As we have been discussing OTA and Booking.com on a number of times in the past the latest release in statement from Booking.com is interesting to say the least.
We felt that this is a very smart move from Booking.com, in which they are playing good cop to both the competition authorities and hoteliers. In summary of the announcement, Booking.com will not issue hoteliers’ with emails and phone calls when you infringe the parity rate code against other OTA but it will still put pressure on you if the pricing on your own website is not on parity with Booking.com.
What does this mean? and how is this going to affect my distribution strategy?
What it means is that Booking.com will still have the best rate available out there in the market. Most hotelier’s objective is to try and push their online business into their own website. Marketers will go as far as offer lower rate to drive this business as the commission level is lower on your own website. The domino effect is that Booking.com will benefit from this as what you do in your own website, will have to apply on Booking.com. You see the clearer picture now, this is the reason why Booking.com does not care about other OTA and focus more on your own website.
However, hoteliers should look at this from another angle. With this news, hoteliers should aim to dilute the business production from Booking.com and spread this across all different platforms. This will take the monopoly of production from Booking.com and hotels should target other lower commission cost OTA.
Have you heard of Tripadvisor’s new Instant Booking? We will have a look at this on our next post and we will explain how this will help in combating Booking.com
Please view below statement from Booking.com
Dear GlobalPartner,
We would like to inform you that pursuant to the recent agreement reached between the French, Italian and Swedish National Competition Authorities (“NCAs”) and Booking.com, we have committed ourselves to inform our hotel partners of our commitments (see attached letter). We can also inform you that we have decided to extend the Commitments to accommodations throughout Europe so that all of our accommodation partners in Europe can benefit from these changes. Therefore, the attached letter has been sent to all of our hotel partners (including your hotels) in the European Economic Market (including Switzerland).
In line with the commitment obligations, all properties within the EU (including your properties) will be informed today using the letter and annex attached. The rest of your contract (including any more favorable provisions to your or your hotels’ advantage) have remained unchanged.
If you have any questions about the commitments or the consequences, please do reach out to your dedicated account manager.
Hotel Optimisation 
