Hotel Direct Booking Campaigns Won't Hurt Priceline and Expedia Says Study
Skift Take
Expedia, Booking.com and Ctrip are all slated to grow at at healthy clip over the next few years despite moves by big chains to steal some market share. If Morningstar's numbers are right, then some of the chains may find that the potential advantages of their direct-booking campaigns may not be as large as they once imagined.
Hilton and Marriott's substantial advertising campaigns to entice direct bookings on their websites and to steal share from online travel agencies does not mean the sky is falling for sites such as Expedia, Booking.com and Ctrip, according to a new study.
A Morningstar research report characterizes the risk to the online travel agencies from major chains' direct-booking campaigns as "overblown," and forecasts that they will produce a 1 percentage point headwind for the Priceline Group (compared with Morningstar's mid-teen percent annual booking growth estimate for Priceline through 2020); a 1.5 percentage point headwind for Expedia (in conjunction with a low-teen percent annual booking growth forecast through 2020), and a 0.5 percentage point headwind for Ctrip (which is forecast to grow bookings at an annual mid-30 percent clip through 2020).
Why would the impact to the online travel agencies be so negligibl
