Brands Take Stand

Brands Take A Stand For Direct Distribution Industry partnership changes the rules of the game in the competition for online bookings. Thursday, January 12, 2012 Dan Marcec

The exponential growth of online shopping and bookings has led to an industry-wide dash for virtual market share, with the recent economic downturn and subsequent rate erosion across the hotel landscape leading to often less-than-friendly competition in the online marketplace. But despite hotels and their brands’ notorious challenges with OTAs, the fact is that having your hotels on the shelf in as many places as possible is good for overall awareness and drives reservations.

However, just having your hotel’s website in various channels doesn’t mean it’s priced right or that your distribution strategy is optimized. Even if your rate is right (though in many cases I assure you it’s not), OTA commissions cause considerable financial strain if you give away too much business to those third parties.  

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