New Research Suggests It Doesn't Always Pay to Book Direct for a Hotel

A new report published by research firm Piper Jaffray suggests it doesn't necessarily pay to book direct with hotels instead of with an online travel agency (OTA) such as Expedia or Booking.com, or a metasearch site such as Kayak or Trivago. Analysts looked at hotels from the top four hotel chains (InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International, Hilton, and Wyndham Hotel Group) in the largest 25 cities worldwide and found that booking direct on a hotel's website was a less expensive booking option for only 14 percent of the hotels in the sample. There were more instances (21 percent) in which an OTA or metasearch site had a lower price for a room. The majority of hotels in the sample (66 percent) had the same listed price on OTA, metasearch, and brand.com websites. This means that 34 percent of hotels included in the sample had inconsistent pricing across different channels. In cases when an OTA/metasearch website offered cheaper prices, the price was less expensive by 4.2 percent on average, versus hotel direct websites averaging a 3.8-percent lower price. Least Expensive Booking Option No. Of Hotels % of Hotels Average % Price Below Others OTA/Metasearch Site 18 21% 4.20% Hotel Direct 11 13% 3.80% Same Price 57 66% -- Total* 86 100% -- *In 14 cases, one of the hotel chains did not have hotels in the cities included in the sample Source: Piper Jaffray and Company Websites "I would have expected the percentage of hotels with same price to be higher across all channels," said Michael J. Olson, senior research analyst for Piper Jaffray and co-author of the report. "I would have expected in most cases where it was a lower price, it would have been directly from the hotel." Olson and his