First Look at Expedia Accelerator Program for Improving Hotel Placement
Photo Credit: Hotels are starting to pay Expedia extra commissions to move higher in the all-important sort order on Expedia's hotel search-results pages. Expedia
Skift Take
Big hotel chains like Marriott and Hilton, with their ample marketing and advertising budgets, can scoff all they want about Expedia and Booking.com pay-to play programs for sort-order preference as the chains push direct bookings on their own sites. But small chains and independents will likely use the programs, seeking any small advantage they can wrangle.
Expedia's new Accelerator program offers a way for hotel properties to move their way up from page three to the first page of listings on Expedia.com -- all they might have to do is pay Expedia an additional 10 percent commission on top of their typical payments.
After discussing Accelerator with distribution officials from a small hotel group and a major chain, as well as a consultant who related feedback from several hoteliers, Skift essentially got a first look at how the new Expedia bid-for-placement program works.
Opinions in the hotel industry about the program -- which turns out to be not completely new -- range from horror over another piece taken out of hotels' quest for profitability to acceptance as an effective means to put heads in beds during periods when occupancy rates are challenging.
To be clear, Expedia states that three factors, including the hotel's offer strength, quality score, and compensation, determine rankings on its hotel pages. Expedia claims the a
