How Will Hotel Content Aggregators vs. Hotel Direct Connects Affect Business Traveler?
May 30th 2011 06:58
During the past month, the travel industry has been buzzing with news on airline-OTA direct connect spats, lawsuits and even deals. The issues at the heart of all this buzz and news revolve around distribution strategy and the battle to control and optimize the return delivered by competing channels to market.
There are many parallels for the hotel industry. So, how will this affect the business traveler? This is an excerpt from hotel content aggregator HotelHub's blogpost on this same topic...
What Business Travelers Want:
The business travel booking process is complex and time-consuming, and it is logical that business travel managers would embrace any channel that makes it easier for them to find the right hotel at the right price worldwide. This is much preferable to trawling through endless direct hotel websites to find rates and inventory availability and then trying to figure out which ones comply with business policies.
Direct connects are good when they help shave off that extra distribution cost, but just won’t help when the client wants to compare multiple options and choose the best option, while remaining within travel policy guidelines. In particular issues of travel policy compliance and crisis management implication mean that companies increasingly have a legal obligation to track the whereabouts of their business travellers – a situation made substantially more difficult when using multiple direct bookings.
Delta airlines signing the direct connect deal with Farelogix, shows that also airlines ultimately need an aggregator, to have a wider customer reach. The situation with hotels is no different – though the significance of direct connects may increase over time, content aggregators will continue to be a critical component of any effective distribution strategy.
You can read the full post here: Will Meta Hotel Content Aggregators Continue To Outpace Hotel Direct Connects?
There are many parallels for the hotel industry. So, how will this affect the business traveler? This is an excerpt from hotel content aggregator HotelHub's blogpost on this same topic...
What Business Travelers Want:
The business travel booking process is complex and time-consuming, and it is logical that business travel managers would embrace any channel that makes it easier for them to find the right hotel at the right price worldwide. This is much preferable to trawling through endless direct hotel websites to find rates and inventory availability and then trying to figure out which ones comply with business policies.
Direct connects are good when they help shave off that extra distribution cost, but just won’t help when the client wants to compare multiple options and choose the best option, while remaining within travel policy guidelines. In particular issues of travel policy compliance and crisis management implication mean that companies increasingly have a legal obligation to track the whereabouts of their business travellers – a situation made substantially more difficult when using multiple direct bookings.
Delta airlines signing the direct connect deal with Farelogix, shows that also airlines ultimately need an aggregator, to have a wider customer reach. The situation with hotels is no different – though the significance of direct connects may increase over time, content aggregators will continue to be a critical component of any effective distribution strategy.
You can read the full post here: Will Meta Hotel Content Aggregators Continue To Outpace Hotel Direct Connects?
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