Google: moving towards OTA?
With Google gobbling up many businesses, the question is increasingly being asked: will it become an OTA or online travel agency? And if so, what does it mean to travel?
Bruno Perez of RevPARguru.com thinks it’s a logical business step for Google.
“OTAs are just sophisticated search engines, and that’s what Google does best,” he said.
While Google Flight Finder is just for US flights, and Google Hotel Finder has been called an experiment, it’s easy to see how consumers will come to see Google as a vehicle for all kinds of bookings, writes Colleen Isherwood in Canadian Lodging News.
She quotes Perez as saying even if Google was just to take a small portion of the OTA business, it would put a lot of pressure on existing OTAs.
“The advantage to the hotelier is that they could be stronger in setting commissions with Google; they would have more leverage at the start,” Perez said.
He thinks hoteliers would embrace Google because it would give them a major advantage in part because of its widespread usage.
Perez adds that many hotels don’t have the infrastructure to negotiate contracts with Expedia, Orbitz and Bookings.com. With Google, they would just have to open one page and plug in the rates.
Hoteliers are currently paying 20 to 35 per cent commissions to the OTAs.
If Google does get into the game, hoteliers would have to re-think the value of their property and what they are paying their own OTA.
By David Wilkening
David
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