The Role of OTAs in the Travel Planning Process
Expert: Chris Anderson, Assistant Professor at Cornell School of Hotel Administration
Travel shoppers use online travel agencies (OTAs) more for research and comparison than booking. Although OTA market share is small, hotel listings on OTAs influence a much larger share of transactions. Hotels that are listed on OTAs see increased reservations on their own sales channels (call centers, booking engines, etc.).
In this episode, Chris Anderson, Assistant Professor at Cornell School of Hotel Administration explains additional factors that influence conversions:
- Page positioning
- Advertisements
- Competitive offers
Basically, the better you merchandise your hotel on OTAs, the greater your conversion factor will be.
The California Lodging Industry Association (CLIA) supports travel booking services that expands the tourism pie, creates jobs, and is critical to economic growth. OTCs put heads in beds and are often the difference between profit and loss.
Bobbie Singh-Allen
Executive Vice President / COO
California Lodging Industry Association
Very true! I am an online marketing analyst handling SEO/SEM for hotels/resorts with OTAs being an integral part of overall success as noted by the video -room nights, bookings, revenues, and also for the incredible research, comparisons, pricing, and exposure with a very high number of impressions per day, which is a much broader scope and higher percentage influencer than an individual property website (therefore reaching a higher number of travelers) with tracked conversions.
The follow on topic would be “how does a hotel increase the percentage of bookings on its own site i.e. what is the marketing mix to funnel as large a percentage as possible potential bookers onto the hotels own site. OTA’s are part of that mix but what are the other elements of the online marketing mix to achieve this?
No matter what website the travel shopper visits, a hotelier’s goal should be to convert that person into a buyer. In the same way that using rich visual experiences on 3rd party sites will help “get your hotel on the shopping list” that same visual experience on your own hotel web site will increase conversion.
Driving travel shoppers to your own website is a must and an admirable goal but keep in mind that all travel shoppers are not the same… some like to visit many sites before booking. Hoteliers have the opportunity to merchandise themselves on those other sites in order to capture as many buyers as possible.
nothing really new, but still interesting.
Interesting to hear the reversal of trend whereby shoppers are coming back to direct hotel channels to book.
A very interesting video, teaches us to maximise our listings on OTAs. Any chance of a discussion on hotel blogs and their usefulness?
The role of Travel Meta Search Engine should also be discussed.
Great networking opportunities!
THANKS
We need to help each prospect imagine the real experience they can have every time we can contact them. OTA, brand site, hotel site, email, social media links, chamber of commerce site, CVB site, event web site – every way we contact the customer. When we do this we sell more through the OTA and we sell more through every other channel. We sell more!
And we get a better customer – one who wants the experience we’ve presented, will enjoy it and generally give us good reviews, share the experience with their friends and recomend us to prospects who haven’t thought to visit us on their own.
Every customer source is an important block in rebuilding occupancy. Together they are more than the sum of their parts. I need to be everywhere a customer is when they are there.
Bill, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. The fundamental premise of merchandising your hotel online is to ensure that your hotel presents itself in the best, most current light wherever travel shoppers choose to look and find your hotel online.
The Internet has revolutionized how shoppers shop for travel by empowering them with the ability to do the research and comparison stages of the shopping journey on their own. They have thousands of web channels to choose from and will use those channels that easily satisfy their need at the appropriate stage of shopping.
Travel shoppers don’t care (or probably don’t know) if a web site’s business model is centered on the booking of travel or not… they just know they get what they are looking for from these sites.
So, hoteliers that focus their online efforts on a single channel (say their own website) at the expense of OTAs and many other sites do so at their own peril.
I agree 100 %. Good job.
You guys should to be used youtube.com
We have a youtube handle at vfmleonardoonline