Hotels have been complaining about online travel agencies as long as the travel websites have been around. Their commissions are about double that of a traditional agent, and over the years, they have made a variety of what hoteliers see as outrageous demands for things like dibs on all available rooms.
Some companies, like InterContinental and Choice, have taken active stands and temporarily taken their properties off the sites. But for the most part, hotel companies have grudgingly stuck with the OTAs they love to hate, especially during the kind of tough economic times they've been through in the last few years, when they were desperate to sell rooms at any rate.
In fact, most hoteliers will admit they have no one to blame but themselves for supplying the OTAs with inventory at the cut rates that have made them such powerhouses.
But some new technologies are beginning to offer hotels a way to market their products online without the OTAs. And while no one really sees any of these new solutions as likely to end the OTAs' domination of online hotel sales or as the preferred booking platform for online travelers, the products' developers say hotels should look closely at the options they offer for helping lure travelers directly to the hotels' own booking sites for commission-free bookings.
Perhaps the most significant tool to come along in some time is technology by Pegasus designed to ensure placement of a hotel company's direct booking rate, along with a link to the hotel's booking site, alongside those of the OTAs on metasearch sites and on new travel search functions such as Google Maps.
Pegasus confirmed to Travel Weekly this month that it is helping to hook up hotels to the new Google hotel search feature. Likewise, it just announced it has developed a similar technology tool for metasearch sites like Kayak, which is partnering with Microsoft's Bing search engine to offer travel listings.
Likewise, a German company, Cultuzz Digital Media, last week unveiled a tool to help hotels sell rooms on eBay, commission-free.
And in a new twist on hotel search, Room 77 recently unveiled a website designed to be a TripAdvisor of sorts for individual rooms. Its most notable feature at launch was the ability to offer simulated views from each room using Google Earth. But its creators say that ultimately, they want feedback from hotel guests on other things that can differ from room to room, such as the strength of the wireless Internet signal.
Room 77 is not a booking engine, but it does offer searchers links to the different OTAs and the hotels' own websites. While it currently does not offer travelers any way to directly book the exact rooms they want, the general manager of the site and vice president of product development, Kevin Fliess, said Room 77 hopes to offer new business models for helping hotels sell their rooms on the Internet.
"If you think about airlines as an analogy, if I want economy-plus or an exit row, you have to pay for that these days," he said. "I think what you are starting to see in the hotel industry is hotels starting to recognize that consumers have different preferences, and they are willing to pay. We will be working with hotels to develop those models."
Indeed, while none of these technologies on their face, or at this stage, are promising to change the way travelers search or buy online, they are finally taking us beyond the OTA model, which for years has been the only easy way to comparison shop at just one site. And that is something hotels should be paying close attention to,
Douglas Quinby, who tracks theses sorts of developments for PhoCusWright, said he did not see the new Google or metasearch tools as game-changers in the online travel searching and booking world.
"It definitely could provide an advantage to hotels for those travelers who use search," Quinby said. "However, this is still at a very early stage. ... So it may mean that there's an opportunity for hotel sites to get a few more clicks and perhaps an increase in conversions. But this is still something that would need to be addressed in the context of a broader multiplatform distribution strategy."
But technology changes quickly. And as David Sjolander, Pegasus' vice president of product management for distribution services, said, Google and others might not even know yet how this all will evolve for their business model.
"For now, what is most important is that hotels are participating and playing in this field and are not being relegated to the sidelines," Sjolander said.
Email Jeri Clausing at jclausing@travelweekly.com.