Over the past few years, major actors in the technology industry and new innovative start-ups have taken over the various players in the hotel industry by developing adapted solutions that can put the OTAs’ position at test. This is the case for many companies like Hotel Intelligence which will offer the simplest, intuitive, reliable, flexible, practical, secure booking tool for the hotels’ S.M.A.R.T objectives – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
The price comparison widget Price Checker, developed by Hotel Intelligence, is dedicated to official hotels’ websites and its main purpose is to promote Direct Booking while increasing its profitability. The latter makes it possible to inform the consumer in all transparency and during his booking process of the prices applied by the OTAs, screenshot in support. This ultimate proof exposes definitively the dogma installed by the OTAs over the last ten years claiming that they offer the best rates. The integration of the Rate Match, Hotel Intelligence’s booking engine, will allow hotels to set their prices compared to OTAs and control their direct sales offers by guaranteeing the best prices each time. Furthermore, hotels can add the Hotel Sync and Hotel Design tools, in order to synchronize, transform, adapt or create a website at the height of a real Direct Booking tool. In the current economic climate, hoteliers must regain control of their pricing policy through their website by investing in a better booking experience for their clients.
A flexible, transparent and accessible solution for all hoteliers.
At present, Hotel Intelligence seems to be the only player in the market that has been able to find the solution to allow hoteliers to compete on the same level by providing a turnkey solution based on a win-win model. If the solution doesn’t work on your hotel, you’ll only have wasted the time of a coffee to implement it.
The solution is very complete and covers all the aspects previously mentioned. Serving both guests and revenue managers, a real-time Price Checker allows you to find out at what rates OTAs are selling hotel nights in each market around the world and to identify the devices used when booking online. This gives the revenue manager complete visibility into the market and the ability to adjust pricing instantly.
There are two ways to collaborate with Hotel Intelligence: include the Rate Match widget on the hotel website with the Booking Button or, free of charge, get a complete website optimised for Direct Booking in 40 languages and 50 currencies in 2 minutes with the Booking Website. To this, the intelligent hotel solution adds background work, visibility and SEO on Google. It allows you to connect directly to your customers while increasing your profitability.
These three elements make it possible to considerably multiply the percentage of Direct Booking compared to OTAs. When we know that 69% of OTAs guests go through the hotel website before finalizing their reservation on OTAs. It is here that we must understand the importance of converting the booking on the hotel’s website.
Why win-win? Simply because Hotel Intelligence is so sure of its technology that the remuneration is only based on Direct Booking. There are no connectivity, deployment, marketing, subscription or cancellation costs. Finally, the pricing policy has been built in consultation with hoteliers. They judged for themselves the price they were willing to pay to equip themselves with this booking solution. This artificial intelligence was specially designed to help hoteliers in their daily struggle with the managerial strategies implemented by OTAs.
OTAs are adapting.
However, the OTAs will not let this happen without retaliation. Indeed, the coronavirus has also hit them hard. And proof of this is their new and increasingly aggressive strategies.
Firstly, there are the increasingly aggressive enforcement measures against establishments marketing their rooms at a more competitive price, which find themselves relegated to the bottom of the league table in terms of the display of consumer searches, even though they have positive ratings from customers. For small establishments, this is a distressing warning shot that jeopardizes their financial equilibrium and, in some cases, forces them to agree to increase the rates offered on their official website. This is in order to be able to continue to generate bookings via their platform. On the other hand, OTAs are now beginning to market offers from third parties (usually wholesalers or tour operators) at unbeatable rates. Booking.com, with its “Booking Basic” program launched in 2018, is transforming itself into a marketplace selling products at negotiated prices for business-to-business distributors. This new strategy demonstrates the industry giant’s determination to dominate without limits, and to vehemently attack any challenge to its leadership.
A future in the making.
The year 2021 should therefore see a resurgence in the fight between hoteliers and OTAs. The debate that has been shaking the industry for several years now has turned into a true trade war in which all blows will be allowed. With the entry of new players in the fight, such as the housing rental giant Airbnb, which is also very badly affected by the health crisis (strong reduction in its workforce) and which should side with the hoteliers, a reversal of trend is not excluded. Nevertheless, the end of 2020 and the year 2021 will only be an episode in the long struggle that awaits hotel professionals to regain control of their distribution and recover the ground lost over the last ten years. In this very tense economic climate, only one stakeholder should be able to hold his own: THE CONSUMER, who will undoubtedly see rates pulled down structurally.
A solution to be discovered right now on https://hotelintelligence.io/.
