Hilton's New Ad Campaign and the Push for More Direct Hotel Bookings

For the 24.95 million people who tuned in to watch the Grammy Awards on CBS last week, an advertisement from Hilton may have stood out — especially if they were travel agents. In the ad, Hilton Worldwide made it clear to potential guests to "stop clicking around," explicitly saying that the lowest guaranteed rate at a Hilton can only be found in one place: Hilton.com. The spot marked the launch of the McLean, Virginia-based hospitality company's largest-ever marketing campaign, and was another firing shot in Hilton's battle to reclaim its market share from third-party distribution channels. By touting the benefits of booking direct and bypassing sites like Expedia and Booking.com, Hilton is going after rate parity and most-favored nation clauses, and attempting to collect revenue that would otherwise go toward commissions paid to third-party sites and travel agents. Those commission rates paid by hotels to online travel agencies can range widely from 10 to 30 percent, and hotels have long had a love-hate relationship with online travel agencies (OTAs). While they help hotels fill rooms, the sites can also eat into hotel revenues. By Hilton's estimates, some 57 billion Hilton HHonors Points—or 1.6 million free room nights—went unearned last year because guests booked their stays through a third party. As early as last year, Hilton already began chipping away at the commission rates paid to agencies like Expedia and Booking.com. Last year, Hilton negotiated for the right to lower commissions and earlier this year, the company tested out offering exclusive HHonors discounts of up to 10 percent off pu