In recent times the hotel industry has seen a surge in the bookings made online. With the introduction of hotel booking websites and online travel agencies the demand for online hotel booking has been on the rise. Online travel agencies are the websites which allow visitors to visit numerous hotels through their own website and book their respective hotel of their choice. OTAs, as they are famously known have been one of the most popular choices for visitors when it comes to finding and booking hotels.
Online travel agencies have been one of the best medium of revenue generation for hotels. With more than a 1000 OTAs surfacing the hotel industry the revenue generated is even more and the market share of these OTAs is even very large. Since their inception these specialised agencies have ruled the hotel industry with more business than any other travel agencies. Make a cut and grab a statistical data of the performance of OTAs! The findings would bamboozle you. The share of the OTA market is limited to less than 11 OTAs from which it can be assumed that it is 10 of those 1000+ which have been in the profit making business.
Four major players have been the driving force in the OTA department and if taken into consideration they would constitute nearly 40% of all the OTAs combined together. Sites like Booking.com, Expedia.com, Agoda and Travelocity have become so huge that the revenue generated by these companies is equal to half of the total revenue generated by all the OTAs. People view them as distribution channels but they are just more than that. They offer value to their consumers at all stage: problem recognition, information search, purchase decision and post purchase evaluation.
If we take a look at the demographics of using OTAs for booking hotels, most people go for the top 9 or 10 OTAs for their booking purpose. Hotel’s channel managers have been partnering innumerable OTAs for their revenue generation but when they take a look at the structure the findings are actually astounding. Out of those numerous online travel agencies only 10 have been contributing to the revenue generation and around 90% of the bookings have been coming from these OTAs. So a major question that comes up “Is there a need of 1000 OTAs when the whole business can be carried out with 10?”
