Launched earlier in May, Google Trips puts merges flights, hotels, packages, home-rentals, car rentals, ridesharing, cruises, and experiences search in one single, übermensch ecosystem, combining the Google Trips app, Google Flights, and Google Hotels under one landing page. And, with Google getting bigger on the travel landscape, OTAs continue diversifying the risks: Booking.com (with Q1-2019 revenue down by 3%, don't forget), especially, alluded to new possible acquisition and it is rumored to announce its new stand-alone tours & attractions program any day now. My long-view on the topic is that Google is going to cover the whole traveler's journey, while OTAs will move more and more to B2B, possibly even SaaS, landscapes. How will these changes impact hotels? What's your take?

Giulia Eremita
Giulia Eremita
Marketing professional, speaker, lecturer and journalist in the field of Digital Tourism

Google is redifining the game for OTAs and Meta, as well as OTAs and Meta redifined the search game for Google more 10-15 years ago and it took quite a while to make visible changes. Now OTAs are forced to rethink their own product and add value for their customers, taking control of the entire customer journey, because Google already owns it. I never believed in the power of all-in-one solution, even if it's a google product. There will always be a better product for a specific purpose elsewhere. As well as a brand which come first to the consumer's mind. For independent hotels it's time to plan advertising at scale to stay ahead of the game (or at least to catch up).

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