Beating OTAs is easy—if you know how!

In recent decades OTAs such as Booking, Expedia and Priceline have emerged and developed. We have also seen other companies, such as TripAdvisor and Google, transform from useful sources of information for travelers into competitors of OTAs, first acting as price comparators and then offering the possibility of direct booking on their website.

Today OTAs have gained great importance due to their ability to provide reservations to hotels, as they invest many more resources than a hotel or hotel chain. It is understandable that hotels saw OTAs, years ago, as an outlet to increase reservations, because they did not have the resources at that time to do so at the individual level, but nowadays they have the opportunity to take control and with lower costs than previous decades.

The time required—and therefore the cost—to develop a website is lower than in the past; booking engines have evolved incorporating advanced features, have significantly improved the conversion rate, uploading inventory has become an easy process for all hotels thanks to the channel managers and PMS. Likewise, the possibility of investing in segmented campaigns with an excellent return on investment and costs lower than the OTAs’ commissions, should end up turning these intermediaries into secondary players.

At Hotel’s Performance we know that successful hotels try to create exceptional experiences for their guests, experiences that have to be communicated in a clear, detailed and personal way—something that standardized platforms such as OTAs do not allow, showing the establishments in an identical way, without being able to differentiate one from another.

The experience of a trip goes far beyond the simple choice of a destination and some tourist attractions to visit. Travelers’ expectations have evolved. It is necessary to assume that in order to win over our guest and get them to book directly on our website, we have to provide them with more information, the best price and cutting-edge technology.

A decade ago a customer was making the search “hotel in Paris”, but today a customer performs the search “hotel in Paris next to the Seine with views pet friendly reviews”. Why? For the simple fact that the consumer has evolved, he is much more informed, he knows that he can look for exactly what he needs and that he will find it.

The informed consumer will start planning his trip in search engines, once the destination is decided, will select and compare prices of hotels that interest him in sites such as Tripadvisor, Trivago, Booking, etc. Once the initial selection is made, a significant proportion of users will visit the sites of the hotels that they liked and fit their budget, to find out more, to be able to see images / videos of the establishment in high resolution and above all to see if it offers a better price and conditions than comparators and OTAs.

This is an opportunity that hotels cannot pass up, when a potential client visits your site. If customers have searched for the name of your establishment, they may be comparing it with other establishments. This is the opportunity to seduce them by offering all the information they may need about your hotel and convince them by offering them an offer they cannot refuse, the best price and conditions.

To achieve this there are many tools hotels can use: customized offers, advanced booking engines, optimization of the booking process through A/B and multivariate testing, microsegmented campaigns, on-site retargeting, etc. If you want us to help you make the most of it, you just have to ask us for a proposal.

Call us now, we will be happy to assist you.