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Why your hotel should list with an Online Travel Agency (OTA)
Greater visibility among high-value guests is waiting for your hotel when you list your property with a trusted marketplace like Expedia Group.
What is an OTA and how do hotels work with them?
Online travel agencies (OTAs) are web-based marketplaces that allow consumers to research and book travel products and services, including hotels, flights, cars, tours, cruises, activities and more. An OTA provides a secure booking platform and is the traveller’s main point of contact for booking changes and cancellations. Online travel agencies are an essential step in a guest’s booking journey. Every day, millions of travellers around the world use them to plan leisure and business travel.
Hotels of all sizes —including bed & breakfasts, inns and ryokans —sign contracts to list their properties on an OTA to get access to more high-quality guests in locations and at volumes that would be difficult to reach through independent marketing efforts. Additionally, OTAs provide a centralised destination for partners to access market insights and tools for targeting travellers, securing and processing bookings, communicating with guests and managing reviews.
There are no upfront fees to list with an OTA; they only make money when rooms are booked, collecting a percentage of the total value of each secured reservation.
What are the benefits of listing with an OTA?
Our recent Path to Purchase research shows that listing your property on an OTA increases reach and visibility, which can bring more traffic to your property’s own website. In fact, after visiting an OTA, 89% of travellers went to another travel site, such as an airline, hotel or meta travel site.* This is known as ‘The Billboard Effect.’
Every year, OTAs spend millions of marketing dollars to bring travellers to their platforms. This investment effort over time has resulted in 80% of travellers visiting an OTA at some point before making a travel purchase, indicating that even if travellers ultimately book on another site, they likely visited an OTA for inspiration, research or planning purposes.* And among those that used OTAs during their path, these travellers spent 160 minutes on OTA sites on average—over 30 minutes longer than any other site type—proving that travellers rely on OTAs for planning almost as much as they do for booking.*
TAKEAWAY
More visibility, less investment.
For many travellers, visiting an OTA has become integral to the trip planning journey. By listing with a well-established one, you’re putting your property in front of a large audience of potential guests that are already engaged.
Why list with Expedia Group?
Our roster of globally trusted brands, extensive network of travellers and industry-leading technology solutions help keep your hotel booked up all year.
Increase demand and attract high-value guests
Reach travellers who spend more with our One Key rewards programme
One Key™ unifies Expedia®, Hotels.com® and Vrbo® into one simple and easy-to-use programme. It allows travellers to earn and use across all three brands and on various trip components, including eligible hotels, holiday rentals, flights, car hire and more. One Key can help you attract high-value travellers who spend more per booking and travel more frequently than non-members* — learn more about how One Key drives demand for your property.
Target more package bookers
Benefit from the broadest offerings in travel. Travellers can shop for different trip add-ons, evaluate price points and amenities, and arrange transfers to and from the airport–all in one place. Travellers that book multi-item trips book earlier, stay longer and cancel less than those that book individual trip elements.** Reaching these high-value travellers can help you scale your business in all seasons.
61% of package bookers booked on an Online Travel Agency (like Expedia).*
Package bookers take longer trips at an average of 11.8 days which can support increased opportunities for on-property spending.*
They also have a longer path to purchase, spending an average of 82 days in inspiration and planning, giving you more opportunities for property consideration.*
Access unique traveller types through our B2B network
Reach travellers that are hard to access through your own channels by tapping into our extensive B2B network, which includes financial institutions, membership organisations, travel agencies and thousands of businesses around the world that leverage our platform and technology.
This extended reach and visibility gives you access to travellers in more emerging markets and those who tend to stay longer, travel more internationally and fill more mid-week bookings.***
"What’s attractive to me is the marketing dollars that Expedia Group is spending to target members. We have very little marketing budget nor the resources for our own loyalty programme, so they’re not just a technology partner–they’re also an extended marketing department".
Leverage our effective tools and support
Reach the right guests, stay competitive in the market and accelerate your performance by leveraging insights from our pricing and visibility tools and helpful support resources.
Optimise your pricing strategy
Let our easy-to-use rate management and revenue insights tools, like Rev+, do the hard work for you. They can help you define and optimise your multi-season pricing strategy to attract more guests and stay competitive.
Stand out to travellers
Understand and improve your guest experience from booking to stay with our visibility performance tools. Get recommendations on how to optimise your listing content, rates and availability—plus, use insights from guest reviews to find areas of opportunity. The better experience you provide throughout the traveller journey, the higher you may appear in search results and the more visible you’ll be to travellers.
Get tailored support
When you list with us, we’ve got your back. All partners receive personalised messaging to improve performance, which can come in the form of emails, access to tips via our Virtual Market Coach platform or even a 1:1 account manager.
"The Expedia Group partnership is really important to us. Our ability to talk to our market manager as a strategic partner and then use Expedia Group marketing tools to drive demand where and when we need it is key".
Start boosting your bookings with us
We connect partners with travellers who stay longer, cancel less and spend more. Access them through our suite of beloved brands, our industry-leading tools and our massive B2B network composed of nearly 60,000 businesses around the globe by listing with Expedia Group today.
1B+
average searches per month***
250K
destinations globally**
~300M
net room nights booked last year**
List your hotel
Gain greater visibility among high-value travellers with our trusted platform.
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*Expedia Group Path to Purchase Research, 2023
**Expedia Group data, October 2022
***Expedia Group data, Q1 2023