TripAdvisor stabs hoteliers in the back?

With Booking.com joining the „Book on TripAdvisor“ program, we are witnessing the first setback to the years-long expansion of market share taken by OTA giants Booking.com and Expedia. However, it is not happening to the satisfaction of hoteliers so far.

Last 12 months saw the ambitious attempts by TripAdvisor, Google and Amazon to shake up the online segment of the highly lucrative travel industry. Hoteliers were hoping that this might benefit them by providing new channels that would generate an equal amount of bookings, but on lower commissions.

What has essentially happened is that Booking.com has agreed to surrender a share of its commission to TripAdvisor, which is a recognition to TA’s value as a sales and marketing channel.

This might not mean the end for hoteliers’ aspirations. It still remains to be seen whether TripAdvisor’s platform will enable more equality between hotels and OTAs than Google search, where hotels are clearly unable to compete with OTA’s huge marketing spend.

So let’s wait for Booking.com’s full integration in Instant Booking to be able to judge the impact all this will have on hoteliers. It is indicative though that in these early stages of its Instant Booking product, TripAdvisor has decided to take the easy route towards boosting income and on-boarded the largest OTA there is.

With speculations that Expedia might soon team up with Google and its “Book on Google” program, hoteliers’ woes seem to be continuing.

So far it’s TripAdvisor +1 and OTAs -1. Not much, if anything, has changed for the better of hoteliers.

The article was originally published on Linkedin on 16 October 2015.