Holiday Inn Pulls Out Of Expedia, Hotels.com
from the cutting-the-channel dept
Well, the battle is clearly on between hotels and the online travel booking sites. Initially, hotels completely underestimated the power of online booking sites, assuming they would just be used by discount shoppers. The hotels handed off their lowest priced inventory to them, assuming they’d still make money from expensive business travelers. They never expected those business travelers to figure out how to use the web themselves. Late last year, the hotels started fighting back, reserving the cheapest rooms for their own websites. Now, InterContinental Hotels Group, owners of Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza and a variety of other well known hotels has decided they’re pulling their inventory from Expedia and Hotels.com completely. While individual franchisees do have some ability to work with whatever channels they want, InterContinental said they’re making it clear that their franchisees need to follow this policy as part of “brand standards.” InterContinental claims the reason for pulling out of Expedia and Hotels.com is a failure to meet the “certification” process they’ve laid out, but it really just means they want more control over their own inventory. The real question is what real impact this will have on those hotels. How much of their sales comes via Expedia or Hotels.com, and are those users comparison shopping on other sites as well. Generally speaking, it seems like a backwards move to completely cut off a popular sales channel, but if they really believe they can do better elsewhere, then more power to them.
Comments on “Holiday Inn Pulls Out Of Expedia, Hotels.com”
Huge mistake, IMHO
I travel pretty frequently. I was just in Iowa this past weekend and in Gatlinburg, TN the weekend before.
Both trips required a stay-over in a hotel and both hotels were reserved through online booking sites. One through Expedia and one through Travelocity.
I never go to a hotel specific site (i.e., HolidayInn.com) because often times I don’t know what hotels are going to be in the area I’m going to, so I rely on a multi-hotel service to tell me.
Looks like those hotels just lost my business…
Re: Huge mistake, IMHO
I agree completely.
Of course, Priceline really has the best deals – I’ve stayed at Mariots (and other nicer chains) for $39/night all over the country.
I’ve never even tried Hotels.com or Expedia…