Hotel Sales Blog

Rate Integrity & Rate Parity

May 25, 2010 at 10:08 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments
Tags: hotel blog, hotel industry, hotel revenue management, hotel sales, social networks

I don’t know if there is right or worng answer here as necessity has indicated the ‘dumping’ of unused inventory on the opaque channels.

This is a little story of trust and integrity.

I went online to book an airline ticket on the United Airlines site that states that the customer will not find lower fares on any other site. The fare was almost $600.

So I tried to save my cleint some money and went to Priceline where I haven’t ever booked an airline ticket before. The fare to the same destination with a better schedule was only $300. Granted, United posted in it’s lower fare column the same fare but the flight schedule was for flights leaving at ungodly hours and with hideous layovers.

Maybe I was naive to believe that United meant what it said but it taught me one thing — I will always check on Priceline prior to booking another ticket.

Does your hotel have a similar lowest rate guarantee on your web site? Will your customers find lower rates on Priceline and the other opaques?

Have we created Priceline’s incredible profits last quarter by driving our clients to the opaque channels?

As Seth Godin said in his book “All Marketers Are Liars” our cutomers don’t believe our marketing copy any more, they believe User Generated Content by ‘people like themselves’ as found in testimonials and review sites.

Have we given the power to the review sites that many hotel managers resent by failing to maintain integerity in posting rates?

Think about it — leave your comments and let’s start a discussion!