Briefing: Meta-disruption in hotel bookings

According to Statistica, over 35% of Millennial and Gen X travellers (all adults under 48) use ‘meta-search’ when planning travel, allowing them to automatically combine search engine results. It is ten years since the launches of two well-known meta-search sites Kayak and Trivago in 2005. In 2015 meta-search is one technology that is developing fast and impacting on hoteliers. According to Skift, changes to Google’s hotel finder search will make Google a big player in the meta-search arena this year.

With the hospitality booking landscape constantly changing these videos have expert discussion on approaches to distribution:

Meta-search allows the consumer to limit the amount of ‘clicks’ from the beginning of their holiday internet research to their booking. While the actual booking is made with the OTA or the hotel the search site allows the researcher to compare deals on the same trip across different sites. This ease and efficiency has made meta-search popular. With consumers choosing to use this shortcut it is important for hospitality businesses to consider whether or not they are showing up in the search results. To appear in meta-search results hoteliers can list themselves on the website (an option on sites such as TripAdvisor or Kayak), or on an OTA (Trivago only lists OTA inventory), which tend to be more prominent in results.

Trivago is the world’s largest online hotel search with 100% growth every year since 2008. It shows results from 266 booking sites (which encompasses 726,065 hotels).

Kayak receives over one billion queries each year. It also has a mobile app which has been downloaded 40 million times.

Metasearch is also frequently used for booking flights on sites such as Monomondo, Skyscanner, and Travel Supermarket.  There is even an apartment specific meta-search site Apartum for consumers preferring alternative accommodation to hotels.

If you’ve been sent to this page and you’re not yet on the circulation list to receive these regular briefings and you would like to sign up, you can do see here. It’s free.

Video clips produced by yBC for the Hospitality Channel, including interview from industry conferences such as the IHIF conference as well as specific Hospitality Channel shoots.

Briefing: OTA giants are eating up the industry

According to a report from IBISWorld, online travel agents are expected to account for 51% of the UK travel industry’s total revenue in 2015. This has risen from just 10% a decade ago. Online travel agents are now powerful entities in the hospitality world and are growing and consolidating. Industry leader Expedia has announced the acquisition of two travel agents in as many months.

In these videos, hospitality experts discuss how the OTAs have gained such power and what this means for hoteliers. Includes comment from Expedia’s Christopher Michau:

A Report by Euromonitor International ‘Online Travel Intermediaries: A Fast Changing Competitive Landscape’ found that on-line travel intermediaries grew 8% CAGR over the 2008-2013 period. This reflects activity both from OTA’s and online booking platforms owned by hotel brands. But in an industry where online booking is growing so rapidly in popularity, the OTAs more specialist expertise gives them an advantage, as discussed by Brian Reeves above.

The Euromonitor Report also states that: ‘The online travel agency sector is seeing increasing consolidation, with Expedia and Priceline emerging as its dominant players.’

For 2014, gross bookings for Expedia Inc increased by 28% from 2013 and revenue increased 21%. Currently Expedia Inc includes (among others); Expedia.com, Hotels.com, trivago (a metasearch website), and Travelocity. The last of these, Travelocity, was acquired in January 2015 for $280 million. This month Expedia has also announced an agreement to acquire Orbitz Worldwide, which comprises of a travel technology solutions company and travel planning sites such as cheaptickets.com.

The Priceline group had $39.2 billion gross bookings in 2013. The Connecticut, USA, based group owns and operates Booking.com which takes over 750,000 room nights reservations a day.

If you’ve been sent to this page and you’re not yet on the circulation list to receive these regular briefings and you would like to sign up, you can do see here. It’s free.

Video clips produced by ybc.tv for the Hospitality Channel, including interview from industry conferences such as the IHIF conference as well as specific Hospitality Channel shoots.

Chat Button