Sales & Marketing

I contest the reference to the word 'becoming'. It has always been a distribution channel. To that end, I would also contest the designation that it be regulated solely by revenue management. If anything we have learned (at an accelerated pace due to the pandemic).

Given today's radical transparent online hotel marketplace, the dividing line between sales, marketing, e-commerce, revenue management, pricing and even loyalty needs to disappear. These traditional organisational structures only create silos that get in the way of insuring that we put the right product at the right price in front of the right customer at the appropriate time moment in their purchase cycle.

Hotel metasearch has become a distribution channel and is no longer an advertising channel ever since Google introduced its Pay-per-stay (PPS) fee model. Other metasearch players like Trivago and Kayak all offer CPA (Cost per acquisition) model, which is not in tune with the current era of high cancellation rates due to Covid uncertainties and ever-changing travel restrictions.

I am quite surprised we're still discussing this topic in "Them Vs. Us" terms. I've been in the travel industry since the late '90s, and I think, except for the early '00s (for obvious reasons), I've never seen a single property NOT listed on -at least one- OTA.

OTAs should educate hoteliers on the long-term benefits of improving their guest stay experiences vs burning time, capital and energy on trying to out-perform OTAs in online bookings. To put it simply, OTAs are perfect for a first-time visitor to your hotel destination.

Not working with OTAs is foolish. Their costs are within the average for distribution costs of other industries (auto industry is 30%, DTC e-commerce is 40-50%, Amazon sellers are around 45%). The problem with OTAs is, like many online distribution platforms, they are really bad at caring for their supply-partners.