Hotel eCommerce teams are lazy! But don’t blame them

If there is something consistent in every hotel I work with is how much time the eCommerce team devotes to Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) compared to its own channels.-

I tell them they are lazy, which makes them hate me… for a little while… but then they start thinking about it, especially when I explain why.-

OTAs have the advantage of having a lot of resources and big teams of people working on getting traffic to their websites. So when the hotel needs to generate reservations, it’s a lot easier to go to them than to build direct sales strategies and work on making direct bookings on the hotel’s own channels.-

I spend a lot of my time trying to change this way of thinking. It’s pretty rare to see a hotel getting a good chunk (like 25%) of their bookings directly, which means they’re losing out on a lot of money.-

On average, a direct booking generates 2.5 times more bottom line income than a booking coming from an OTA or an agency.

But, as much as it bugs me, that is something usually not known or discussed between commercial and financial managers, let alone by the top leadership.-

So what do eCommerce teams focus on? They focus on generating the occupancy budgeted with the least possible effort, hence, lazy. But their laziness comes from the top of the pyramid, whether their name is CEO, COO, CCO, CSO, CMO or General Manager.-

95% of the hotels don’t have an incentive related to direct sales.-

In today’s digital era, understanding the intricacies of online sales and creating direct customer relationships is non-negotiable. Hotels failing to prioritize their direct channel strategies are at a significant disadvantage.-

So, is your hotel working on boosting direct bookings, or is it just relying on OTAs?