Stop using marketplaces and book directly, these companies have no risks and take 16% to 30% commissions. If consumers start booking directly, recovery from the pandemic will be much faster.
Some perspective from someone who has worked in hospitality: Some brands have fought back in creative ways.
An essential part of being listed on Booking or Expedia is to agree to never advertise lower prices anywhere else, including your own website. That means you can share a $100/night rate on your own brand's site (with no commission) and you can't tell Booking or Expedia to show rates over $100. Thus, users have no advantage in going to a hotel's own site, which only shows their own brand's hotels. Expedia/Booking on the other hand show you all the hotels in the area and you can be confident in price-shopping (the one exception is loyalty points, but if you're a price-conscious, non brand-loyal customer, that won't matter to you). Worse, competing hotels can get better visibility by sharing even lower rates and promotions on these aggregators, and it becomes a race to the bottom, really hurting hotels long-term just for visibility.
Choice Hotels had an interesting response a couple years ago: they show a "member-only rate" on their website. In the above scenario, technically, their public rate is $100 so Booking would take around $20 leaving $80 for the hotel. But Choice might also show $93 as an option on their website only for members (which is free to join, only takes an email/password). This way, technically their members-only rate isn't being advertised for just anyone so they don't run afoul of their Booking/Expedia agreements while only losing $7 as opposed to $20.
Last I checked, Booking and Expedia didn't like this and they docked Choice Hotel visibility in their searches because even if it didn't run afoul of the agreement, they still have discretion over their search ranking.
These aggregators don't need to disappear. They just need to lose some of their leverage over hotels. If all hotel brands banded together to offer their own "members-only" rate and customers became aware of what's happening, I'm sure it would really help out hotels long term.
What is shocking to me, is why aggregators got bailouts. This is not sustainable for the market. 16% to 30% commission, taxes, costs, almost hotels are subsidizing tourist stays. There is a path outside the marketplaces, we offer plenty of perks for direct guests and it works.
Any “solution” to the problem of excessive power of platforms that is based on the “individually do the harder thing” is bound to miserably fail.
I think this kind of fallacy should have a name by now.
This doesn't work anymore, the platform is also used for discovering places.
I have seen this both as a traveller and working in the industry for a little while. If you are not on Booking.com you might as well close, 95% of our reservations came through Booking.com, the rest were other platforms, direct bookings and people walking in.
As a traveller its extremely convenient. I have a single place to do everything, I don't need to sign up anywhere else, I don't have to call, I don't have to worry about payments, in general everything just works without ever speaking to a human, I don't lose time calling around to check availability, I can see fotos and opinions. Consumers are not going to give that up.
On the hospitality side we never cared much about their fees, it has massive benefits as well (lower fraud rate, lower no show rate, integration with front desk software). The only problem is that they generally tend to give the customer the benefit of the doubt when there are any problems so good luck getting rid of bad reviews.
This is the real lesson. I've learned this the hard way several times and I won't book through any 3rd party service anymore.
If there is a problem, like your flight gets cancelled, the book service will tell you they can't do anything and you have to talk to the airline. The airline will tell you they can't do anything because you booked through a booking service. Eventually, things get resolved but is 10x more stressful than they need to be.
If you're due a refund, like for a cancelled flight, the booking service will try to keep part of it to cover their fee. It took initiating a chargeback to get my money back in one instance.
Don't mess around with these services. I know airlines are not necessarily paragons of customer service either, but it's better to deal with one entity that is actually in charge of providing the service.
Maybe they should fix their websites and refund / cancellation policies. No one would mind booking directly from a hotel website if they offered the same price, convenience and guarantees that booking does.
Booking.com does nothing special, it is the hotels that charge your card, and pay a commission to Booking.com. The only thing is that they enforce some common policies. Hotels give power to the marketplaces and then Stockholm syndrome kicks in.
Easier said than done if you want to pay with anything else than cash. Or if you want at least a somewhat functioning website where you can see if the venue is actually available and do booking.
I know it is hard, but I have done it and I am a Revenue Manager in hospitality and a tours company. You have to be strong, it is a long process where you get repeat customers and friends of customers. A small loyalty program, best protection if your customers deals directly. one on one relationship but it works.
