenue as massive commissions to the OTAs.
The hospitality industry has mixed reaction against rate parity with OTAs and Hotels having a different take on it. Countries including the USA, France, Italy, and Germany have already started employing measures to either restrict rate parity to specific scenarios, or completely do away with it.
However, a deeper understanding of these changes will help you figure out how you can stay ahead of your competitors despite the developments that apparently inhibit your property’s potential to profit and grow. Let us delve into some rate parity tips to help you dash over the speed-breakers in your revenue-maximizing journey.
#1: Prepare yourself for a world without rate parity
In an ideal world, we can expect everyone to be fair and follow rate parity agreements. However, we do not live in such a world and thus the Rate Parity breach and the entire cycle of tracking who cut our rates, etc.
OTAs bring you lots of revenue, but they come with just as many restrictions and rigid, unbending parity rules. A removal of such rules will make your revenue management and maximizing strategy much more flexible and provide you with ample room to experiment. Hence, you will no longer need to monitor what rates your partners and OTAs offer at a given time. You can compete in a market open to rapid price changes that can be dictated by the forces of demand and supply and not some agreements that may not be favourable for all times.
#2: Improve your hotel brand website
There is a reason why OTAs are so popular, the first choice for booking by travellers and they dominate as a primary source of the vast majority of online bookings. This is because apart from marketing efforts, they have also invested in an appealing user interface to build a brand identity and brand image. They have ensured to provide the customers with an efficient user experience that involves fast web page loading, regular updates, call-to-action buttons that are easy to locate and a robust online booking engine.
