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Hotels Now See Online Travel Sites as Rivals (marketwatch.com)
Major hotel chains are engaging in an online turf war with the very travel sites that have helped drive their businesses. From a report: Marriott, Hilton and InterContinental are using extensive marketing campaigns to claw back business from Expedia, Priceline and other travel-booking sites, which steer customers to hotel properties but also take commissions of up to 30% for each reservation. The chains are starting to treat these sites less as valuable business partners and more as gatekeepers standing between them and their customers. Many large hotel brands are offering lower nightly rates and other perks to loyalty members who book directly through their sites instead of online travel agencies. [...] The new battle is the latest episode in a two-decade "frenemy"-style relationship between online travel agencies and the hotel industry. Sites such as Expedia and Priceline were crucial for hotels during down periods such as after 9/11, but they have gradually eaten into the share of overall bookings ever since. Also read: Why Bargain Travel Sites May No Longer Be Bargains.
I use the travel site to find the best room and rate.
Then I call the hotel directly to book usually at a better rate.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Not mentioned in the summary directly but the corollary to "perks", is that many hotels now will treat you poor poorly if you did not book through the hotel itself - you may not get as nice a room (the people checking you in have lots of flexibility as to location), you may not be as likely to get a request like late checkout, they may be less (or not at all) flexible when changing a booking.
So even though travel aggregators are convenient, it's probably a good idea to just book through the hotel...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Many of those sites are owned by a single company anyway, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
Every time I've tried to book travel in the past few years, I've found better prices directly on hotel chains' web sites. There was one time when the chains had no rooms, but Expedia did, but at $500/night (vs $125 normal rate.) I passed.
From my experience, the hotel industry got much worse following the rise of these reseller sites. They suck up rooms and hold them, hoping for a better deal. That makes it harder to find rooms, and their policies are always worse. It wasn't long ago that any hotel wouldn't charge you if you canceled the day of your reservation. That's getting harder to find, since these sites lowered expectations.
These sites sure advertise a lot, but a tiny amount of searching will almost always find better rates. I mostly use them to see what hotels are in the area then go directly to the hotel's web site to book. Always cheaper.
They are doing the same thing with rental cars, too. I've always found better rates elsewhere than those sites. Costco, in particular, has better rates for car rentals than just about anyone and if you don't want the car, just don't pick it up. No fees.
The sooner these sites die, the better.
I don't know, but it works for me.
I have a feeling that this is just the industry catching up. Airlines used to need the services of travel agents and would pay them a commission to sell tickets. This was because they had no or limited capacity to sell seats directly to the public. Once they got this capability, airlines stopped paying commissions and travel agencies either went out of business or specialized in areas where they could still make money. Hotels are a much higher margin business than airlines, and are much more inclined to increase occupancy at the expense of lower room rates, so it makes sense that they would pay commissions to get someone on the property and spending money. I know when I travel for business I'm much less cost-conscious than I would be if I were a vacationer, so hotels do make a lot of money once travelers are on-site.
I'm in technology and most tech people are all for squeezing every single inefficiency out of every system out there. And it is true that there are a lot of brokers and middlemen out there - ask anyone who just bought a house or car for examples. What I wonder is whether tightening the screws so much that you start to affect employment in significant ways is such a good idea. You can have a 100% efficient process, but if your profit relies on people having a disposable income to buy your products, does it make sense to leave some slack in the system?
The real disconnect is that Travelers want to buy a trip(airfare, car rental, hotel, attraction), Hoteliers want to sell a stay.
Even more importantly, business travelers aren't generally allowed to buy anything other than a Trip, they have to use some Travel Management Company who is essentially an Online Travel Agent but with a shitty interface and a corporate policy enforcement.
American Express is disrupting the Agent/hotel infrastructure right now by allowing hotels to pay a flat annual "commission replacement" instead of a per room night commission, when nights are booked using AMEX's corporate Travel Management Company. This of course locks them in to the agent model further, but makes the pill a bit sweeter. The "book direct" push is a bit wrong-headed as the Airlines have already opened central booking, such that it is a no-brainer for a website to add flights and hotels together, whereas hotels are almost never going to be able to tack on airfare without becoming full service travel agents.
Book direct seems like a no-brainer, until you look at how travel is planned and purchased in the real world.
And none of that is even counting the fact that all the big hotel chains still run their businesses on 30 year old platforms with no end in sight.
Booking non-refundable rooms for the guaranteed low price is also primed for an upset from the reselling app standpoint. If you book a $200 dollar non-refundable room... then you can't make it... you can auction it off on Roomer or others... selling it to someone for $150 recovering some of your loss... And undercutting the "lowest rate" promise at the exact same time.
The whole thing is a mess and direct booking won't solve it... and may make it worse.
Even if there is no difference in the price to direct booking there is one huge advantage: Expedia oversells rooms. I've had the experience of making a reservation with Expedia and turning up at a small US town in the middle of nowhere with the wife and kids on holiday to find that they overbooked the room. Fortunately, the staff had realized this and booked the only other remaining hotel room in the town so, thanks to their thoughtfulness we were ok, but after that experience, I have only ever used Expedia to find hotels and will never, ever use them again to book a room.
They seem to think that everybody knows which hotels are located in, let's say Buttfuck, Idaho and know which one is the best, cheapest or with the best location or facilities.
That's not the case.
I use them to _find_ the fuckers in the first place, without those sites, their hotels would be half empty.
Many of these booking sites (including all the big players) have clauses in the contracts that hotels sign when they list on the site that says they aren't allowed to offer the same thing cheaper anywhere else (including the hotels own site). Some jurisdictions have outlawed such practices but others (including here in Australia) haven't yet done so.
So the Hotels may not be able to offer a better deal if you book with them direct than they offer through the booking site without violating the contract.