This Is How Hotels Could Win the Direct Booking Wars
Skift Take
Wars aren’t won overnight. If hotels really want to make some inroads in taking back market share from online travel agencies, and owning the customer relationship entirely, they need to wage an all-out offensive that goes well beyond direct bookings.
Can hotels win the direct booking wars? Or are the online travel agencies (OTAs) like Booking.com and Expedia just too big to fail?
Those are two questions no doubt weighing heavily on the minds of executives on both sides of the so-called direct booking wars.
On one side, you have the hotels, consisting of global players like Hilton and Marriott, as well as smaller, independent brands and properties. On the other, you have the OTAs, made up of Expedia, Priceline Group, and increasingly, Ctrip, as well as hybrid challengers such as TripAdvisor.
All of these entities are vying for guests to book with them and, for many years now, it's seemed like the OTAs have had an edge and the commissions to keep them at the top in this constant struggle between the two.
Morgan Stanley Research estimated that the global hotel industry saw revenues of $570 billion last year and of that amount, brands took home about $11 billion for branding fees. OTAs, on the other hand, collected $16
