UK hotels “fail to honour web price guarantees”
UK hotels are the worst offenders in failing to honour price guarantees advertised on their websites, new research shows.
The KPMG survey conducted across 330 hotels in 16 countries found that although 43% of hotels offered best web rate price guarantees only 27% of them delivered their price promise.
UK hotels performed worse with only 19% honouring price guarantees on their website prices.
It is only 12 months since most major hotel chains decided to tackle the issue of attracting customers away from third party agents by offering lowest price guarantees if rooms were booked online via the hotel’s own website. This was a new strategy by hotels to gain greater control over their booking distribution systems.
But Nick Pattie, director of KPMG’s hotel practice which conducted the research said: “These survey findings are surprising considering the amount of effort being made by hoteliers to direct customers to their own booking channels. Hotels want their customers to book direct but in practice, hoteliers aren’t delivering consistent prices and customers will continue to use other booking methods which offer more attractive room rates.”
The KPMG global survey found the majority of cheapest hotel room rates are still found on the internet with 36% of room rates being cheapest via online intermediaries although there are significant regional variances.
The survey also highlights regional trends, showing that:
*Corporate travellers in the US get the best deals with business travel agents.
*Emerging countries in Eastern Europe tend to offer cheaper rooms via their own booking channels, offer a high percentage of guaranteed web rates, and have a low level of price variation between the different booking channels. But online agents continue to increase their representation in these countries and may yet wrest control from the hoteliers, according to KPMG.
Report by Phil Davies
Phil Davies
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