By Jack Tan, Independent Hotel Consultant
Retailing hotel rooms has never been as complicated as it is today, with a myriad of channels, tools and services now available. Direct is every hotelier’s pipe dream and for some, it remains a pipe dream as the market becomes more complex and the consumer more fickle and savvy. That doesn’t stop some from trying though. A look at the future of hotel booking, retailing and pricing.
Talk of the town is now very focused on getting customers to book directly with the hotels instead of third parties intermediaries like Expedia, Booking.com, etc. At the WIT morning session on the future of hotel booking we heard a very lively discussion on this hot topic.
Accor Group created a stir in the industry by offering a curated marketplace to entice independent hotels to sell on their platform. Romain Roulleau, SVP Digital and E-Commerce of AccorHotels says, “We are the dolphins among the sea of sharks”, implying that their new marketplace is created by being smarter and transparent to the hoteliers and consumers. Accor Hotels is curating the hotels to join this marketplace based on several criteria including location of the hotel, its TripAdvisor rating and a rule of exclusion: the hotel must not be part of the top 50 international hotel chains.
IHG’s Chief Commercial Officer AMEA regon, Nick Barton, wants his customers to have a seamless experience with about 70% of their bookings are coming direct.
Perhaps Dan Wacksman, SVP Global Distribution, Outrigger Hotels and Resorts said it best. “We have a very close relationship with our guests. Our guests sleep with us. So it’s important that they are satisfied”. He delivered that with the pun very much intended.
So, what’s the most important thing that hotels have to do to get the consumer to book directly with them? It was certainly a consensus that the ease of booking ranks number one on everyone’s list. The other was getting in front of the customer. You need to be involved in the entire customer journey, according to Nick. This includes creating mobile apps for check-in and and check-outs and the use of beacon technology.
A panelist of technology providers also weighed in on this issue. “Don’t build your own technology solution. Hotels are not technology companies,” proclaimed David Meltzer of Sabre Hospitality. He continued to say that there are enough technology solutions out there that hotels needn’t build their own. Instead, they should concentrate on providing better guest experience.
According to Ben Jost of TrustYou, the “lines are blurring for the consumer”. To a large number of independent hotels, a site like Booking.com is the brand that is bringing in the bookings for them, and it’s hard for independent hotels that don’t have the large brand power to compete with large OTAs for direct bookings. It is much more difficult for independents to get in front of the customers.
Duetto’s CEO and Co-founder, Patrick Bostworth stood firm that hotels should have flexible pricing. “Transparency in search,” said Hishame Assi of HotelsCombined.
Are all these enough to move the needle to convinced consumers to book direct? Should hotels take note from the airline industry, specifically the bold move of Lufthansa charging consumers extra fees if it’s booked outside their direct supply chain?
Could one of the big hotel brands make a similar move and charge a fee if consumers book via an OTA but no fee if booked directly on the brand’s own website? While the jury is still out on the Lufthansa move, we too will have to wait and see for our own industry. Is it time to press Ctrl-Alt-Del and reboot?
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