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BIG hotel chains are paving the way for a trend of direct bookings, with Choice Hotels International the latest group to jump on the bandwagon.
Aggressive marketing campaigns have been carried out by hotels to take back their market share and weed out third-party distribution channels or online travel agencies (OTAs) such as TripAdvisor or Agoda.
The chief financial officer of Choice Hotels David White said that although “OTAs continued to grow as part of our business,” the company is “not happy with the price points that they want”.
“We’re not anti-OTA, but we are not at all happy with some of their practices and we’ve never been happy with their pricing,” he added.
Hilton too launched a marketing campaign – one of its biggest in its 100-year history – to tell its loyalty members to “stop clicking around” by booking directly on their site.
A few weeks ago, Marriott launched an unambiguous campaign titled “It Pays to be Direct” in a bid to woo guests directly to the site.
The relationship between hotels and online travel agencies (OTA) has been contentious lately due to the fact that hotels are resentful of the high commission that the agencies often charge, oftentimes 15 percent or higher.
This has prompted large hotel chains to push back by offering discounts to guests booking directly with them as well as other benefits including program points, online check-in, express check-out and mobile reservation management.
Marriott’s “It Pays to be Direct” campaign which offers low rates among other perks
It’s not just lower rates that travelers can enjoy by direct booking, but perks like personalized service and room upgrades are more likely too.
However, based on a report on Skift, Expedia hit back by saying that hotel chains are likely to suffer from reduced exposure and lost traffic from OTAs’ billboard effect.
The American Society of Travel Agents said that forcing agents to book directly on hotel websites “makes comparative shopping harder than agents and consumers alike, and adds to an agent’s workload by disrupting the standard booking process”.
The post Hotels gain from direct booking in war against online travel agencies appeared first on Travel Wire Asia.
Source: travelwireasia.com