The Hospitality Digital Toolbox for a New Normal | By Max Starkov – Hospitality Net hospitalitynet.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hospitalitynet.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Founder at Infinito
Rate Parity in itself was a flawed and BS concept from the get go, only putting more powers on OTA s and tech vendors making money of selling parity data to hotels. If we look at other industries: buy a TV in shop 1, same TV in shop 2 cheaper. Petrol same thing..even strawberries from the same brand in 2 different shops having a 25% variance in price?
so the question is not, is it obsolete? the question should be: how are we getting out of this mess?
What we forget mostly is that OTA s and Hotels both want the same thing: increase revenues. OTA s do that by competing against other OTA s with the same products (lie supermarkets), hotels do that by competing on value and price (like a variety of strawberry brands on the shelve). It is in no ones interest to sell cheap rates because it will drive down commission cost and revenue for the hotels. OTA s use member rates to undercut other OTA s..Hotels undercut their competition to steal business from them.
Today s typical online travel consumer - your past, current and future hotel guest - is exposed to more than 250,000 digital micro-moments a year: from social media interactions to messaging and quick read of the headlines on their smartphones (Google Research).