Some industry professionals have declared rate parity "dead". Some European countries have de facto outlawed rate parity in recent years. Yet, all major hotel chains strictly enforce rate parity for all publicly available rate. A number of industry experts believe that rate parity benefits hoteliers more than the OTAs and cite case studies from Europe that clearly show that the only beneficiaries of the removal of rate parity were the OTAs. Should rate parity become obsolete or should it continue to be a best practices opponent of hotelier's revenue management strategy?

Aymeric  Erulin
Aymeric Erulin
Multi-Property Revenue Manager

If rate parity becomes obsolete (legally), maybe the players with the strongest direct channels could afford the luxury of having different prices between their channels. But let's be realistic, for most of the hotels and their dependency on OTA's business, the goal will be to maintain a good display ranking. Today, to have the best ranking, hoteliers pay more commission. Tomorrow hotels will still pay more commission but also only be pushed if planning and pricing are loaded identically to their direct channels. So, even though hotels are legally allowed to drop rate parity, this will hardly happen due to the fight between hotels to get the best ranking and get more business.

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