Hotels.com Faces a Brand Problem

Online Travel This Week

Rebranding got a lot of attention in the past few days with Facebook’s name-change to Meta, but what about Hotels.com’s outdated brand?

The idea for this column arrived Wednesday afternoon when the subject line of a Hotels.com email popped in: “We offer so much more than hotels.”

And then there was the headline in the email body: “Don’t let the name fool you, we do more than just hotels.”

You know where this is heading. Hotels.com, which was among the first websites before the turn of the century to enable online hotel bookings, today also offers vacation rentals, apartments, villas, houseboats, trailer parks, and apartment hotels — not to mention things to do, car rentals, packages and flights.

Like Expedia.com, Hotels.com has been busy adding vacation rentals to its hotel portfolio from sister brand Vrbo, and Hotels.com wants to ensure that travelers aren’t fooled by its obviously outdated brand.

But while parent company Expedia Group has been busy over the last year-and-a-half shedding brands such as SilverRail and Egencia — its sale to American Express Global Business Travel closed this week — and otherwise consolidating operations, rebranding Hotels.com does not seem to be in the offing.

Expedia is still pursuing a multi-brand strategy so folding Hotels.com into Expedia.com would be a debacle.

The Hotels.com brand is too well-known and its brand value worth too much to simply cast aside the name. So Hotels.com at this point is stuck reminding customers that it is just not about hotels, and sells the gamut of other lodging types, as well. Hotels.com customers can earn stamps on vacation rental bookings, and redeem them for free nights at more than 1 million eligible properties, the company said.

You can expect Hotels.com’s videos and TV commercials to soon reflect its relatively new beyond-hotels reality.

Two hours after receiving that Hotels.com email, I received a promotional email from another outdated brand, HotelTonight. Owned by Airbnb, HotelTonight expanded beyond same-night bookings several years ago, and users can now book rooms 100 days ahead, for example, and can also extend stays beyond the initial night.

So HotelTonight, like Hotels.com, has a relatively well-know brand name that just doesn’t fit its current mission. But at least HotelTonight is still primarily selling hotels — although not just for tonight.

I could see HotelTonight, founded in 2010 and a relative kid compared to Hotels.com, rebranding far sooner than Hotels.com. But both have a marketing dilemma.

That brings us to CheapOair — it’s not just about cheap flights. Oh, well.

In Brief

SPAC Skepticism Is Trimming Valuations

Sonder is the latest would-be public company looking to execute a special purpose acquisition company merger to see its valuation trimmed. The hybrid hotel and short-term rental operator saw its proposed valuation trimmed to $1.9 billion, from an earlier $2.2 billion. A bunch of SPACs have experienced, or are likely to see, similar reboots. Skift

The Apple Privacy Effect

It will be interesting to see if major online travel agencies report an adverse impact in their retargeting efforts because of Apple’s privacy update. Facebook, or Meta, that is, reported during its third quarter earnings call last month that it experienced revenue shortfalls, with the largest factor coming from privacy changes in Apple iOS 14.

Vacasa Launches Homeowner App

Vacasa, which like Sonder is aiming for a SPAC debut in 2021, has just launched a dedicated app for homeowners that enables them to track reservations, maintenance issues, and the financial performance of their vacation rentals.

Airbnb Experiments With Total Pricing Displays

Airbnb said it is running tests to show the total price of a stay — with the exception of taxes — including cleaning and service fees, in the initial listing search. This would save the sticker shock later for guests when view their bookings before paying. The taxes portion of the payment would continue to be shown on the final payment page. Airbnb