More than 210 Internet booking engines have signed up in anticipation of what TripAdvisor calls its game-changing online platform, TripAdvisor Connect, scheduled to launch later this year.
(Pictured, Nikoi, an example of a small, independent resort in Bintan that would benefit from the new service)
Initial commitment from Internet booking engines means that more than 135,000 hotels and B&Bs worldwide will be able toparticipate in Hotel Price Comparison on TripAdvisor.
Initial commitment for TripAdvisor Connect has exceeded company expectations, with booking engines from 48 countries already on board. The announcement has also generated interest from industry opinion leaders.
Jay Karen, President and CEO of the Professional Association of Innkeepers International, welcomes the development: “Currently it seems that millions of TripAdvisor visitors may bypass B&Bs when searching by dates of stay, because there has been no connectivity to nearly all of the inventory in our industry. This initiative looks to be a big step forward.”
In Asia, an executive responsible for digital marketing and distribution for a major hotel group told WIT, “TripAdvisor Connect allows TripAdvisor to tap one, into budgets of smaller/independent hotels (hence more $$$) and two, to get more reviews (“….remind guests to write a reviews).
“The platform allows (smaller) hotels to place bids and compete against OTA bids for their own property – the question is: are smaller hotels able to compete with the big guys budgets to appear among the first 3x placements (= 90 % of clicks)? Some hotels might have the budgets, most probably not, or they have to shift their offline budgets to online. The big winner is TripAdvisor and some (smaller) wins for smaller/independent hotels.”
What industry observers say they find interesting is that Google (via Hotel Finder) as well as TripAdvisor are introducing features that empower hotel suppliers to sell directly more and more. At Asia Connect in Bangkok last month, players such as Site Minder and Sabre Hospitality Solutions report robust increases in direct bookings through their IBEs.
Said the executive, “They must have looked at the upside closely as currently their business is dependent on the large OTAs (ie Priceline $1.14 billion ad spend on Google represents 2.6% share of Google’s total ad revenues in 2012). However, the total hotel supplier segment seems to represent a larger opportunity in the long run vs the OTAs.
“I guess it’s also a diversification move (reduce dependency on OTAs over time), matching consumer trends to book directly with supplier.com as suppliers get smarter and it’s a hedge against OTAs being disintermediated by Google over time.”
Morris Sim, CEO & co-founder of Circos Brand Karma, said, “With TripAdvisor Connect, independent hoteliers now have a low-cost method to shift customer online bookings from OTAs to their own booking engine. This makes TripAdvisor a credible alternative channel to OTAs. Because TripAdvisor has an extraordinary amount of user-generated content and is a must-visit resource for travelers researching where to go, if a hotel has a good reputation, its booking engine now has a fair chance to earn its share of the wallet.”
According to PhoCusWright data, APAC online hotel gross bookings was US$22.8 billion in 2012, up 17% year on year. This represented a fifth of total hotel gross bookings.
Chetan Kapoor, India-based analyst at PhoCusWright, noted, ““Given the fragmented landscape and high number of standalone/unaffiliated properties, OTAs are (still) a leading online distribution channel in APAC. Suppliers are also increasingly driving online sales but we believe it’s still largely via OTAs and less via their own websites.
“However, there are strong initiatives to boost brand.com sales – more so by chains – through loyalty programme benefits, complimentary add–ons (F&B, spas, transfers, etc.). Hotel supplier website gross bookings grew by 18% YoY in 2012, whereas OTAs grew 16% during the same period.”
Jean-Charles Lacoste, TripAdvisor’s Vice President of Direct Connect Solutions, said, “We’re delighted to have such an international range of Internet booking engines on board for the launch of TripAdvisor Connect. The enthusiastic response from over 200 Internet booking engines from 48 countries shows that they realize this will be a powerful new way for their clients to generate incremental bookings.
“We anticipate signing up even more Internet booking engines over the next few weeks and we look forward to enabling so many independent accommodation owners to generate new bookings.”
To see the full list of Internet booking engines committed as TripAdvisor Connect Partners, visithttp://th.tripadvisor.com/ConnectPartners
