The term “OTA” is well known in the hotel industry, but in case you don’t know, this acronym means “Online Travel Agency”. The most popular one, probably, is booking.com. As I said, they are not a new technology, but an incredibly powerful tool to show your property to people all around the world, that are definitely potential guests. Depending on the OTA, customers can book hotels, accommodations, B&Bs, flights, rental cars, activities, and other travel services.
So, this Hotel OTAs marriage is important for hoteliers because they allow hotels to reach a wider audience of potential customers, increase their bookings, and maximize their revenue management strategies.
By partnering with popular OTAs such as Airbnb, e-dreams, and TripAdvisor, hotels, accommodations and B&Bs can list their rooms and attract more bookings from customers who prefer to book their trips online. These OTAs also provide a platform for smaller properties to compete with larger hotels, giving them the opportunity to showcase their unique offerings to a global audience. Obviously, you should choose the right OTAs for your audience, later in the article, we will see that some OTAs are stronger in some countries than in others.
Hotel and OTAs incredible duo is also useful to manage your revenue effectively by providing you with data and insights into traveller preferences and booking trends. Why this is important for you? Because you need insights to adjust your offer, from the pricing to the marketing strategy to have more possibilities to attract consumers and, above all, the customers that you want in your property!
Overall, partnering with OTAs is a crucial aspect of the hotel industry nowadays, allowing them to attract more customers while also helping them to manage their revenue effectively.
As I was explaining before, OTAs are not Santa, so for all these benefits, hotels pay commissions to the OTA for each booking made through their platform. The percentage of those commissions is increasing a lot in these past years, so as always, pros and contras. Surely, you can find a way to cut off this expense, using OTAs but implementing them with another distribution strategy.