Who’s Really Winning the Direct Booking Wars Between Hotels and Online Travel Agencies?
Photo Credit: An XYZ lounge at an Aloft Hotel. Hotel brands and online travel agencies both remain focused on getting more respective direct bookings from consumers. Marriott International
Skift Take
Arguments can be made for a number of sides, but the truth is there's no true winner or loser here, if we're being totally honest.
Editor's Note: Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Deanna Ting presented a version of this story at the Bernstein Hotels Versus OTAs conference in New York on Thursday, February 28 to an audience of investors in the travel and hospitality industries.
So, who is winning the so-called direct booking wars? Is it the hotels? Is it the online travel agencies? Is it Google? Is it the consumer?
This is a question that so many people in the travel industry have attempted to answer and, thus far, we've seen some statistics that seem to suggest that the tide is changing a bit.
Back in November 2017, a little more than a year after many of the major U.S. hotel companies launched their respective direct booking pushes, a report from Kalibri Labs suggested that the hotels were, indeed, winning.
Compiling data from its database of more than 25,000 hotels in the U.S., including validated costs and daily transactions directly sourced from the hotels' systems, Kalibri Labs found that there was
