Online Bookings systems Expedia and Booking.com to relax rate parity in Australia
Global powerhouse OTA’s Booking.com and Expedia have recently written to their hotel and hostel clients advising of changes to the terms and conditions of their agreements. These agreements are now falling into line with other Online Bookings systems across parts of the world. These updates to their T&C’s relax their previously strict rate parity demands.
The four key points that Booking.com has announced are as follows:
“1. You may set different room rates and offer different conditions and availability on different OTAs
“2. You may offer lower rates or better conditions through offline channels (such as telephone bookings and walk-ins) provided you do not publish or market offline rates online.
“3. There is no restriction on the unpublished room rates or conditions you may offer, provided you do not market those rates online.
“4. You are still contracted to give Booking.com parity in respect of room rates and conditions offered on your own website (which includes meta-search sites such as Trivago, Kayak, TripAdvisor or Google Hotel Finder when they redirect the consumer to your own website for booking).
Hotels and hostels across Australia are now free to offer discount rates to loyal customers, and can offer discount rates via call centres, but cannot offer discount rates on their own websites.
Expedia have also announced that they will be allowing properties to advertise cheaper rates anywhere but the property own website.
The article was originally published on seperate articles via TravelTrends website and full details of the content of the email from Booking.com CEO Gillian Tans.
TravelTrends Booking
TravelTrends Expedia
GuestCentrix Web Interface Manager can be used to easily manage rates & inventory and publish different rates & inventory to different OTA’s (channel manager dependant) where hotels and hostels require.