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Hotelbeds outlines commitment to rate integrity
Hotelbeds has told its hotel partners it has sacrificed around €300 million of sales over the last year in order to maintain rate integrity under its new stricter policy.
Giving an update today on the implementation of new distribution management rules, the bedbank said it has managed to reduce reported rate integrity issues for its 180,000 hotel partners by 90% to a historic low over the last six months, falling to 0.01% of total room night production.
Hotelbeds has implemented a strict ‘three strike policy’ where, after just three warnings, it disconnects offenders that have been found to distribute opaque rates in the OTA channel.
Managing director Carlos Munoz said Hotelbeds has been consulting with hotel partners in private to quietly introduce changes.
"Whilst it is still early days and we recognise that more remains to be done, I am nonetheless pleased to confirm the significant impact we have made already and the positive feedback from hotel partners about the automated technologies we are using that are unavailable from any other bedbank," he said.
"Understandably some have asked ‘why are you doing this and how are you able to forgo €300 million in otherwise profitable sales?’. The answer is simple: we are totally committed to adding real value to our hotel partners and we know the best way to achieve this is by providing incremental, high-value bookings from long-haul source markets that don’t compete with their direct channel.
"We achieve this by leveraging our B2B network of over 60,000 travel agents, tour operators, airline and points redemption schemes – all of whom offer a high proportion of incremental long-haul, long-stay guests that hotels find really valuable."
Hotelbeds has invested heavily in new automated technologies~and data analytics to accurately segment and monitor how contracted products are distributed.
It has established a team of professionals dedicated to ensuring rates intended for offline channels are not sold by OTAs.
"Soon we’ll be announcing further initiatives and providing more updates on how we feel that we can encourage the whole sector to take this topic more seriously: watch this space," added Munoz.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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